How NOT to be a Football Millionaire - Keith Gillespie My Autobiography (11 page)

I had realised, however, that everything isn’t always black and white.

15

Temptation

I WAS always shy when it came to approaching girls, so football was the right profession for me. It’s a world where you don’t have to work very hard to succeed. The girls come to you.

Newcastle really opened my eyes. Picking up girls was easy. The formula was simple. Head for the usual spot in Julies nightclub, relax, have a drink and wait for the offers to come. It was common knowledge that the players always went there and our corner always attracted attention. Geordie girls have a reputation for being quite up front and straightforward, so there was no bullshit.

They’d come up, strike a discussion and, in no time, you’ve pulled them. The tactical types might start off by looking for you to sign something for a family member, or pose for a photo, and it would go from there. Others were more direct. After a few minutes chatting, I knew they’d be coming home with me.

I don’t know how many girls there were, although I’m not saying I pulled every night.

There were times when I just wanted to chill, and I’ve always had this thing about staying until closing time anyway, paranoid that I might miss something good. But the option was always there, a perk of the job. It was perfectly normal to have girls throwing themselves at you. That’s not a boast. It just goes with the territory.

Monday mornings in training were always the same. A time to compare stories.

“Out the weekend?

“Yeah.”

“Doing a bit?

“Yeah – had a girl back.”

Simple as that. And the dressing room code made sure that certain tales always stayed in-house. The lads rarely brought their other halves to Julies, and it was a bit like what goes on tour, stays on tour in there. I got up to things that I shouldn’t have. Temptation was hard to resist.

It is true that footballers who stay faithful are a rare breed. Personally, I can’t say that I’ve encountered many. I heard a story recently about a player who had never cheated until he slipped up on a trip to Asia. He was so overcome with guilt that he told his missus and she smacked him across the head with a saucepan. There was no sympathy for him when the other lads at his club enquired about his substantial bruise. “Why did you bloody tell her?” She might have told the other wives and that would make them curious about what the others were up to. Nobody was going to put an arm around his shoulder and ask what this meant for his relationship.

I’m not trying to defend anyone’s actions here, and I’m certainly not looking for sympathy. Footballers have a reputation for a reason. But I don’t think anybody can be too high and mighty about what they would or wouldn’t do unless they have been repeatedly put in a situation where attractive girls are offering themselves up to you. Serious willpower was needed to stay onside, and I didn’t have that strength.

It’s remarkable what you can get away with.

I remember playing with a guy who was so hooked on prostitutes that his missus got wind of it and they agreed he would go and see a sex therapist. The ‘expert’ reckoned that he was just addicted to paying for it, and recommended that he started financially rewarding his wife for sexual favours. Strange advice, but they went with it. A month later, the player rang his agent. “I’m bloody broke,” he said. And so he went back to the prostitutes.

It’s a different world, and there’s always enough people around to make allowances for your behaviour. The boundaries are pushed out. I can’t say I did anything too extreme, but I wound up in a few strange scenarios. Like getting padlocked in a student flat by a crazed girl who simply wouldn’t let me leave until she got what she wanted. Or sneaking into an upstairs bedroom with the daughter of a Manchester United legend while her Dad was out at a wedding. A pal of mine claims I brought two girls back to a hotel room while he pretended to be asleep in the double bed next to us. Drink was involved, and his recollection of the story is entirely different to mine; I think I’d remember a threesome. But I do recall the girls being up for coming back. Some women wanted footballers so much that they didn’t care about the consequences.

The stand-out example came in my final months in Newcastle. I’d gone for a drink with Ian when it looked as though the Middlesbrough move was on track. He buggered off and I wound up talking to a couple of girls who happened to also live in Whickham. We shared a cab home and dropped the first girl off. Her friend, who seemed a good bit older, immediately invited me back to hers, and it was obvious what was on the agenda. We headed straight for the bedroom and were getting down to business when I thought I’d heard the front door open downstairs.

“What’s that?” I said. A look of panic crossed her face.

“It’s my boyfriend!”

Her boyfriend? She’d never mentioned him. I made a break for the nearest door and entered a room where the presence of empty bunkbeds suggested that children also lived in this house. I climbed onto the top bunk and pretended to be asleep, conscious that a pair of large feet appeared to be stomping up the stairs. The door opened. There he was. A Geordie, comfortably taller than six foot, marched in.

Think on the spot time. I did a pretty poor job of pretending that he’d just woken me up, rubbing my eyes and producing a fake groan as he turned the light on. The brightness alerted me to the walls, which were covered with Newcastle United posters, and the centrepiece was a team shot with my mug right in the middle. The man of the house squinted and produced a facial expression that combined anger and amazement.

“Fucking ’ell, it’s fucking Keith Gillespie,” he said, in a thick North-East accent. “Have you been shagging wor lass?”

I jumped down to the floor and pleaded innocence. “No, no, of course we weren’t, don’t be stupid.” But my flustered demeanour gave the game away. Hero worship was out of the question here. A signed jersey wasn’t gonna make this any better. He swung a fist, I retaliated, and all of a sudden it was like a fight scene from a Steven Seagal movie. We ended up grappling on the floor, and rolling down the stairs in a ball, raining punches at each other, while his bird screamed at us to stop. He’d obviously brought the kids home as well, as there were two little boys standing there watching too, just to make the situation that little bit worse. They were probably wondering why Daddy was fighting with the man from the poster. The saving grace was that he’d left the front door open. I wrestled free and ran for freedom.

Garry Flitcroft, my captain at Blackburn, loved that story. I scored a goal at Ewood Park once and he leapt on me in the celebrations screaming “have you been shagging wor lass?” in my ear. I always enjoyed Garry’s company, but he learned the hard way about getting involved with the wrong girl. He slept with a bird who, he said, started blackmailing him, saying she’d go to the press unless he gave her money towards a boob job.

Garry was married with a kid, and he was totally freaked when this woman sent a parcel to his mother’s house with evidence of their affair. He said another girl was looking for a few quid to stop her from going to the papers as well. It was an awful time for Flitty, and the shit hit the fan in 2002 when he found out that he was going to be exposed in one of the Sunday papers.

We had an away game at Leicester and got wind that a crowd of photographers were waiting to catch him coming off the team bus. The lads decided to do something because, deep down, we knew it could have been any of us in this situation. So we all agreed to put our tracksuit tops over our heads so they wouldn’t be able to figure out which one was him, a ploy that worked a treat. As it happened, the Queen Mother was unwell at the time, and one of the boys remarked that the only way Flitty would escape the front page was if she died. He was bloody right as well. She passed away, and his infidelity was relegated in prominence.

Still, the entire episode had a major effect on his family. Flitty was convinced that his father, who suffered from depression and tragically committed suicide years later, never fully got over the negative attention that followed the revelations. The poor man stopped attending his games, unable to cope with some of the abuse that his son was getting. Flitty thought it was fishy how the tabloids had tracked down the women, and ended up giving evidence in the Leveson inquiry. Something didn’t add up at the time. There’s a dark side to the glamour, as I would later learn.

I never got stung by a kiss and tell. Being honest, I don’t think I was high profile enough when I was up to it regularly. The girls in Newcastle didn’t seem to be motivated by that anyway. They were happy to just get hold of a footballer; I’d see old conquests on other nights out, and there was never any hassle. Just a knowing nod. Maybe it was different for the lads down south, where the girls might have had different motivations. London is a different scene, full of girls who are intent on becoming famous through whatever means. They target footballers, and the high profile lads now have to be so careful. With camera phones and social media, it’s hard to get away with anything. Even an innocent photo can be spun into an incriminating story. It used to be easier to get away with messing around, although I don’t think it’s going to stop anybody. Boys will be boys. When it’s on a plate, there will always be takers.

With the lifestyle I led, getting married was a crazy idea, but that’s exactly what I did on June 14, 1999, on the Caribbean island of St Lucia, in front of an attendance that consisted of my fiancee’s best mate and her boyfriend, a pair of photographers from OK magazine, and two random couples from Manchester who I’d met on the beach a few days earlier. That was it. No family. Why? It saved me the hassle of public speaking. The prospect of it terrified me. My wife-to-be, Frances Reay, felt the same way, a rare example of us totally agreeing on something. From the moment we met, ours was a fiery relationship. An ominous sign of things to come.

I first set eyes on her at a joint engagement party for Steve Watson and Lee Clark in the Gosforth Park Hotel in February, 1996, just after the fall-out from Black Friday.

I instantly spotted the small, attractive, blonde girl across the bar, and made it my business to wander close enough so we’d have to start a discussion. She was 18, a local girl, and worked with Lee’s missus, Lorraine, in a clothes shop in town called Life. I’d just turned 21, and had never really had a serious girlfriend before.

We clicked, she gave me her number, I called the next day, a date was arranged, and it quickly escalated from there.

A year later, we were engaged, even though we’d already broken up a few times and reunited. It was usually over nothing, immature stuff, arguing for the sake of it. Her parents were separated and she’d lived with her father before coming to live with me for a while when things got serious. We rowed even more then. I’d disappear out with the lads and wouldn’t come home – she’d lose the plot, and return to her Dad’s. But Frances loved her nights in Newcastle, and drink has a habit of bringing people back together. It was a small town when you knew where to go, and on the Sunday night crawl we always seemed to bump into each other at the last stop. If I was at home, I might receive a call asking if I could pick her up, and all would be forgiven.

And when things were good, they were very good.

She wasn’t stupid. Frances spent a lot of time around footballers, and knew their habits. Heck, I might be out with her, and girls would still come up and try their luck, so her eyes were open to what was going on. But we were in love, a fiery kind of love, and believed that marriage was the natural step to security. It was a decision rather than a spur of the moment thing. I didn’t get down on bended knee. We talked about it in the house one evening, and decided it was the way forward. I know Alex Ferguson encouraged his lads to get married early, but there was nobody at Newcastle advising me to settle down. This was our call.

I went out to splash £5,000 on an engagement ring, and we made it official, even though it was stop-start right up until we left Newcastle and moved to Blackburn in December, 1998. The wedding was set for the following summer, and we were determined to do it our way. A Caribbean holiday sounded good, but the real paradise for me was avoiding the traditional big day with the pressure to speak and entertain.

My family was down the list of concerns. There was no tension over Mum and Dad’s divorce because they remained on speaking terms. In fact, by complete coincidence, Dad was remarrying 10 days later, and my sister Angela was getting married a week after that. But I didn’t use the wedding congestion as an excuse for inviting nobody. I’m sure they would have liked to be there, especially Mum, but I was in my own, selfish zone. This suited me, and that was all that mattered. All Frances wanted was her mate Michelle to be there, and she brought her boyfriend along, a Welsh lad called Johnno who was good company. The one thing we did want to get for our families was good photos, and that’s how the OK magazine deal came about. Phil spoke to them, and they were given exclusive access in return for giving us the pictures to keep. We didn’t receive a penny.

Our beachside hotel, Sandals, offered the whole wedding package. When you walked down the steps from the main building, you turned left for the sunbeds, and right for the marriage area. Local laws said we had to be in the country six days before the service, and we saw other couples enjoy their special moment as we lay enjoying the sun. I was recognised by two boys from Manchester, big United fans, and we told them to bring their girlfriends along for our turn. They joined Michelle and Johnno in the seats as I stood at a makeshift altar, waiting for Frances to make her grand entrance down the stairs. I’d be lying if I said it was a dream ceremony. The lady Reverend kept telling me to look at Frances as I repeated the vows, but the sea breeze made it almost impossible to hear. I needed to train my eyes on the Reverend to lip read what she was saying, so it wound up being a bit of a struggle. Fitting really, given how the marriage turned out. Half an hour later, we were pronounced man and wife. I rang Mum to let her know it was done, and then moved to the beach for the photographs. Then, we went for a low-key meal and that was it.