Gazza: My Story (39 page)

There was a lot made about the hotel bills I ran up while I was working for ITV. Yeah, perhaps my bar bill was pretty big, around £9,000 for the three weeks. But it wasn’t just me, as everyone imagined. Ally and Andy Townsend were coming back to my hotel with me, so it was for several of us …

I have a bit of jewellery, too, which Jimmy has put away safely in the bank for me. I did buy myself a few nice things when I had the money. I’ve got a limited edition Ayrton Senna watch, and a couple of other limited-edition racing-driver watches. And I have my medal from the Pope, and of course my football memorabilia, my England shirts and caps and football stuff. I gave a lot of it away, either to raise money for charity or just to friends as presents. Probably about a third of it. The remaining stuff is being kept safe for me. If and when I buy a house for myself again, I might display it there, to remind me of all the good times.

Now I’d better start packing up, getting ready to leave this hotel. I have to go to London, see my therapist, go to an AA meeting, and then head back to the north-east. See what turns up.

My plan at this moment is to go and stay at Jimmy’s for a few months. I’ve got legal matters to sort out with Shel and I need to be near my Newcastle lawyer. I could go to my family, but I don’t want to get in their way. Jimmy only has a small flat, but he has a spare bed I can use. It will be like going back to the past, to where it all began. Maybe I will end up being famous for being a friend of the well-known Jimmy Five Bellies. That would be a laugh.

For Jimmy has become a celebrity in his own right. The BBC in Newcastle recently devoted a whole documentary to him, he’s been offered hundreds of thousands over the years by the tabloids for his story, and now he’s thinking of doing a proper book about his own life. It’s not a joke – several publishers are interested. It’ll be X-rated, I reckon.

The BBC documentary about him was excellent. When I asked him why he agreed to do it, he said it was because he hoped it might lead to something else. ‘Such as?’ I asked. He said he’d quite fancy being a
presenter of children’s TV programmes. Well, it would be easier and warmer than being a roofer, which is what he’s been doing recently.

Jimmy has been round the world with me, to Italy, America, everywhere. We went to New York once. It was his birthday treat and I took him on Concorde, just for one night.

We stayed overnight at the Peninsula Hotel, and as usual, I couldn’t sleep. I was just lying there, waiting till it was morning and I could get up. At about five o’clock I heard noise outside, all this banging. It was the binmen, out on the sidewalk. I thought I’d get up and get dressed and go and help them. They let me join in, emptying the garbage into the truck, and I was enjoying myself so much, I forgot all about the time. When Jimmy surfaced he couldn’t work out where the hell I’d gone. I got back to find we’d missed the Concorde flight, and we had to stay on another day.

I didn’t often venture far without Jimmy in those days: he is the only person outside my family I feel I can really trust. He’s always been there for me and I know he always will be. He’s never let me down, or told any secrets, or revealed any awful things about me. That’s my job.

We do argue, all the time, like an old married
couple, but I am relaxed and comfortable with him. He knows all my thoughts, all my secrets. I don’t think Shel liked me going out with him, or going to stay with him. Some people think he is a bad influence. But he’s not. He’d drop anything he was doing if I were in trouble and needed him.

He looks upon himself as my brother, and he’s been through everything with me. He did have a long-term partner, Joanna, with whom he has two children, Liam and Sharnie. But they split up. He now has a new girlfriend. Well, he is very attractive.

I have given him lots of cars over the years, probably about five, and other presents, and I pay his way in hotels when he travels with me, which is only fair, but he’s never been on a salary. I did once, just to wind him up, say in a radio interview that he had a full-time job working with me and I was paying him £100 a week. When that got into the papers, Jimmy had his dole money taken away. He was furious. He works in the building trade, laying floors, mending roofs, but of course he is often out of work, so it’s only right that he should be able to claim the dole.

I’m looking forward to going to stay with him now. With Jimmy, I can just be myself.

It’s now a few months on, May 2004, and I’ve just about finished writing this hardback edition. When I began the book, I was spending some time at Shel’s after I’d returned from Arizona. I thought I would be staying there, perhaps for ever. She said I could stay as long as I wasn’t drinking, and I didn’t start drinking. As I write, I still haven’t. It’s now well over a year, a world record for me, since I was eighteen, anyway. But God knows how long it will last.

So drink was not the problem. I’ve been depressingly, boringly sober. And I honestly thought it might work out this time, if I behaved myself. But there again, I’ve thought that on many occasions in the past. This time, it does look as if it’s the end. Money has been the
main cause of the arguments. I haven’t had any income from football for about a year now, and not much from anywhere else. I turned down a lot of money from
Hello!
last year. They wanted to do a piece on me living with Shel again. Good job I declined. When I started maintenance payments, I was making about £2 million a year while at Rangers, so I could afford it. Not now. But that’s all in the hands of the lawyers.

My sister Anna thinks I have kept it going with Shel for so long because I can’t admit defeat. Throughout my life, whenever I’ve really wanted to do something, to win something, whether it’s been a football match or a game of tennis or snooker, I’ve gone for it, and refused to be beaten. Perhaps I have seen my relationship with Shel like that, too.

But I’ll have to admit it now. Defeat, I mean. I’m forced to acknowledge that the relationship, like my football career, is over. I miss Regan, all the time; I think about him constantly. I will of course have some sort of access, perhaps have holidays and Christmas. But I worry that Regan might not respect me, nor Bianca and Mason. I have tried to do things for them, in the way of holidays and money and stuff. Obviously I’ve done wrong in the past. I know that. They know that. Perhaps one
day, in the future, Regan will look upon me more kindly. It breaks me up, every time I think about it.

One thing I don’t believe in is badmouthing other people. I didn’t like Paul Merson talking about me in a recent TV programme, claiming I was swallowing all these sleepers. If he was going to say it on national television, he should have told me first. I’d never criticise a fellow player in public. I’m not saying everything said about me is untrue, but if you have no warning that someone is about to air your dirty linen for you, it can be very hurtful for your family. And I hated all those therapists and experts analysing me on TV when they’d never even met me.

There have been lots of stories about me in various other autobiographies, like Stuart Pearce’s and Tony Adams’. I suppose publishers think it sells books if they can spice up their memoirs with some tales about me. I could tell some good stories about them, too, but I’m not revealing them. I hope in this book I haven’t hurt anyone at all by what I’ve said about them. Except for myself. Over the last four years, I like to think I’ve done no harm to anybody, not in the way I may have done in the past.

But it’s all my fault, the place I find myself now, and I know it. I threw away Shel’s love. I put her through
so much that she can’t live with me any more. Yet other people I’ve been bad to in the past still love me. There must be some good in me, for them to be still there for me. My problem is mainly myself. When I play against myself all the time, I’m the loser.

And yet I’ve been so lucky. When I go into a corner and cry, there are still people around who will kiss and cuddle me, who ring me up, want to see me, want to cheer me up.

As I said earlier, I suppose many people in the world have experienced to some extent the same sorts of fears and silly worries that plague me. Most people learn to cope. The ones who don’t can end up in the gutter, being kicked while they are down rather than being offered help. I have been lucky there, too. I have had the support of so many family and friends as well as the money to pay for the Priory and Cottonwood.

I know I’m a selfish, self-centred bastard. I go on about my own worries when there are kids out there with no money, no friends, no help, no hope. I am taking up the help they could be receiving. So what have I got to moan about?

When I take tablets for depression, I think how depressing, and feel more depressed. I know I should
try to enjoy life, and not get depressed, because I’ll be a long time dead. It’s very hard for other people to understand my mentality. It’s only those who have experienced the same kind of obsessions and compulsions who can really understand it. You look in the mirror when you’re slumped in the middle of a depression or a panic attack and you don’t see yourself. You see another person, someone you don’t like. You hate him so much you want to try to get away from him.

I’ve been in enough clinics, from Arizona to the Priory, with countless people trying to help me, offering me therapy, counselling, medication, all sorts. It often works – for a while.

People are always trying to analyse me, explain why I’m like I am. They go on TV or write in the papers about what’s wrong with me without knowing me. They often say I’m suffering from ADD – attention deficit disorder. That’s bollocks. They all seem like idiots to me. I might be hyperactive, always wanting to be doing something, unable to sleep properly, but I can concentrate when I want to. I always concentrated on training, doing more than was required rather than less. My attention never wandered and I never gave up. Doing this book, I was able to concentrate and talk for three
hours at a stretch – though I admit it did my head in at times.

OCD, those are the other letters they throw at me – obsessive compulsive disorder. That’s probably true. All the clinics have told me that, so I have to agree. I’ve always been obsessive, about little things as well as big things. I still have to have everything in a certain order.

But why I’m like this, fuck knows. Perhaps it’s the traumas I’ve been through, starting with the death of Steven. That still comes back to haunt me. The more I have been in therapy, or talked about myself, as in this book, the more I understand myself, but I still can’t explain why I’m the way I am. Would I have been different without the traumas, the things going wrong in my life? I don’t know. Or if my parents and childhood had been different? Fuck knows. All I know is that I still get obsessed and have panic attacks and my head feels like it’s about to explode.

Not drinking for a year has helped. Drinking only made me more depressed, especially when I woke up. The pills are helping, ones which my psychiatrist has recommended, and I’m going to AA meetings. I’m on something called melatonin and also Zyprexa to help me relax, control the panic attacks. I could be on pills for some time. Perhaps years. We’ll see.

I’ve often wished I was dead, but I just haven’t got the balls to commit suicide. Then I think, if I did kill myself, what’s that going to do to all those good people behind me who love me, who are constantly trying to help me? They would be devastated.

Then I think I’d quite fancy it. I’d like it all to be over, to be in heaven, or perhaps in hell. I’d like to be cremated and have my ashes scattered on St James’ Park. I can just see myself going to heaven and God saying to me ‘Hello Gazza, how’re you doing?’

But for football, I know I would be in a far worse state than I am today. There are people who think I threw it all away, just as they think George Best did. They believe I could have done so much more with my talents if I hadn’t been so self-indulgent and daft and drunk and stupid. I think the opposite. I think I have achieved far, far more than I ever expected to achieve, considering I’m me, stuck in this body and this head with all this going on. I would have done much less in life if it hadn’t been for football.

I’m surprised myself how long I’ve kept going, given all my problems. I’ve now just turned thirty-seven, but I’m fit and slim and still able to play, if anyone wants me. Most of all, I’m still here. Everybody knows about
my drinking, but few have been aware of the mental troubles and depressions that triggered it. If I’d taken advantage of the psychiatric help I was offered back when I was a child, it might have helped.

But you can’t go back. Obviously, I do regret belching in Italy, and playing the flute in Glasgow. I sometimes feel I haven’t put myself first enough, worrying about so many other people, like my family and Shel and her children. And of course my biggest regret of all is beating up Shel.