Jonny: My Autobiography (34 page)

So, back home, it’s easy to say no when
Hello!
magazine comes knocking. They want the full Jonny-at-home photoshoot, probably lying back on various bits of furniture while wearing leather trousers and an open white linen shirt
with the cuffs undone under a nice waistcoat. I don’t even need to know what money is being offered. It’s just not my thing.

Among the many other offers that come my way are the chance to endorse a range of Jonny dolls and the opportunity to appear with Keith Harris and Orville the duck, whom I used to watch as a boy, in a supermarket ad. These are not for me, either.

Hello!
are very keen and offer £1 million. The answer is still no – not my style, not how I want to live my life, I’m not going to change my mind. But I make the
Hello!
cover nevertheless. They run a stock picture of me and concoct a story out of a bunch of old interviews. I guess you discover sooner or later that you can try to compete on that territory, but you will never really win.

I like the fact that fans write to me, and I am so keen to respect the effort they make and the support they give that, for some time now, I have had my mum helping me deal with the post. I try to answer genuine letters, enclosing a signed photo with a personalised message. What I do not appreciate so much is seeing the signed photo then being flogged on eBay. Sometimes you can even see that the personalised message has been scrubbed out in order to make it more widely marketable.

I am just getting my head round the whole eBay phenomenon. I’ve seen shirts on offer with the Jonny Wilkinson signature so badly forged; they haven’t even tried to copy the genuine article. ‘Johnny’ spelled with an ‘h’ is a bit of a giveaway. I’m starting to receive letters from people who have bought a signed Wilkinson shirt at an auction, but found the signature wasn’t mine.

How do you police this? How do you get a grip on it?

The problem is twofold. One, honest people find they are buying signed photos and shirts that aren’t genuine. Two, I support five children’s charities, which I care about passionately, and if the marketplace is being flooded with fakes, the value of the genuine items will go down and my ability to raise money for these charities is reduced with it.

Sometimes, when I’m signing autographs, someone will give me a photograph of myself to sign, and then hand me a whole lot more and ask me to sign those, too. I suspect I know where those are going, so I say yes to just the one. A minute later, I’ll have a kid standing there holding out a load of the same pictures, and I’ll say who d’you want me to sign these to? And he’ll say I don’t know. That guy over there just asked me to do this.

So, reluctantly, I’ve decided to stop signing England shirts. As a result, I get letters from people who are disappointed. One even threatened to take the story to the media. I say to them all I’ll sign anything else, a Newcastle shirt, a Lions shirt, a ball, anything. I just need to be in a position to work out what signed shirts are out there and where they are coming from. That’s why I won’t sign.

The answer comes from Bren, my godfather, who has offered to help with this. Bren found a company in Chester called Sporting Icons, which was selling fakes of my signature. He got in touch with the police, who put him on to the Trading Standards department at Chester Council. They were interested in the case but progress was slow, so Bren played a masterstroke. He told them that there appears to be a considerable amount of fake Manchester United memorabilia for sale there, too. The case suddenly became more important and kicked into action. Watch this space.

I decide to address formally the process of re-evaluation. In a new notebook, under the title ‘Onwards and Upwards [Blackie’s favourite phrase] the next step’, I write down my new goals.

First, under Goals – Personal:

The next subtitle is Goals – Sparks:

Then Long-term Goals – Personal:

Then Team Goals – Newcastle Falcons:

Then Other Goals Personal To Me:

I may now have goals. Naturally, I also have an intense anxiety about whether I can get to where I want to go. And as is my way, I decide to tackle that anxiety, to contain my fears, by working hard and inviting obsession to kick in.

I manage to construct a daily schedule whereby I’m in the gym for rehab at 9am. I’ll also do a fitness session with Blackie and, from the end of February, when I find I can just about kick well enough, I fit in a separate kicking session, too. Basically, I train pretty much non-stop from nine till five every day.

My pledge is to come back better and I won’t let it go, even if it means being distinctly economical with the truth with the people who are trying to help me. Blackie doesn’t know that besides his fitness sessions, I am doing a whole lot more. And when he asks how long I’ve been kicking, I give him a number that might be missing a digit or so in
a key place. Likewise, the physios don’t know how much I’m doing with Blackie, and when my schedule dictates that I have a day off to take it easy, I go and kick at Darsley Hall, Newcastle United’s indoor facility, so no one has a clue where I am.

The medics at Newcastle all tell me take it easy, don’t do too much. And I say OK and then carry on doing the opposite.

The results aren’t good. I get chronic tennis elbow in both arms and I have trouble with diet. The food I eat never seems to suffice. I eat and eat and eat but nothing fills me up. And I cannot sleep. If I go to bed at midnight, I wake up at four or five in the morning. If I stay up later and go to bed about one, I’m awake at five or six.

Deep down, I’m simply stressed and angry with what is happening to me. Most of the energy I’m burning is pure worry and that’s what is waking me up so early, too. But I can’t stop. My frustration and anxiety used to be channelled into rugby; this is the outlet it has settled upon instead. It’s my way of keeping sane, although it also has adverse results. I am extremely fit but also unhealthy.

When I go to watch our home games, my regime is particularly strict. I go to Kingston Park and straight to the gym underneath the stand to get a session done. Then I change into my suit to watch the game, often in a box with some of our corporate sponsors, and at half-time, I’m back down to the gym for ten minutes’ gym work and then back up again to watch the second half in my tracksuit. As soon as the second half finishes, I’m off down to the gym again.

That’s my way and the regime doesn’t drop for away games. It’s just simpler. I need to be in the gym when the game is going on. That way I still feel part of it and I don’t feel so much as though I’m being left behind.

People want to know if I’m going to be back and fit in time for the England summer tour to New Zealand and Australia. I have a breakfast meeting with Clive, but have to tell him I’m not ready. If there was any chance, I’d be there like a shot. Clive doesn’t push it. Put rugby and England on hold a little longer.

THERE’S a scene in the
Bourne Identity
series where the Matt Damon character explains how he can go into a bar and tell you immediately how many people are in there, which ones have got a gun, whether they are right- or left-handed and where the best escape routes are. I think I have now developed the same technique.

I can go into a café or a restaurant and immediately sense who has noticed me, who is likely to recognise me, who is carrying a camera, who is pretending to text on their phone but is actually using it to take my picture, where the best seat is so I don’t get boxed in and what is my best exit option if a hasty departure becomes necessary.

Don’t misunderstand me. I love having the opportunity to speak to rugby supporters, to talk about the game and the World Cup and all these fantastic things. And I think the passion and values of the supporters are really special. The energy that kids seem to have for the game, and the spirit they have
to listen and learn, makes me feel that the future is in good hands. It’s just that in public, non-rugby settings, I get embarrassed, and turn inward. Off the field, you see, I’m really no performer.

I have started to be apprehensive about being in those places where I can’t control the situation. So I tend not to go to restaurants in town any more. It’s a good thing I love country pub food, and around my way, a few places suit me perfectly – the Black Bull in Corbridge, the Travellers’ Rest in Slaley, the Wellington in Riding Mill. I can go to any of these places and the people look after me brilliantly. They hide me at a table round the side or in the corner without the slightest fuss.

It’s worse if I go to the cinema, a sports event or a concert. In those environments you’re kind of stuck. I get very self-conscious, and feel like a sitting duck. When I do go to the cinema, I walk down the aisle head down, hat on, relieved if I can make it to my seat without hearing my name mentioned behind me. And during the film, in the dark, I’ll be thinking mostly about my exit strategy at the end.