‘Mate, what are you doing?’
‘Putting a line in the side, like Aguero.’
‘Mate, I said I like Aguero as a player, not that I wanted his haircut!’
Good job he didn’t mention Bobby Charlton, I’d have walked out bald but for three strands of hair swept over the top of my head. As it was, I wore a cap for about a month because I looked like an absolute tit.
I don’t know what I’d do if Donald or Howard disappeared, because going anywhere new makes me anxious. With Donald and Howard, I’m ready for them. Because I’ve known them so long, I know what to expect. With somewhere new, there’s the whole feeling-out process: are they going to recognise me? Are they going to ask me what I do? Is everyone else in the hairdresser’s going to start listening in on our conversation? Am I going to have to give them a begrudging tip when they’ve already charged me £30 just to trim the back and sides? I get embarrassed if I don’t tip, feel guilty for some reason. But then I end up tipping even if someone has done a shit job. Or I tip waiting staff in restaurants if I have a good meal, even though they didn’t cook it. And I get worried about the 10% service charge. Does the chef get that? Does the owner take it off him? Do I need to tip on top of that?
Back to appearances, it’s not like I’m vain in everyday life. Well, maybe a little bit. But not that much. I wear the same clothes pretty much every day. I get up, slip into some leisurewear and go to the gym. And when I get home, I have a shower and put a tracksuit on. If I do go out, it takes me about 15 minutes to get ready. But I do think a lot more about my appearance now. I have to, because if I looked like I did when I was in my early twenties, I wouldn’t get any work.
When I was playing cricket, I basically wore pyjamas every day. But it didn’t matter what I looked like as long as I scored runs and took wickets. And the first time I had make-up done for TV, I couldn’t get out of the chair quick enough. But now, I even have an opinion: ‘Do I need a darker eye shadow? Would a beauty spot be too much?’ Not really. I don’t take myself that seriously. But I do care. Because you know what kind of people do my head in? Those who put a lot of effort into looking like shit. Putting effort in, when it came to appearances, used to mean turning up in a tuxedo, with shiny, Brylcreemed hair. Now, it means spending time and money on looking like you’ve just got out of bed. I’ll never be able to get my head around that.
CHAPTER NINE
SPORT TALK
Alas, lockdown wasn’t all sitting around the house in my pants. Sometimes, it was sitting around in my house in my pants broadcasting to the nation.
talkSPORT had just had a bit of a shake-up, with Laura Woods taking over the breakfast show from Alan Brazil Monday to Wednesday, and they wanted to keep things light. Instead of chatting about newsy stuff, me, Laura and Ally McCoist mostly just had a bit of a laugh. I found that a bit weird at first, because I kept thinking we should have been mentioning coronavirus and the chaos it was causing, at least every now and again. But I soon realised that we were supposed to be a little chink in the clouds for four hours every morning. If people wanted grimness – lots of different people discussing the coronavirus casualty figures, the lack of PPE in hospitals, when the whole madness might finally come to an end – there were plenty of other channels doing that, including our sister station talkRADIO. We touched on it every now and again, because it would have been weird not to, but me spouting about very important things I didn’t really know about wouldn’t have been wise, it would have been downright dangerous.
It’s strange how these opportunities arise. I’d done a bit of radio before, including a live show on BBC Radio 5 Live, which involved me interviewing various famous sportspeople (some of whom I’d never heard of), and enjoyed it. But there’s no way I would have been able to do a breakfast radio show in normal times because of my other commitments and the idea of getting up at 3.30 a.m. and driving to a studio fills me with dread. You can make it sound good on paper, because the show finishes at 10 a.m. But I’d just be knackered for the rest of the day and not be able to do anything. And I’d be lying in bed every night, panicking about having to get up in a few hours and worrying about not getting enough sleep. But during lockdown, I was able to roll out of bed at 5.30 a.m., shuffle into my living room, turn on my laptop and I was ready to go. To be honest, had I not been on camera, I could have set my alarm for 5.55 and done it from my bed. I’m always trying to come up with projects that don’t take me away from family (I haven’t been successful at it so far) so it was perfect.
I made it quite clear to the people at talkSPORT that I wasn’t a football aficionado, although I have started getting more into football recently, because of the kids. They watch anything: the Premier League, the Bundesliga, Serie A, La Liga. I’ll watch Match of the Day and think, ‘Where have I been all these years, this is amazing. And when did Alan Shearer stop being miserable and become so charming?’
I play a bit as well, with some mates over at Man City’s indoor academy, and absolutely love it. I’m not Virgil van Dijk, but I can play to a half-decent standard. But I still don’t really know what’s going on. Luckily, my fellow centre-back is better than me, so I say to him, ‘Do me a favour, tell me where to go and what to do and I’ll be fine. Just don’t leave me to my own devices, or we could be down five–nil by half-time.’
When I was a kid, I played a couple of games for Preston Boys and got scouted by Blackburn, I think. But I never turned up for the trial, because I knew I wasn’t very good. I was just big, quite fast and someone who would get stuck in, which isn’t enough to make it as a professional footballer. When I played cricket, I could read a game. I could see how everything was going to pan out, like when I was playing chess. But I had no football intelligence. I’d stand at the back and think, ‘Where should I go? Who should I mark? What should I do if the ball comes to me?’ It would baffle me; I wouldn’t have a clue. So when Gary Lineker, Ian Wright and Shearer are breaking a game down, with all the graphics and arrows and what not, that’s like magic to me.
On talkSPORT, Ally had the football covered anyway, and it was a chance to focus a bit more on other sports that don’t always get a look in. Obviously, there wasn’t much live sport to talk about, which made it a bit tricky at times. And while I spoke to the bosses about what they wanted from me, I didn’t really get any guidance. There were periods when the only ‘sport’ was stories about furloughing. Hands up who knew that word before lockdown? Luckily, Laura, who has been presenting on Sky for years, is a consummate broadcaster and Ally is also brilliant and such a nice man. The best thing about Ally is that he is a great talker, to the extent that I was quite taken aback by it on my first day. As I soon worked out, it meant that it was my job to fill in the gaps. Saying we just winged it makes it sound unprofessional, but that’s basically what we did: Laura played the passes, Ally ran with the ball and I tried to finish things off.
People ask me if it’s terrifying, presenting a live radio show for four hours. It is a bit scary, but there are lots of adverts. After 13 minutes, I could pad downstairs in my slippers and get a brew. But it was more weird than scary, knowing that I was sitting on my own in my house and millions of people were listening. Instead of finding it stressful, it was more a case of being careful not to let my guard down, because I was sitting in my living room in my T-shirt. When I started doing it, I’d been living in a bubble for a few weeks, only really speaking to my family and close friends. So even having a conversation with Laura and Ally seemed bizarre. I could see them on my Zoom, but there was a slight delay and it made it more difficult to read people, bounce off them and anticipate what was coming next. At times, it was almost like flying blind.
Before my first show, I made the mistake of going on Twitter. While most people were nice, there was a lot of negativity, mostly along the lines of, ‘Fucking hell, what have talkSPORT got that dickhead Flintoff on for?’ Jeez, people are ruthless on there. I found myself thinking, ‘All right mate, it’s only sport.’ But to some people, s
port is the most serious thing in the world, even during a global pandemic. If a nuclear bomb landed on London, you’d be able to hear voices coming from underneath the radioactive dust: ‘This is bad and all that, but I hope this doesn’t mean Spurs are going to delay sacking Mourinho . . . ’
I quickly worked out that presenting a sports show is very different to presenting an entertainment show, because everyone seems to have an opinion about sport, in the same way as everyone had an opinion on how to beat coronavirus, and some people get very angry if you’ve got a different opinion to them. Because I’ve never played professional football, some people thought I wasn’t allowed to have an opinion on it, or indeed anything else. And even if I had the same opinion as them, they sometimes got upset because I didn’t put the opinion across in the right way: ‘Stop. Doing. Sport. Wrong!’
Most people knew it wasn’t going to be perfect, given the unusual conditions. But others had absolutely no problem letting me know that they didn’t like me, in a way that I’ve never experienced when presenting various TV shows. I suppose that made sense, because talkSPORT is essentially a station for football fans. Then there were the people upset that we weren’t talking about sport enough. I couldn’t get my head around that. There was genuinely no sport, we weren’t making it up. Did they want us to pretend there was sport going on? I’m not going to lie to you, the strength of the criticism surprised me, I was getting called all sorts at 7.30 in the morning.
While I’ve never really got that tribal football-fan mentality, where people are absolutely vicious in their criticism, it did demonstrate how much people need sport in their lives and how upset they were to be without it. Sport is escapism, a release, gives people something to talk about and their lives meaning. Before lockdown, I would never have thought of myself as a sports fanatic, so I was surprised that I missed it so much. I just took it for granted that I could turn the TV on at any given moment and there would be some sport on, whether it was some cricket during the day, football on Wednesday evening or boxing on Saturday night. During lockdown, I’d find myself sticking the TV on, in the vain hope that some people somewhere on the planet were defying coronavirus and having a game of rugby or tennis. But, of course, there was nothing there, and I struggle watching old footage. It’s not the same as watching the same film twice, because knowing the final score means that most of the drama is lost.
Lockdown even made me reassess the importance or otherwise of my sporting career, and I’m about to contradict myself completely (I’m allowed to do that, because it’s my book). I’m often quite dismissive about my time as a cricketer, because it always struck me as a pointless trade that didn’t really help anyone. But when sport suddenly disappeared, it made me realise that sport does affect people’s lives, in that it makes people happy or sad or angry or frustrated or inspired. Maybe I did enhance people’s lives a little bit. It’s certainly true that I missed my kids playing sport, because I get so much satisfaction from watching them enjoy and do it well, whether it’s football or cricket or anything else. I guess lockdown proved the old adage that you only realise how much you love something when it’s taken away. It also showed that it’s okay to admit to missing unessential things, even during times of global crisis. I’m sure people missed lots of trivial things during the Second World War, even while other people were being killed all around them. That’s just basic human nature.
About the only sport that soldiered on during lockdown was darts, although the players had to play a ‘home tour’ in their garages and former world champion Gary Anderson had to pull out because his WiFi signal wasn’t strong enough. Let’s be honest: Gary probably just couldn’t be arsed, like most of the rest of us during lockdown.
Taking over from Alan Brazil, who had presented the show for the previous 20 years, was harder than taking over from Clarkson on Top Gear. I suppose some people just don’t like change, but the figures suggested there were still plenty of people getting up at 6 a.m. to listen to it, so they can’t have been that upset. And as far as I was concerned, at least it was getting me out of bed, breaking up the monotony and giving me a bit of routine, which I’d missed. When you’re being told what to do all the time, like when I was playing cricket, you rebel a bit. But when it’s gone, you realise how important it is.
When subjects came up that I wasn’t bothered about, or guests were on who I didn’t really know, it was a bit harder. Everyone was suddenly up in arms about what footballers got paid and I’d be thinking, ‘Have they only just realised?’ And sometimes I’d find myself discussing sportspeople I knew hardly anything about at 6.15, like when Arsenal’s Mezut Özil refused to take a pay cut (apparently he gives a lot of money to charity – when you’re a radio presenter, you quickly learn that some stories are a lot more complicated than you originally think).
As I’ve already mentioned, furloughing was a hot topic during lockdown. You had Premier League clubs mothballing non-playing staff and asking the government to pay some of their wages, which obviously didn’t go down well with fans, because their players were still getting hundreds of thousands of pounds a week. Then you had county cricket clubs furloughing staff, which was a different situation entirely, because some of those clubs were right on the brink. Even Lancashire were struggling, not only because of the lack of cricket but also because of the lack of income from the hotel and conference room. As for the grassroots clubs, lots of them were in dire straits. And with the best will in the world, there’s not much Lancashire could do for them. Me sending them a message of solidarity and singing ‘Imagine’ from my house in Altrincham wasn’t really going to be much help, let’s be honest.
Another lockdown staple turned out to be footballers ignoring government guidelines, like Aston Villa’s Jack Grealish and Manchester City’s Kyle Walker. Kyle allegedly had a party at his house. There couldn’t have been much social distancing going on that night. I don’t know what goes through people’s heads. I mean, it’s one thing having a couple of mates round for a few glasses of wine in your garden, another thing entirely filling your house up with ladies. But at least he gave us something to talk about for a few minutes. And to be honest, I felt more let down by joggers than footballers having sex parties. I was out one day with my missus and our new baby and these people kept running past, panting all over us and spraying us with sweat. I actually got quite angry about that. One of them ran straight through the middle of us, so I told him, in no uncertain terms, to behave himself. And when someone on a bike came too close, I stuck my arm out and let him have it as well. I wasn’t too worried about us, but there was an old couple down the road who looked absolutely petrified. They were almost cowering, as if they’d spotted the Grim Reaper.
Then there was the story about the potential takeover of Newcastle by Saudi Arabia. I didn’t know much about it, but I soon understood that Newcastle fans didn’t like Mike Ashley, because he sells cheap sports gear but hasn’t got enough money for their liking (even though they’re quite happy to buy half-price trainers from his shops), but they seemed quite happy for their club to be owned by Saudi Arabia. Then you had the other fans who had been wanting him to sell the club for years but were having a go at him for selling to Saudi Arabia. Whatever the subject, I soon realised that once I’d taken a position on it, I had to remember what that was, because we’d keep coming back to the same story throughout the show. When you’ve only just woken up, four hours can seem like an eternity. But if my position had been different at the end of the show than it was at the start, that would have given the game away.
Because there were so many people struggling financially during lockdown, there was a lot of talk about the immorality of football. Should footballers be earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a week? Probably not. But if someone had offered to pay me two hundred grand a week to play cricket, I would have bitten their arm off. That’s why it doesn’t really make sense to give footballers grief. At least they’re providing entertainment, unlike some people who work in the City,
who are just moving money around and earning millions of pounds a year for doing it. And it’s only immoral because society is structured in such a way that people who do important jobs don’t earn anywhere near enough. That’s not the fault of footballers, especially as plenty of them give a lot of their money away. And look at Manchester United’s Marcus Rashford, who raised millions to provide free food for underprivileged kids and forced the government to change their policy.
One of the problems when it comes to talking about morals is that everyone’s morals are different. Is what I earn for A League of Their Own or Top Gear immoral? (No, I’m not telling you how much I make.) Who decides? What is the cut-off point? The only way footballers’ wages will come down is if people stop watching them play. But that’s not happening, which presumably means hardly anyone objects on moral grounds. You could sell out Anfield and Old Trafford twice over for some games. But Premier League football isn’t all fan-funded anyway, most of the big clubs are owned by ludicrously wealthy foreign businessmen. Manchester City are owned by an entire foreign state. So it wouldn’t really matter to them if they had 40,000 people or one man and a dog watching their games. Fan boycotts would have more of an impact in the lower leagues, but those players don’t earn as much anyway.
Of course, the morality of big money in sport isn’t just a Premier League thing. I’ve seen stats that say cricket’s Indian Premier League (IPL) is the richest competition in the world, in terms of what players earn per game. Someone like Virat Kohli is earning hundreds of thousands of pounds per game, while tens of millions of his countrymen are living in the kind of poverty most British people couldn’t even imagine. But I played in the IPL and I don’t remember my agent asking for less money because it all felt a bit immoral.
Right, Said Fred Page 11