Gazza: My Story (6 page)

I can’t explain these nervous twitches. I knew I was doing them, but that knowledge didn’t mean I could control them. I’d often go to my bedroom, or somewhere on my own, and twitch my neck twenty times, telling myself that would get rid of the compulsion so that I wouldn’t have to do it again when I was in public. That strategy usually worked – up to a point. I’d stop doing whatever I’d been doing, but then I’d develop another twitch.

One thing I hated was being on my own. Solitude always seemed to make my problems worse. Luckily, it was around this time that I met a mate who was to become my closest and longest-standing friend. I was hardly ever alone again from then on.

Jimmy ‘Five Bellies’ Gardner says he remembers me from when I was about four or five, when his nan lived in Edison Gardens, near us, and that he used to play in the street with me. I have no memory of that. But his recollection might be better than mine because he’s older than me. About three years older and thirty stone heavier.

My first clear memory of him is seeing him on the pitch with some Sunday league side – Whickham Sports, I think it was – when I was sixteen or so. No, he wasn’t playing. He was this fat kid running on with a bucket and sponge whenever someone got injured. He’s not very tall, smaller than me, but he had so many bellies. I burst out laughing every time he appeared, shouting something like, ‘Go on, you fat bastard,’ and he probably gave me a mouthful back. After the game, he came across and asked me: ‘Are you Paul Gascoigne?’ I think by then he must have known I was an apprentice with Newcastle.

Not long afterwards, he came into the Dunston Excelsior, where I was sitting with my girlfriend, Gail. When she went off to powder her nose, Jimmy sat down in her chair. ‘That’s my lass’s seat,’ I informed him. He said he just wanted to tell me that he could give me a lift to training any time I wanted. He didn’t actually have a car, but he could borrow his dad’s. From that
moment on, we became best friends. The first day he took me to training, I asked if I could drive the car, and drove straight into a wall.

Jimmy taught me to drive in that car of his dad’s. After a fashion. I was always bashing into kerbs, hitting things. One Bonfire Night, we stuck some Catherine wheels on the windscreen of Jimmy’s dad’s car and drove it round with them whirling away. It looked brilliant, and everyone was staring at us – till the front windscreen turned black from the smoke. When we touched it, it fell out.

Out of my wages, I eventually managed to buy an old Mini, although I hadn’t passed my test and nor did I have any insurance and that. Jimmy worked in a garage at the time, so he knew a bit about old cars and gave it the once-over for me. We were out together in the Mini one day, after giving a lift to some girls we fancied (or girls Jimmy fancied), just driving round and round, messing about, when suddenly this hippy ran across the road in front of us. At least, he looked a bit like a hippy. Whoever he was, we hit him.

I was at the wheel and flew into a complete panic. I just drove on, back to Newcastle. When we got there, I dumped the car and smashed the front windscreen to make it look as if the Mini had been stolen and wrecked.
I didn’t really know what I was doing. It was stupid, but I was in such a state, thinking that was it, my career was over, the club would definitely get rid of me now.

I had saved up some money which I’d put in the bank, and I told Jimmy that he could have £100 if he took the blame and said he’d been driving the car if we got caught. I was staying at Gail’s house at the time. I didn’t tell her, or her dad, Alfie, what had happened. They had been so good to me and I didn’t want them to be angry with me. Jimmy went back to his home nearby.

In the middle of the night, I hear this banging at the door. The police have arrived. They tell Alfie they’ve come about an accident, but of course he doesn’t know anything about it. They get me out of bed and say there’s been a car accident. I tell them my car’s been stolen and I haven’t been in any accident. And they say, ‘Don’t try that, son, we know the whole story. Jimmy has told us what happened.’

What a fat bastard. He’s supposed to be my best friend and he’s told them everything, even that I had been driving. Or so the police said.

I asked about the kid who had been run over. Was he OK? They said he’d had something like twenty-four stitches, but was now recovering. I asked if I could visit
him and they said no. I think they thought I’d try to bribe him not to let it get to court. As it was, it all came out and we had to answer the charges.

In court, when Jimmy was giving evidence, I was kicking him under the table. The bastard. I was fined £260 and got eight points on my non-existent licence and Jimmy received a £120 fine and four points. When Jimmy was asked by the judge how he would like to pay, he said he’d pay £1 a week. The judge inquired if he could make it £2, and Jimmy said, OK, he’d try. When I was asked, I said I’d pay my £260 right away.

That evening, Jimmy and I went out and got drunk.

Later I got a right bollocking from Mr McKeag, one of the Newcastle directors. I was told this would be my last warning.

Jimmy and I had so many laughs together, doing daft things, egging each other on. Jimmy’s mates once got a crossbow from somewhere and Jimmy put an apple on his head while I tried to hit the apple. Then we got hold of an air gun. Jimmy stood twenty yards away with his pants down and I fired at his bare arse. For each of the pellets I managed to hit him with, I had to pay him £25. His arse ended up looking like the end of a watering can. We used to drive that old Mini right through
hedges, just for a laugh, though we did take the precaution of wearing crash helmets in case we got injured. Eventually, the car fell to pieces.

I had failed my driving test several times, so I took my next one in another area, where I was told it was easier. Jimmy found out that the examiner might accept some money to pass me. I offered him £50 and he said, ‘Make it £75.’ The examiner kept the money but failed me. Bastard. I later sat it again elsewhere and passed.

I was still having trouble with Colin Suggett, the youth coach. I was doing well in the youth team, and we were winning things, but he was on my back all the time, going on about my weight, about getting into trouble off the pitch, getting injured, the usual stuff. I suppose that was hardly surprising, but it got me down, made me depressed, and then I’d feel guilty and ashamed at my own behaviour, about eating all this junk food, but because I was depressed, I’d just eat even more.

Colin was still making me do extra laps after everyone else had finished training, to get my weight down, which I hated, especially when the others hung around laughing at me. I remember Wes Saunders standing there having a milkshake while I was sweating like a pig. One day, after the coaches had gone, I was
getting changed on my own when I felt so fed up I went out on the pitch again and got on to the groundsman’s tractor. I didn’t really know how to drive it, but I aimed it straight at the dressing rooms and jumped off just in time. It knocked about twenty-five bricks off the dressing-room wall. I was fined £75 for that.

I worried, all the time, that the club would get rid of me, not because of my football but because of my behaviour. At home I would moan constantly that I was being picked on, it wasn’t fair, Colin Suggett was being a bastard to me. My dad said he’d go up to the club and thump any of the coaches who were picking on me, but I managed to stop him. What I didn’t know was that my mam had written to the club saying everyone was being horrible to me, making my life a misery; that the club was making me depressed and unwell. I was called in and her letter was read out to me. That was really embarrassing.

I knew that only a small percentage of apprentices ever get through into the first team and make it as professionals. But I was confident enough of my football to think I would be the one to make it. I believed I was better than the rest. Well, most of the rest. I have to admit I was a bit jealous of Ian Bogie. He was a year younger than me and had played for England Schoolboys,
which I never did. That was the real reason why I was jealous. Not that I told him that, or anyone else.

I realised that to be the best player among the youth players, which I was determined to be, I had to be stronger. So I did a lot of extra training with weights and things to build up my upper body. Jimmy used to borrow weights and medicine balls from the training ground and I’d go out in the evenings to Dunston Park and train there on my own. Then, late at night, Jimmy would return the equipment and sneak it back where it belonged.

Ian Bogie was probably the one that was better than me at the time, for his age, but there were other good talents as well – Joe Allon, who went on to play for Chelsea, and Tony Haytor, who was a brilliant tackler. Tony Nesbit was a right workhorse, but he got a nasty injury and the last I heard of him, he’d become a policeman. Jeff Wrightson was good, as was Paul Stephenson. Some made it, some didn’t. Some showed early promise and then didn’t develop. I always thought that, because he had played for England, the pressure of expectation hung over Ian Bogie. It worked against him, and then he got an injury, which didn’t help.

You just can’t tell who’ll come through. It takes determination as well as talent, and I had plenty of that.
I had worked on my natural ability. When I was younger, I’d injured my right ankle once, so for weeks I did almost everything with my left. I ended up being able to kick with both feet. My dad had always been on at me to use my left foot more, and I built on that, practising tricks for hours. Now I was playing on through injuries, scared I’d miss a game. And there were people who encouraged me. My dad would shout at me to get me out of bed on the days I didn’t fancy it, and players like Waddler and Beardsley were very good to me. Waddler may have called me a fat shit, but I knew he’d taken a liking to me.

Working on my upper body paid off. It helped me get physically mature more quickly. When I began to play with the senior pros, they couldn’t knock me off the ball or intimidate me, which they can easily do with a young boy who’s perhaps not very strong or confident. I was strong in my body and also in my head, always confident of my own ability.

But of course I might still not have come through, for the other non-football reasons. And if I hadn’t become a professional footballer, if I hadn’t had the talent and determination, God knows what I would have done. I’d probably have ended up as a carpenter – if I was lucky.

I had been quite good at woodwork at school. I
once made this very thin board which I stuck down my shirt. I told everyone I’d been exercising to control my weight and now had a rock-hard stomach. I asked this kid to punch me as hard as he could in my stomach, just to test it. He did – and broke his knuckles.

If I hadn’t become a footballer, my life, obviously, would have been very different. And my problems would have been much worse, I’m sure of that. I believe football saved me from a far worse fate than I’ve experienced.

As I approached my seventeenth birthday in 1984, I was starting to fantasise about being in the first team, even if no one else at the club was doing so. I was in the dressing room once, finishing off some jobs, when I noticed that Arthur Cox had pinned up the first-team selection for a game. He’d written out the list himself. I traced the names on the list with my fingers, still wet from washing the toilets, imagining mine was among them. I didn’t know that Arthur was in the shower. When he came out he realised I was responsible for the grubby, wet fingerprints on his list. He told me never to touch it again.

In those days, the first team marked a win with a bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream Sherry in the dressing
room. Hard to believe now, when a side is more likely to celebrate with a bottle of vintage champagne. I’d nip into the dressing room after they’d gone, empty all the dregs into one glass and drink them. Arthur caught me at it one day. I said I was just clearing up the glasses, but he knew I was lying. He offered me a drink, as there was still some left in the bottle. I said no, I didn’t drink. Which I didn’t, really, then. I just liked the sweet taste of the sherry.

He poured me some out, in a plastic cup, not a glass. He said I would get a glass when I got into the first team. I think Arthur quite liked me deep down, and was hopeful I’d succeed – if I didn’t mess it all up.

Arthur signed another very good pro to help us get promotion, and that was Glenn Roeder. He was a natural leader and very good to the young players, someone you could go to for advice. He was also a very snappy dresser. He’d come up from London with all the latest styles. He wore a sheepskin coat which reached right down to the ground. I offered to carry his stuff for him if he’d let me wear it, which would have looked pretty funny, as he was about six inches taller than me and as thin as a rake.