Be Careful What You Wish For (2 page)

Dare I say it: the goal never should have stood. But it was symbolic in a way – as I was later to find out to my considerable financial cost, there is indeed a thin line between success and failure.

How things change. I remember playing Wolves at home in the third game from the end of that campaign and losing 2–0.

The Palace supporters were baying for blood and demanded the head of manager Alan Smith and his assistant Ray Houghton.

With two games remaining I thought we were nigh on dead. I took a monumental gamble and fired Smith and Houghton to replace them with chief scout Steve Kember.

We went on to destroy fellow relegation-threatened Portsmouth 4–2 at Fratton Park and then, thanks to Freedman’s minor miracle, won at Edgeley in the final game to preserve our status and escape relegation.

Much had taken place in those three short years. The difference in circumstances was so vast as to border on the obscene.

All the battles, managers, headlines, meltdowns and controversies I had encountered in those three years had led us to this moment.

Previously I had been fighting to stay in the old First Division and pick up the £2 million a year in BSkyB money. Now we had the keys to the Sky vault to plunder.

There was no official invite; we didn’t even knock on the door. We simply walked in and helped ourselves to a near £50 million and landed ourselves a place amongst the elite. Billed as the richest game in football and beamed to 160 countries with a global audience exceeding 700 million, the Premier League was a high-stakes poker game where the winner takes all.

We were going to the big time, playing the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea.

Left behind was a graveyard of twenty-three grounds I had no interest in revisiting, in front of us was not one but nineteen theatres of dreams. It felt good to own a Premier League club, I can’t deny that.

It was the beginning of a new era. No longer was I an outspoken, controversial owner of a First Division club; I was going to be, well, the outspoken controversial owner of a Premier League club and join the media circus that accompanied the world’s most elite league.

At thirty-six I was the youngest ever Premier League club owner, but mixed in with that euphoria was a feeling of wistfulness.

I had done what I set out to achieve. Was this the moment to
take
a bow, walk offstage and get out of the industry that I had quickly come to dislike for all its falseness and disingenuity, its pressures and disappointments? Should I get out now, whilst Crystal Palace was at its height, or was this the time to enjoy the spoils and try and go even further?

The boy that had travelled a hundred yards to watch his favourite team play had already travelled a lot further in life, and was going to travel a lot further still.

And while the journey had never been a straight line, it was to become an even more crooked path and I would run down it with my customary lack of regard for establishment and protocol.

But as I stood in the Millennium Stadium, all that was in the future. Let’s start instead at the beginning.

2

SHOW ME THE BOY

AS THE SAYING
goes, ‘Show me the boy and I will show you the man.’

Childhood is one of those things that you have to address when you are writing a book about your life, but it is also in my view possibly the least interesting part of the journey. What you did as an adult is the money shot, certainly in an autobiographical book, that is.

My childhood wasn’t without event, but I grew up in a loving, supportive home. I’ve found that writing the vague memories of your childhood in some respects lacks integrity. Recreating how you felt as your mind and body was forming; trying to get in touch with ‘the child within you’ is, in my view, not hugely honest or obtainable.

But, on the other hand, we all came from somewhere, with a background and traits that were introduced by our parents, honed by our friends and changed by life experiences. So I will indulge myself by setting up my childhood as the backdrop to my sometimes fantastically successful, sometimes totally destructive, but always eventful life, so far, at least!

I was born in South Norwood, Croydon on 24 September 1967, sharing that birthday with my close friend Theo Paphitis (he of
Dragons
’ Den
), although it is fair to say my birthdate was many years after his.

I was lucky to have in Linda and Peter two loving parents, and my younger brother Dominic arrived two and a half years after me. I grew up on a friendly street, where back doors were always left open and all your best friends in the world lived next door. In my street all the houses were in the shadow of Crystal Palace Football Club’s stadium.

Throughout my childhood I was rebellious and strong-willed. I never sought out confrontation, but I certainly wasn’t the sort to avoid it. This trait has stayed with me throughout my life. I rebelled against all authority, starting at home then extending it to the world at large. I was single-minded and believed I could achieve whatever I wanted when I put my mind to it. Reflecting on my childhood, it seems I wanted to do exactly as I wanted when I wanted and not be bound by discipline and rules like everyone else.

Football was my love as a boy; I played it all the time and became accomplished from a very early age. All the neighbourhood houses faced out to a disused field, called the Brickfield, and regularly all the kids would be out until their mothers called them in to dinner, playing football in the most competitive of spirits.

Ironically that field now houses the car park of Crystal Palace Football Club and was the battle ground for my dad and Ron Noades, who owned CPFC at the time. Noades had perhaps rather thoughtlessly done a deal with Sainsbury’s to convert the Brickfield into a car park and fence in all the houses. My father, being the tenacious animal he was, became locked in a rather bitter and vitriolic court case with Noades and Sainsbury’s to protect our rights. Perhaps if Noades had a bloody great fence stuck at the bottom of his garden blocking him into his house he might have taken umbrage too. At the time, I was too young to really know
what
was going on, but it probably did colour my dealings with Noades in the future.

My father regularly took me the hundred yards up the road to watch Palace play; he loved football too. As it happened, he had played for the club as a young man and his father and grandfather before him had been Palace fans. I loved going to Selhurst Park, the home of Palace. I loved going so much, I even went when I was not invited, breaking into the stadium on Sundays with my younger brother, kicking about on the hallowed turf and climbing floodlights – amazing to think of now as I am scared of heights – running through lounges and the like. Perhaps not quite the behaviour of a future owner, or perhaps I was marking my turf.

Soon enough I played football in school teams rather than fields. I can even remember my first-ever proper goal aged nine for my school, Cypress Juniors, in a 4–2 win. Recalling my last goal to date is easier as it was the second goal scored during the first game at the new Wembley Stadium in a pro–celebrity match alongside such football luminaries as Geoff Thomas, Graeme Le Saux, Mark Bright and Neville Southall.

As I moved into my teens my parents sent me to an all-boys’ school, Purley Boys. It had a fearsome reputation for discipline and its headmaster was a major advocate of the cane. Obeying rules was not my forte so going to a school where discipline was so prevalent was like an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.

Perhaps my only saving grace throughout my school years was my ability at sports, and I excelled in football, tennis and cricket. My father always supported me, and he’d run me here there and everywhere and always bought me the best equipment. My dad’s focus on me sometimes bordered on the obsessive but he believed in me and wanted me to be the best. Throughout my life he has remained the same, believing I can do whatever I set my mind to.

My football career blossomed and two professional football clubs, Palace and Chelsea, eventually picked me up and, in the end, put me down too.

My most hated subject at school, although it was fair to say there were a number of subjects in close competition for that title, was design and technology, and I loathed the teacher with even greater passion. He wanted discipline and I wanted to do as I wished: the end result was constant conflict and me being regularly excluded from the lesson and locked in his office.

On one of many lock-ins I decided to exact revenge. His prized cactus, grown from a seed, was sitting on his desk. I sliced it to pieces with a Stanley knife. Mid-mutilation, he came up behind me. The result was my first but not my last encounter with the bamboo cane.

Despite the battles I had with the school structure, at the year-end assembly of my first year at Purley I received at that time a record number of Full Colours awards for sporting achievement. No sooner was that achieved than I got my next visit with the bambooed one.

It was the very end of the final day of term. After the last lesson of double games I had decided to leave my sports shirt on and not change into my proper school shirt.

As I lined up to get on the bus, two arrived and all the pupils jumped on. Suddenly Mr Wright, the deputy head of the fifth year, spotted me not wearing my school shirt and ordered me to go back into school and change. The second bus made to pull away and, assuming it was departing, I jumped on, ignoring the order, safe in the knowledge the bus was leaving and I was going to be on summer holidays for seven weeks. Not only had I disobeyed Mr Wright, I made a cocky comment as well. Unfortunately the bus was not leaving, but merely shuffling forward. So there I was, stood on the bus platform, looking directly into the face of Mr
Wright
. My reward for my disobedience and comedic timing was to be ordered off the bus, dragged back into school and caned.

My last year at Purley Boys was to be one long battle, especially with the Head of Year, Mr Wozniak, who had taken a dislike to me and I to him – I don’t like bullies. My sporting prowess was what kept me in school; it certainly was not my scholastic application or observation of rules.

As spring approached the cricket season arrived. It was the headmaster’s second favourite sport and one I excelled at.

In a game away to Maidstone Grammar, my cricketing teammates and I were subjected to a very fast bowler, bowling very dangerously and hurting several of us. He hit me and then knocked out one of our players. As no intervention and protection ensued I, much to the chagrin of the teacher in charge, walked off and got the game abandoned. It was my first foray into righting the wrongs of sport!

On Monday morning a raging headmaster awaited me. ‘How dare you lower the name of the school and disobey a teacher!’

I tried in vain to explain what happened, until Mr Wozniak barged in, took over and suspended me for a week.

As the end of the fifth year approached incredibly I was accepted to stay on to the lower sixth. Since my suspension I had kept my nose clean and worked hard. I was also back in the headmaster’s good books and restored to the cricket team.

Mr Wozniak got there in the end by having me expelled. This was due to confusion as to what time I should have arrived for the traditional end-of-season cricket game between staff and pupils. Wozniak insisted I should have been there at one time; I countered by saying I had been told another, the end result was being told I was not playing in the game. This invoked great disappointment in me and ended with me pushing a teacher, resulting in expulsion.

To top it all my exam results were poor and I had no choice. I had to enrol in Croydon College to get more qualifications. It dawned on me that I wouldn’t amount to much if I didn’t pull my finger out.

College was completely different from school. Education was up to you. You were not forced to attend lectures or put in detention for misdemeanours. My new friend Edward Penrose (son of Barrie Penrose, co-author of the book
Spycatcher
) and I decided we wanted an in to the student union. There were elections in the winter of 1984. We put ourselves forward and were both elected. Once elected, we did absolutely nothing; sitting in meetings had no interest for either of us. We used the student union supplies and offices as our personal fiefdom, liberating supplies, using the student union phone; eventually our fellow student union reps respectively requested we leave.

Edward and I had identified a business opportunity delivering fresh vegetables to households. We canvassed a hundred houses and ascertained whether they would like such deliveries. Then we went to new Covent Garden and put together a price list. As our enterprise was about to begin, we decided it was too much like hard work and what we should do instead was sell Edward’s father’s vintage stamp collection at a radically reduced price from what it was really worth. Anything rather than hard work seemed to be our motto.

I coasted through the year. College was barely holding my attention. But I finished my exams and awaited my results. I passed two: English Literature and Government and Political Studies to add to the three I had passed at school. Now, fast approaching eighteen, I had five O levels and was standing at a crossroads.

Croydon was a melting pot of cultures, and like a lot of inner city areas it had its share of violence. There were gangs of all colours
and
creeds, and I had a brief flirtation with people in that way of life.

I saw many incidents of violence and destructive behaviour. Whilst I was always on the periphery of them, the mindlessness of some of these acts and the outcomes for my ‘friends’, who had run-ins with injuries, the police and ultimately the legal system, were not lost on even my adolescent, rebellious mind.

The tin lid for me was when I was sitting with a group of lads in a pub and a guy walked in and stuck a shotgun in my face. I had never seen him before in my life and to this day I still have no idea what it was about. But he was waving it in my face and telling me he was going to ‘blow my fucking head off’. I seriously thought my time was up. One of my mates even turned to this lunatic and told him to pull the trigger and see what happens to him. For some reason the gunman had a dramatic change of heart and bolted out of the pub.