Gazza: My Story (37 page)

Becks has also been excellent in his commercial dealings, keeping sponsors happy and stuff. I tended to fall out with mine, or say the wrong things, or fail to do what they wanted, like the time I buggered up the Brut campaign. I couldn’t be bothered with them. Becks has made all that work for him. That’s one reason why he is now so rich. I had the chances, the offers, but I wasted most of them. I did make money from deals with the
Sun
and
Hello!
and stuff, but at the same time I took several papers to court for writing lies about me, which did not of course make me popular with them. Becks has had enough going wrong in his life – especially the reaction to the incident for which he was sent off against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup – but his troubles have made him stronger. He coped with them the right
way. Whatever his problems with Alex Ferguson at Man United, he never criticised or badmouthed the manager after he left.

He seems to plan his life so well, right down to what he will wear, what he will be doing in a week or a month’s time. I could never do that. I didn’t know what I’d be doing or what I’d think from one day to another, one moment to another. I just cancelled things if I couldn’t be arsed. I feel David seems to like the publicity, and has learned to handle it. He’s been very clever. I wasn’t consistent. Some days I liked publicity and some days I didn’t.

There are lots of excellent new young players coming through now, though perhaps not as many as there should be or used to be, especially in Scotland. I blame it on the influx of foreign players. There are just too many of them. Clubs today buy experienced players from abroad, who can go straight into the side, and the young lads don’t get a chance of a decent run in the first team. They need the experience, to get used to it, to develop, to make mistakes, to learn, as I did, when I got into the Newcastle side. I was given time. Now youngsters might get one chance in the first team, for a minor game, or when there have been a lot of injuries, but they
soon realise that if they are going to get regular first-team football, they have to leave, go elsewhere, down the leagues.

No wonder kids see their local team and think, well, it’s not worth trying to join them, I’ll never get in the first team. Look at Rangers and Celtic: loads of foreigners. We had quite a few when I was at Rangers, but not nearly as many as there are now. And when I started at Newcastle, back in the eighties, we didn’t have any overseas players at all. Not one.

Of the new generation, Wayne Rooney is the outstanding player so far. People have described him as a younger version of me. I suppose he is, in a way, though fame and success have come to him at a younger age than they did to me. He became a household name at seventeen, playing for Everton and England. I first played for Newcastle at the same age, but didn’t play for England till I was twenty-one, and wasn’t well known nationally.

I first saw Rooney when he was fourteen, when I was at Everton, and this lad came on as a sub for the Under-17s. They were 1–0 down before Wayne was brought on, but he scored two goals, and they won 2–1. I said to Colin Harvey, who was running the youth academy, ‘This is some player.’ So I knew of his
existence long before the general football public had got to hear about him.

He will have to be careful. There are snipers out there who have built him up and will be looking to knock him down. He must be wary about making too many celebrity appearances, or letting
Hello!
or
OK!
do features on him. The opportunities will be very tempting, and very lucrative, so he will need to learn how to pick and choose. There are good and bad celebrity events, like good and bad footballers.

I am hardly the one to give him advice, and God knows, I have had enough advice in my life and never taken it. I’ve always hated being preached at, so I would never preach at anyone else. The thing to remember in football is that there is always plenty of talent out there, coming through in every generation, all over the world. There are plenty of players who are capable of making it, of going far, but it’s what is going on in your head, that matters most in the end.

I don’t know how much money I have earned in my career. Twenty million, perhaps? I never kept track of it, even when it was pouring in. All I know is that I haven’t got twenty million now.

Today, I haven’t even got a car. I had nine Harley-Davidsons at one time, but I’ve only got two of them left, and I’m not sure where they are. At Shel’s I think. I gave the other seven away.

For the last five years I’ve been homeless. By which I mean I haven’t got a house. I’ve been living in either hotels or rented flats. Of course, I’ve owned quite a few good houses in my time, and over the years, I’ve bought enough for my parents, sisters and brother, but I’ve ended up without one for myself.

I’ve heard that Robbie Fowler has lots of properties. They might, of course, include a lot of places in Liverpool he bought cheaply to rent out, but he’s obviously invested wisely and well. So have many other top footballers. It’s the sensible thing to do. I wish I had done it.

I was fortunate enough to come into the Premiership at a time when wages were high, if not as huge as they later became. I’ve always considered myself to be rich, from the moment I left Newcastle for Spurs in 1988. I played in the Premiership till 2002, when I left Everton, so I did very well, and I was lucky. It’s the players who played ten or twenty years before me who are the unlucky ones. They made very little in
comparison. They didn’t end up millionaires who could afford to retire when their careers were over and never needed to work again. But that’s what every established player in the Premiership should be able to do today.

So where did all my money go? Well, a lot has gone to Sheryl over the years. The main divorce settlement was around £700,000, plus £120,000 a year in maintenance. I was paying out a huge amount of money when we were married, and before that, so for about thirteen years altogether. Then I gave her the Loch Lomond house. So let’s say around £2 million in total has gone on Sheryl. I’m not moaning, or blaming her. I’m just trying to work out where the money has gone.

Another £2 million has probably gone on my own family, in houses and cars and presents and treats over the years, and £2 million more on presents for other people. Not just Jimmy, but friends, people I happened to meet, people begging for money, needy people, people who helped me. I have always given to charity as well, when I had the money and even when I hadn’t. I was giving away between £50,000 to £100,000 to charitable causes every year. I haven’t got as much now as I had, but I’d still give away my last 5p if I thought someone needed it more than I did.

I began getting begging letters, sacks of them every year, after the World Cup of 1990, and I still get them now. I read them all, and then tear up the ones that are rubbish. But I try to help if I can, if I think someone is genuine.

When I was at Rangers, I got a letter one day from a boy near Newcastle with leukaemia. He said I was his hero and that his dying wish was to go to Disneyland. I didn’t know whether his story was true or not. The lads in the dressing room said it was obviously a total con, and they wouldn’t fall for that. So, after training, I jumped straight in my car and drove to Newcastle. I found the boy’s house from the address on the letter and knocked on the door. When his mother opened it, I asked her if her son had written it. She said he had. I asked if I could see him. It turned out it was all true. So I gave him money, enough for a trip to Disneyland, two or three thousand pounds, then jumped back in me car and drove home to Glasgow. It must have been a 200-mile round trip.

At Everton, I did something similar when an old woman wrote to me from Norwich, saying she had only two sausages for her Christmas dinner, to feed her and her dogs. I was really touched by her letter, but I wanted
to check out whether it was true. It was. I gave her the cash for a turkey and all the trimmings.

When I’ve been feeling down, I often think, what a selfish bastard. What have I got to moan about? I’m so fucking lucky. That’s when I try to help someone or go off and visit a local hospital.

I was walking down the street in New York once when I saw this tramp crouching in a cardboard box, begging. I got in beside him and gave him a can of lager and $25. He started crying. He said no one had ever done that before. I asked him how he’d ended up begging and he told me a long story about falling into debt, being made homeless and starving. I then took him to a hotel for a champagne breakfast and gave him $100.

Another tramp gave me a sob story about some terrible operation on his stomach. He took his shirt off to show me the scars. He said his wife had died of cancer and he’d gone to pieces. I gave him money as well.

The press reported both these incidents. They happened at a time when I’d gone off on a binge and was being followed around by the rat pack. They cross-examined both tramps after I had moved on, and discovered that the first one had been telling the truth, but
the second had made it all up – his stomach wound had been self-inflicted and his wife hadn’t died, but left him for another man. However, he did say that he was grateful to me, and that if he ever won the Lottery, he’d give me the money back. I liked that.

I’ve probably spent about a couple of million on myself. I don’t mean on just living, but on daft things I didn’t need to spend money on: mad luxury holidays, drinks, running up ridiculous bills in hotels. I must have donated a fortune to Disneyland over the years, taking all the family and the kids several times, treating them all. And also treating myself. I love Disneyland, being a big kid myself.

I don’t know what Mel and Len made, but with hindsight I wish I’d parted company with them earlier. I appreciate that they made me a lot of money for many years, organising all my business, financial and legal affairs, which took the load off me. But charging me £200 or so an hour for advice, plus expenses, made it a costly service for me. If Mel and Len came out for the weekend to see me in Rome, for example, to discuss business matters, the bill could easily come to £5,000, what with the plane fares and hotel bills.

Their statements came in every month but often I
didn’t really grasp them or even read them properly for up to six months, so it’s my own fault.

In addition, I must have frittered or given away something like £8 million. All of which I would have now, if I had been sensible, or if things had been different. If, over the years, I’d put that sum into property, for example, it could have grown to about £30 million today, judging by some of the increases in house prices.

I haven’t the energy to try to work out where it’s all gone – or even where it came from. My best wages were at Lazio when I was eventually on over £24,000 a week, and then £17,000 at the end of Rangers. Boro’s were also good, around £16,000. And those were only my basic weekly wages, don’t forget. I was actually paid a lot more than that as there were always extras, appearance bonuses, bonuses when I played for England. I got £10,000 every time I pulled on an England shirt. And then there was all the commercial stuff. The best deal I got was £1.2 million over four years from adidas, but there were plenty of others.

I did invest in a little company once, in Newcastle, a clothing company. I met the two blokes who ran it and they seemed all right, so I put £120,000 into their firm. They had two shops, and some other ventures, like
a café. After a year or so it became clear they weren’t making any profits, or at least, if they were, I wasn’t seeing any of them. I wasn’t being ripped off – the business just wasn’t making the money they had hoped it would. In the end, they offered me one of the shops, the café and some cars, so that at least I would get my investment back. But I thought, bugger it, it’s my mistake. I shouldn’t have got into something I didn’t know anything about. So I just gave the shop and café and the cars away to friends. I couldn’t be bothered with them any more.

Looking back, I’ve obviously been stupid, and I should have done things differently. But at the same time, I have no regrets about money. I suppose that doesn’t quite make sense. I just know that, given my time again, I would probably do exactly the same.

One regret I suppose I do have is that I never could seem to get the right balance with the press. The media first became interested in me because I was seen by many as a genius on the pitch, but I didn’t want them to follow me around all the time off the pitch, reporting everything I did. You could say that I drew attention to myself, doing daft things in public. But I would have done those things whether I was rich and famous or not.
That was just me. I’d always acted spontaneously, pulling stupid stunts and playing practical jokes. But I don’t think they should have been reported and held against me.

From the beginning, when the press and TV were after me, Mel Stein always said I should charge them. He got a fee out of everyone, sometimes enormous fees; if they didn’t pay, I didn’t speak to them. He said I had to make the most of my position, earn money while I could, because I’d be a long time retired. And why, he argued, should they get things for free anyway? They were commercial people, trying to sell newspapers.

That all seemed fair enough, but what I didn’t realise, not at the beginning, was, of course, that the papers that don’t have an exclusive will try to get at you in some other way, to beat their rivals. And I realise now that I was hardly ever interviewed about football, or written about in the so-called serious papers, the big papers, as I call them. I haven’t kept my own cuttings – I’ve got nowhere to keep them – but me mam has, piles of them, filling stacks of cases, all sitting in an outhouse in Dunston, covered in dust. But they are mainly tabloid scandal-type stories.

When I was in demand, being offered £100,000
for a story, it was always because of some personal drama: going on the booze, falling out with Shel. That was what they wanted. I agreed not only for the money, but also because I saw it as a chance to set the record straight. Whenever there was a nasty piece in a paper, people would come up to me all the time and say, ‘Ooh, I read about you doing so and so – aren’t you terrible?’ So I thought if I told one of the rival tabloids the truth, put my point of view, at least some people would read an accurate version. The tabloids were, after all, the papers all my friends read, not the big papers. So why would I want to be in them? But if I were starting again today, perhaps I would do more with the big papers, and concern myself less with being paid for it.