Be Careful What You Wish For (37 page)

From the moment Iain Dowie went on the stand it became clear that if a question asked of him was one he liked or advanced his position he could recall exact dates and times. But if the reverse applied, he’d immediately reply with ‘I do not recall.’ During the majority of the questioning my QC was greeted with that unhelpful response from Dowie.

At one point it got so ridiculous that Dowie, when asked if he had a diary, didn’t recall if he did. John Davies persevered and said ‘
A
desk diary, perhaps?’ And still no recollection from Dowie. It was only when John produced a desk diary, with the label ‘Iain Dowie’s desk diary’ printed on it in his handwriting, that he suddenly recalled owning one.

Throughout his time on the stand Iain was as upright as ever. I genuinely think he had convinced himself he was absolutely in the right. As I have said, he avoided answering behind a blanket of ‘do not recall’s but was constantly pressured by John Davies into giving more forthcoming answers, despite objections from his own barrister. It is difficult and somewhat intimidating being in the witness box but Iain approached it with his customary confidence. He even developed a ludicrous way of answering questions with ‘My learned friend’ at the beginning or end of his answer, which of course is how the legal profession address one another and is not how witnesses answer questions.

The difference between the questioning of me and Iain was that John had the evidence to confront him with. We had phone records and computer files; they had newspaper articles and allegations of abusive management, which for the record were not true!

Via the computer records we established that Dowie had produced a number of reports for clubs with potential vacancies. All of them had been written even before the compromise agreement to release him from his Palace contract had been agreed and were entitled: ‘Reinvigorating the Rams’ for Derby County, ‘Fuelling the Foxes’ for Leicester City and ‘Advancing the Addicks’ for the vacancy at Charlton – the club he assured me he was not joining!

John forensically took him through his phone records, which were in our possession as Iain had submitted them for expenses at Palace. We had investigated various numbers. Two days after a conversation between Iain and me in Spain he had a series of calls
with
Mike Horton, the chief executive of Derby County. When questioned on this Dowie explained that he had been asked his advice on how to restructure their club!

Then we moved onto the critical area of the case: the contact between Charlton Athletic and Iain Dowie, when it occurred, what it contained and what Dowie had said to me prior to me signing the release agreement. In essence the whole case turned on these facts.

My evidence, which was not contradicted by Iain when on the stand, was that I asked whether he was going to Charlton on Saturday 20 May, and asked him the same question again two days later on Monday the twenty-second, prior to signing the release agreement. Both times he emphatically denied that he was. Given what we were able to substantiate, this was very damaging to Dowie’s credibility. Even more so when at the press conference announcing his appointment as Charlton manager he said: ‘No contact whatsoever and I am fully comfortable I have covered myself in lots of integrity.’ This, quite apart from not making sense and being shocking English, was a blatant lie!

We had phone records that showed that Dowie spoke to Richard Murray the Charlton chairman on 17 May, 19 May, twice on the morning of 22 May and again directly after the press conference that announced his departure from Palace and his release from his contract.

Also, on 19 May at 11.57 he created the ‘Advancing the Addicks’ document and amended it at 12.57 on Monday 22 May. We had Richard Murray’s phone records, as well as those of Mick McGuire from the PFA, who represented Dowie. These records showed calls from Murray to McGuire and McGuire to both Iain and Bob Dowie straight afterwards. In his witness statement McGuire told how Murray had phoned him to ask about Dowie’s position. All
of
this from a man who stated he had no contact with Charlton whatsoever prior to his departure from Palace or knowledge of their interest in him.

Under intense questioning, Dowie said the telephone conversation on the seventeenth with Richard Murray was to do with the Charlton chairman asking his advice on Palace players who might be for sale. From this point on John Davies turned the temperature up on Dowie and began to piece the phone calls together, analysing each one. He was beginning to make statements rather than ask questions. In one of the breaks he said privately to me that he wondered if at any time in this trial Dowie was going to tell the truth!

Davies took that sentiment into court after the break and on the penultimate afternoon of the trial questioned Dowie about every phone call, questioned the likelihood of his answers, and forced Dowie into admitting that what he had said in the Charlton press conference about no contact ‘whatsoever’ was untrue. Then, out of the blue, John Davies ramped up the rhetoric and openly called Dowie a liar in court.

Once Iain got down from the stand there was one more witness, Richard Murray the Charlton chairman, and this provided a little bit of a sideshow. He had sat adjacent to me and throughout the case attempted to befriend my father, much to my distaste. At one point when I was absent from the courtroom Murray then changed tack and told my father that he should be ashamed to have brought up such a disgraceful liar of a son. I repeatedly reminded Dad of this man’s conduct two years earlier.

Under questioning from McParland, Murray was confident and assured and made a number of disparaging comments about me, much like he did in that press conference. When he was faced with John Davies the confident demeanour remained, but the facts did
not
. In taking him through his witness statement John tripped him up on a contradiction. Murray admitted he had only speed-read his statement and signed it, which John seized on. ‘Read and signed? Do you not mean written or dictated?’ Murray misunderstood where he was going and asserted he was a busy man and had many documents to read.

The point John made was that Murray did not appear to know what was in his own statement, asserting that this was a statement prepared by someone else, made to fit the circumstances and was merely speed-read and signed by Murray. By doing this and getting him flustered, John had discredited pretty much everything Murray had to say.

When John had finished we were treated to a stunning outburst from Murray in the witness box. When asked by McParland if he had anything else to add, which was strange in itself given that he was a witness and not there to make statements, he raged: ‘When we win this case I will be bringing an action against Simon Jordan for £50 million, which is what we have lost as a result of the distraction of this court case and our relegation.’ I have to confess I burst out laughing at this bizarre statement. The fact that he used ‘we win this court case’, when the action was against Dowie not Charlton, was not lost on the courtroom. Perhaps it explained why the Charlton chairman was there for the entire case, as well as bringing legal representation along with him.

We had the closing statements of the opposing lawyers and then it was over. Now all we had to do was to wait for the judge’s decision. Whilst we were confident, we couldn’t be entirely sure which way the ruling was going to go.

On 11 June we were handed down the verdict three days before it was made public. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. We had won, and not just won, but in tennis parlance we had won 6–0, 6–0,
6–1
. We had just received a landmark verdict, and once again showed the football world that there were consequences outside of its seemingly protected and unaccountable existence.

Despite being denied leave to appeal by the judge, Dowie was granted an appeal by the Court of Appeal. His new legal representatives offered to settle, which in the interests of time and questions surrounding Dowie’s ability to meet his increasing costs, I took. When the substantial settlement finally arrived I was only surprised that it wasn’t from Charlton Athletic’s bank account!

14

LIGHT AT THE END OF MY TUNNEL

NO SOONER HAD
the season finished and the drama of the court case with Dowie concluded than I received the biggest and most monumental news of my adult life. Suzanne was pregnant and I was going to be a father. Initially I was shocked. I mean honestly I was only thirty-nine and having my first child at such a young and tender age! The relationship with Suzanne, although relatively new, was very passionate, and now we were bringing a child into the world together. In my mind I had been looking after a group of children for seven years in football so it would be much more rewarding to have one of my own, and one who might actually love me!

During the summer I had hoped against hope that Peter would come back with a fresher perspective and the next season would be one of achievement and getting back to contending for a place in the Premier League, which was the very reason why I brought him here.

Peter wanted to change the personnel around and freshen up the playing squad to stamp his authority on the place. Players who had been here for a while and become stale needed to move on so a number of senior players left Palace in the off season. We also
sold
Jobi McAnuff, as he had been one of the disgruntled players who had wanted to leave the previous summer. Relegated Watford agreed a £1.75 million fee and McAnuff left.

As we had a reasonably sized squad and made quite significant additions over two years I felt Peter needed to get the best from the squad he had, not least the players he had spent heavily on last year, before we started more spending. In football, managers will tell you that when they spend your money they will spend it with the same care as if it were their own. Then they proceed to spend it however they want and if they get it wrong they come and ask you for more.

Despite that, my ambition to achieve got the better of me and I still allowed Peter to spend the best part of another £1.5 million on players, bringing in Neil Danns, José Fonte and Jeff Hughes. Our parachute money had run out so funding was now entirely dependent on me.

Significantly reduced gates further depleted our finances. In the space of three years 7,000 fewer supporters per game were following Palace. In the previous season alone there was a £1.6 million reduction in the gate receipts and this trend was to continue. Falling attendances reflects a lack of success, yet as I have said clubs that had been relegated and were achieving far less were still pulling in far more supporters than us giving them a significant financial advantage over us. To compete with them and ultimately achieve promotion back to the Premier League the onus fell on me, which I accepted as a consequence of owning a football club.

We had a playing squad that had cost about £12 million to assemble, a wages bill of £9 million on players, before bringing anyone else in, and a turnover of just £12 million, which meant that the costs associated with trying to achieve success were
frankly
ludicrous in relation to the turnover of the business. But that was football. In fact, in that financial year to the end of 2008, the actual losses were £8.1 million so I already had a bloody huge headache as the beginning of the world’s financial crisis began.

As a nice respite from thinking about the economics and problems of my football club I played in the Soccer Six tournament, which was televised and held at West Ham United’s ground. Given my football prowess (!) I was made captain of a team, which, amongst others, included Nick Moran, Bryan McFadden from Westlife, Steve Norman from Spandau Ballet and actors Tamer Hassan and Danny Dyer.

Steve Norman’s presence caused great amusement to Nick as I had often been likened to the bass guitarist because of my long blond hair, and not in a complimentary way. We were a competitive lot and not bad at all, with the exception of Nick, who was an asset for every other team apart from the one he played for – he’s a talented actor but even he couldn’t pull off impersonating a footballer! We won all our group games.

Danny Dyer and Tamer turned up late, severely hung over, brandishing a bag of five-pound notes they had just received for a public appearance in Plymouth. Frankly I didn’t particularly much like either of them at the time. I had come across Danny Dyer socially in my restaurant and thought he was a poor man’s Ray Winstone. I left Burke and Hare on the bench counting their fivers, even preferring Nick to them, and still won. In the quarter-finals disaster struck as our star player – besides yours truly of course – Bryan McFadden, pulled a hamstring and featured no more. We were playing Babyshambles, who were quite a strong side, and made up of the members of the band including the infamous Pete Doherty, who was quite a good footballer. I was forced to resort to Danny
and
Tamer, who were bloody useless. Danny in particular would have difficulty trapping a bag of cement although in his mind he was Wayne Rooney – Mickey Rooney would have been more appropriate. We were knocked out and our dream was over. The only satisfaction I got was winding up Doherty, firstly by waving profusely to his then girlfriend Kate Moss, who I knew via my relationship with Meg Mathews, and secondly when, after one particular scything challenge I enacted on him, he got up in my face full of testosterone and I suggested, ‘There was no need to get the needle,’ referring to his much publicised heroin addiction.

Back to the serious football. Palace played Anderlecht in a friendly and drew 1–1, had a quick tour of Sweden and finished off playing Everton, which saw the return of the crowd’s hero Andrew Johnson in a game that was part of the deal when he was sold. Playing Everton enabled me to fulfil a little boy’s dream. He was the son of a friend of mine from Chester, and was a massive Everton fan. We made him their mascot, walking out on to the pitch holding AJ’s hand, as well as giving his parents an executive box for the game and getting the Everton boys to come up to the box afterwards. This is one of the good things about owning a football club: watching a young man’s face light up as he meets his heroes.