by Bishop, John
I had known Jimmy for a few years as we played football together, and he remains one of my best friends to this day. I was in LA, he was in England, so God knows what time of night it was, but he answered.
‘Hello.’
‘Jimmy, if you hear a shooting noise, it means I have been shot.’
‘What?’
‘I think I am in a bad area and some cars are driving past, and I saw a story on the news about drive-by shootings, and I think they may shoot me because I am German and don’t belong on their turf.’
‘What?’
‘Jimmy, I am just saying if you hear a bang, then it means I have been shot.’
‘Not necessarily – what if they shoot and miss?’
That was typical of Jimmy, missing the central point that I feared for my life to argue that not all bangs necessarily meant that I had been shot. Fortunately, my bus came before either of us could test the theory.
When I arrived at the address, the door was opened by a middle-aged man, behind whom stood a very attractive Hispanic girl in her early twenties. It was her car I was to take to New York. She had come to the West Coast to live with her boyfriend, but things had not worked out, so she had decided to go back home and was staying at her uncle’s house until the car was collected.
They took me to the garage and showed me the car. A brand-new black Ford Probe. A sports car. My mind immediately went back to the wink from the man in the office and the jalopy the Cambridge wankers were driving, and an even bigger smile crossed my face.
I handed over the $100 – to be returned when I delivered the car – and set off to empty my room and head east on a road trip that I could never have dreamt of.
• • •
In the eight days it took me to cross America, I went to as many sights as I could whilst covering the near 3,000 miles. I planned to sleep in the car to keep costs down, but after the first night in Las Vegas I felt this was not the best idea. The Ford Probe was a great car for driving; it had been designed to get you from A to B and to look cool whilst you did so, but it was not designed as a make-do caravan.
I stopped at the Grand Canyon, drove across the flat Arizona desert and up through Denver where, after a night’s sleep, I then drove 19 hours to Chicago.
I was doing this to see a friend from college called David who was training at a Christian centre, prior to going to be a missionary in Africa. We had been on the same course at Manchester Poly and, despite our differing views of the world, we always got on and I liked his company. He would be leaving in a few days’ time, so if I was to see him it had to be on that day or not at all.
I drove through the night to get to his house, but when he opened the door I walked right past him and fell asleep on the couch for 10 hours, cancelling out any progress I had made.
That evening, when we went out for dinner, I used the magic number to allow us to talk to our friends from college, Jane and Julie. One was in Newcastle and one was in Belfast. We made the call from pay phones next to each other and then, after we had each spoken to them for a considerable length of time, we held the receivers upside down so the girls could talk to each other – surely the most expensive call ever made between Belfast and Newcastle.
All the way across America, I thanked Ged for two things. One was the magic number, which allowed me to be constantly in touch with people in England for free, and the other was his lost shoe. The camera I had didn’t have a self-timer on, and as I was taking the trip of a lifetime alone there was every chance that I would end up with a handful of slightly dull photos of various views. So I decided to take photographs of Ged’s shoe.
At the end of my road trip I had a collection of shoe pictures, which I gave to Ged when I returned his shoe. The shoe in Vegas. The shoe at the Grand Canyon. The shoe in Denver. The shoe in Chicago. The shoe in New York. I know Cinderella got more when her shoe was returned, but I thought it was an impressive effort.
The value of the magic number became apparent again when I was in Chicago. A message had been left at my mum’s house saying that I was to call the North American Soccer Camps office in Norwich, Connecticut. In today’s world, where we are all connected via the internet and mobile phones, it seems crazy that if someone wanted to contact you in America they had to call your mum in England. Anyway, I made the call and was told that if I didn’t want to return to England I should make a detour on my way to New York as the president of the company, Gary Russell, wanted to interview me about a full-time job.
I took the detour and the interview went well, Gary offering me the job there and then. It was paying $20,000 a year, one week’s paid holiday (Americans never have enough paid holidays, which might explain why when they retire they are everywhere), and all travel expenses covered. My job was to travel through Texas and California, where I was to spend the winter months selling the camps to soccer organisations and schools before returning to the Connecticut office to co-ordinate things in the summer. The company would take care of my visa and assist with the aim of acquiring a green card.
I had left Manchester Poly barely five months before, and now I was being offered a job in America involving football. What could possibly go wrong? I immediately thought about Melanie. For some reason, American girls just never did it for me, and though we were still involved in the shadow-boxing of a noncommittal early relationship, I had spent a lot of time thinking about her, and a lot of time phoning her as I travelled across the country.
At this stage, we had been going out with each other for nearly a year and in many ways it was still very early days for me to consider her in relation to taking up such an offer, but the truth is she had a hold on me. I knew if I took the job one thing was certain: it would mean the end of any relationship with her.
I told Gary that, before I accepted, I wanted to phone home and asked if I could use his office phone. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I have this magic number; it won’t cost you anything.’ I did what I always did, dialling in the magic number, followed by the number I was ringing. Gary watched intently then left me alone to talk.
When he returned to the office, he looked more concerned than I was expecting him to look if he just wanted to know what my mum had said. He was with his right-hand man, Paul Lawrence. Paul was from Preston and, like all the lads who worked in the office, had progressed from being a coach to establishing a full-time life in the States. As Gary was American, it was clear he was bringing Paul in as a go-between.
‘Gary says you have a magic number,’ Paul said. ‘Where did you get it from?’
I knew something was wrong and didn’t want to drop Ged in it, so I replied unconvincingly, ‘Just one of the lads. I can’t remember, but it’s OK. The phone company rents them out and then forgets to cancel them, so nobody has to pay for it.’
Even I was beginning to suspect this logic was a bit flawed. They asked me to write the number down, which I did. They were out of the room for less than five minutes before Paul came back in and dropped the bombshell.
‘This is Gary’s personal credit card number. A few years ago, when the company was started, he allowed people to use it to call the office, but for no other reason. How many calls have you made?’
‘Only a couple.’
I returned to England before the full picture came out.
To his eternal credit, Gary still maintained his offer of the job, suggesting I could work off the debt somehow, although this was before the size of the debt became apparent. However, I knew the trust would be gone, and besides, once I returned to England, I realised there were places and, more importantly, people I would miss if I left.
A few weeks later, an itemised bill arrived, from which it was possible to plot my journey across America. It revealed I owed a staggering $6,400, which at the time was roughly £4,000. This is a lot of money today, but in 1989 you could almost buy a decent left-back for the price. I had no income and barely £100 to my name. However, I vowed to pay every penny back, and I did.
Even tho
ugh I never worked for NASC again, the organisation had given me such a brilliant experience that I did not want my name to be besmirched even further by not accepting my responsibility. It took time, but I am glad I never ran away from the debt as I could have done. For what they had given me, they deserved at least that.
The truth was, although I made multiple calls, one person probably accounted for half of the total, and maintaining my relationship with Melanie, no matter how long distance, had seemed something worth paying for.
CHAPTER 12
FOOTBALL
When I returned from America, in November 1989, I was in debt for the first time in my life, and had no immediate source of income apart from football.
I was a good footballer at a lower level, but once I moved up to non-league it was apparent that there were many more skilful players than me around. I decided to make up for my lack of skill by being a good worker, and by that I mean running and tackling.
At that time, it was expected that within every non-league team there would be one or two players whose job it was to stop the better footballers in the opposing team from playing. This was often achieved by the type of tackling that would result in you receiving an ASBO in today’s game.
That was my job and one I did reasonably well. My semi-professional football career included a number of clubs. The general pattern was that I would sign for a team and after two seasons move on, either because I had fallen out with the manager and wasn’t getting picked, or I had a better offer.
Whilst playing for Southport in 1991 we played against Liverpool in the Liverpool Senior Cup. This was a tournament that involved the local non-league sides and Liverpool and Everton, who would play their reserves. That night I marked a young lad who Liverpool had just signed from Bournemouth called Jamie Redknapp, and though we both have different memories of who was the better player on the night, neither of us could have imagined we would become good friends some 20 years later. For anyone interested, I was the better player … it’s my book so that’s what is going in!
I devoted a lot of my life to football and, in many ways, I regret this because I never did any other sports or engaged in activities such as going on weekends away. I needed the income from the semi-pro football on a Saturday, and I also got great pleasure from playing in the Sunday league sides my dad ran. I’m now starting to take up other sports, although it’s quite apparent that I am pretty rubbish at them all.
I also played for money, which changes the whole raison d‘être. You turn up three times a week because you are paid to be there, not because you choose to be there. When I stopped playing non-league football for good after around 14 years, I never missed it. I missed the dressing-room banter and the lads that I played with, but I never missed the travel and the commitment. You only have to draw 0–0 away at Bishop Auckland on a cold, wet and windy Tuesday night in front of 50 people and a dog a few times before you start thinking there must be better things to do with your time.
I had two epiphanies during my non-league career. The first was at the end of the biggest game I played. I was playing for Hyde United, and we were in the semi-final of the FA Trophy against Telford who played in the Vauxhall Conference, the league above us. This is basically the FA Cup for non-league sides, and the final is played at Wembley. The semi-final is a two-leg affair, and we went into the game a goal down from the home leg, but still feeling we had a chance. We scored early and for a period it felt like we might make it, but eventually Telford went through as well-deserved winners.
I hadn’t played particularly well and was substituted with 15 minutes to go. At the end of the game I was completely deflated. That morning I had been 90 minutes away from Wembley. By the time the final whistle blew, that dream was over and I felt I would never get there. I had been given a chance and had blown it.
It was 15 April 1989. In the dressing room, amidst the disappointment, news started to come through that something had happened during Liverpool’s FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough. In the time it took to shower and change, it became apparent that a disaster was unfolding, and people began talking about fatalities. I have always been a Liverpool fan and almost certainly would have been there had I not been playing. Within minutes of my biggest disappointment, football didn’t seem to matter at all. Writing these words, it still seems incredible what unfolded afterwards and that families are still fighting for justice. If ever a day changed my view of the importance of football, it was then.
The second was to come years later. I was married with a new baby, had a full-time job and was playing for Caernarfon in the Welsh League. Caernarfon was a two-and-a-half-hour drive from my house. My son, Joe, was a few months old and I was still training twice a week. On a Saturday, I would set off around 10.30 a.m. and return when he was in bed around 8.30 p.m., and that was for home games. In the Welsh League, you could be in mid-Wales or even down south, which was an even bigger commitment.
I can’t recall who we were playing against, but it was spring and, as the sun lowered itself in the sky and began to signal its departure by unfurling a beautiful red aura across the sky just behind the corner flag, I found myself standing in the middle of the pitch, with the game going on around me, as I looked at this brilliant splash of colour on the horizon. I stopped running and just watched the day end.
I looked around the small ground at the 70 or 80 spectators, and it hit me. I was in my thirties, I was never going to get any better – if anything, I was getting worse. I was just making up the numbers in the team, and if I wasn’t playing, someone else would have my shirt on. I offered nothing unique and gained nothing except some extra money, which is what I had used to justify not being at home. But yet another day was over and my son had not seen me. He had grown another day older and I had missed it.
For the rest of the week I would be away again, working. I was giving up the opportunity to be a better father in pursuit of extra cash, cash he didn’t even know existed. It wasn’t the cash from playing football that made him laugh, it was me pulling faces. It was me who bathed him, who changed his nappy, who read him stories, who tickled him and who rocked him to sleep. It was me who did all of those things, but it was also me who had chosen to give that time up so I could chase a ball. I realised the only place I was unique was at home being a father, being a husband. Only one person on the planet could do that job, while there was a queue of people who could stand in mid-field and tackle.
‘Bish, what the fuck are you doing?’
The game was still on, and whilst everyone else was defending an attack I was down the other end of the pitch gazing at the sky.
The manager’s voice broke my trance. I ran back to defend, but finished my non-league playing days shortly after. I had more important things to do, which didn’t involving kicking someone – well, not often.
I still played football locally for a year or two and now I play every week with my mates on the five-a-side pitch I have had put in my garden. I even had a dug-out installed, which Melanie says only proves I am still a little boy wanting to be a professional footballer! I also still have season tickets at Anfield and go regularly with my dad, my brother and the two sons who like football. We had a season of a family table in the corporate part of the ground where you can get a four-course meal before the game before we all agreed it wasn’t for us, and went back to our normal seats. I love going to the game, and it’s also one of the places where I seem to be left alone. People know I am just going with my family, and it’s really nice that this is respected. I never mind giving people photographs or autographs – it’s a privilege that they ask. But it is nice sometimes to be left to do something normal. As my brother says, ‘Who’s going to be arsed with you when the match is on?’
• • •
One thing that has been great about living the dream I never expected – that of being a comedian – is that I have also been granted the opportunity to live the dream I wanted by playing in celebrity charity football matches. I took part in the H
illsborough memorial game for the Marina Dalglish charity at Anfield, and also played at Old Trafford with Soccer Aid, as well as taking a penalty at Wembley on A League of Their Own.
Of course, you are only there because you are good at something else, so it’s not like being a real professional footballer. But as a friend of mine said, ‘If you get a beautiful woman because you’re rich not because you’re good looking, you still have a beautiful woman. Even if everyone looking at you thinks you’re a perv.’ If you play football at the best grounds in the world because you’re a comedian, not because you’re a good footballer, you are still playing at the best grounds in the world, even if everyone looking at you thinks you’re shit. There is logic in that somewhere.
CHAPTER 13
TIME TO GROW UP
In debt, and with a girlfriend in Manchester while I was living at home in Runcorn, it quickly became apparent that I needed to get a job with some form of transport.
I had a friend who was selling an ice-cream round. This entailed buying the van and the right to drive around the estate selling ice cream after rousing everyone from their houses with some chiming music – a bit like the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Although I was tempted, I decided that in the fledging stages of my relationship with Melanie, turning up in a Mr Whippy van would not convince her that she was on to a winner.
I was in the position that many people find themselves in upon leaving university; you have been independent for three years and then you move back home to your old bedroom at your parents’ house. Even if you enjoy a great relationship with your parents, as I did then and still do now, the reality is that once you leave you need to stay gone. There is nothing like going back to your teenage bed to sleep under your teenage posters to make you want to get a job and move on with your life. Also, parents get out of the rhythm of having children to look after; even if you are a man with more body hair than either of you would like to admit, bumping into your mum on the landing after a rushed shower still makes you feel like a naughty boy who shouldn’t be getting the carpet wet.