I got in my car and started driving north, deciding I’d go home to Newcastle. Mel Stein rang me on my car phone. He said I should turn round and go back to be with Shel when she had the baby. I just told him to fuck off.
I drove to me dad’s and went out on the piss all night. Next day, I went out to the pub in the morning to get drunk again, and it was there that I read in the paper I’d had a baby. That was how I learned about it, and found out the baby’s name and weight. Shel had tried to discuss names with me, but I’d refused to talk about it. I was blanking it out. I didn’t want to know or hear about a baby.
I didn’t do anything for about two weeks, made no contact, sent nothing. By this time, I felt very embarrassed and guilty about what I’d done, or not done, knowing I really should have been there. Finally, I went down south and I saw my son for the first time. Shel was brilliant. She let me have him on my own, so I could cuddle and kiss him.
I quite like the name Regan now. I think Shel got it from a waiter in some hotel or restaurant. He had served her, and his name was on the bill, and she liked it. She looked it up and discovered it meant ‘little king’. She thought that was a good omen.
Regan’s arrival brought us together again and Shel took the plunge and moved up, with all three children, to join me north of the border. I bought a large house in Renfrewshire, near Ally McCoist’s, which cost £510,000, a lot of money then in Scotland, or anywhere in Britain, come to that. It had six bedrooms, a swimming pool and a tennis court. I loved it. Lovely house. And to start with, we were happy there.
I was playing well for Rangers, and for England, loving life in Glasgow and Scotland, winning trophies – and I was injury-free. That was about the most important thing of all in my life at the time. Any time, really. It’s when I get injuries that things become horrible. That I become horrible. But I had no twitches, I was sleeping OK, I had hardly any worries, hardly thought about death and other awful things.
“He’s a fantastic player when he isn’t drunk.”
Brian Laudrup, Rangers team-mate, 1997
“He’s an intelligent boy who likes people to think he’s stupid. He doesn’t have a bad bone in his body but he does some stupid, ridiculous things. That’s what makes him so interesting.”
Ally McCoist, Rangers colleague, 1996
18
EURO 96 AND A DENTIST’S CHAIR
My England career had been massively interrupted by all those injuries. Remember, I lost over a year waiting to move from Spurs to Lazio, and then another one at the end of my time in Italy. But England hadn’t done much to speak of during that time anyway, under Graham Taylor, notably missing out on the 1994 World Cup finals. And I hadn’t done much when I did appear.
So I’d been well pleased when Terry Venables took over the England job in 1994. I had loved him at Spurs. The minute we all heard the news, people like Paul Ince and Ian Wright, who hadn’t played for him before, were asking me, ‘What’s he like? What’s he like?’ I told them he was fucking marvellous.
I wasn’t fit for his early games, but he picked me for the Japan match at Wembley in June 1995, just before I signed for Rangers. It was the first time I’d pulled on an England shirt for fifteen months. I came on as a sub and we won 2–1.
After that I became a vital part of Terry’s Euro 96 preparation games. As the tournament was being held in England, we didn’t have to qualify. I was on great form at Rangers, and playing well for England, so much so that Terry took me aside one day and said he was thinking he might make me the England captain.
I didn’t think it was such a good idea. The press would be bound to dig out all the old cuttings about me drinking, the kiss-and-tell stories, the bust-ups with Shel, and would just hound me, looking for more dirt. Basically, they’d have a field day, which would be bad for me and my game and bad for England and for Terry. So I was quite pleased it didn’t happen. I would, of course, have been dead proud. But I was proud enough to be going into the Euro 96 finals to be held in our own country confident enough that I would be in the team.
As part of our final warm-up for Euro 96, we went to play a couple of matches in Hong Kong and China. On the plane out, I tried to attract the attention of a steward standing in the aisle, just after we had taken off, to ask him to get me a drink. All I did was poke him gently in the back. But then things got out of hand and there was a bit of a scuffle. The pilot intervened, giving out a message that if there was any more trouble, he would stop the plane in Russia, drop me off and leave me there. An official complaint was later made to the FA about my behaviour. Luckily, none of that ever made the papers.
In Hong Kong, after we’d played both our matches, Terry said we could have a night out, so we all went to this club. I got drinking with Robbie Fowler at the bar and he saw this girl and said to her, ‘Hi, what’s your name?’ I said, ‘What a fucking awful line. You must be able to do better – that’s really corny.’ So of course we started pushing and shoving each other. We were just messing around, really, nothing serious, but it led to me picking up a pint and pouring it over Robbie’s head. Then Teddy Sheringham arrived. I poured a pint over his head as well. Steve McManaman came over and he, too, ended up wearing a pint. At the same time, I somehow managed to rip his T-shirt. The evening’s game then became that everyone had to have a pint poured over them and their shirt ripped. Just a simple little intellectual game.
Bryan Robson was now on the England coaching staff, no longer a player or one of us, so he was standing around, staying cool. The lads said, ‘Go on, Gazza, rip his shirt and pour a pint over him. You said that was this evening’s game.’ I was a bit worried about involving him, as he was looking cool in his best clothes, whereas the rest of us were in T-shirts and tracksuit bottoms. I was afraid he might thump me. I decided I would rip his shirt, but only a little bit. But when I did it, for some reason the whole of his shirt came away, leaving him with only his collar on. It was very weird. And very funny. He took it in good humour.
I went and hid in a little telephone booth, and when I came out, Dennis Wise and Teddy Sheringham had taken down some boxing gloves that were hanging in the bar and were pretending to have a boxing match. As I stepped out of the booth, Dennis hit me with a real upper-cut.
Then someone said, ‘How about the dentist’s chair?’ I thought, that’s handy, I could do with some fillings. I didn’t know what it was at first. It was explained to me that what you had to do was sit back on this big chair and the barmen would pour different spirits down your throat from the bottles. I think there was tequila and Drambuie. Obviously, most of it got spilt, as you were lying back, with your mouth open, just like at the dentist’s – hence the name. It was all a laugh, no more than us letting our hair down before the Euro finals. Nothing bad happened. Nobody got attacked, no girls were assaulted, the place didn’t get wrecked. I went home quite early, in fact, sharing a taxi with Bryan Robson in his shirt collar, thinking it had been OK – a quiet night, really, nothing wild. Till we all saw the next day’s papers.
I should think about eight of the England team had stepped into that dentist’s chair, but most of the photographs that were published afterwards were of me. They had been taken by some punter who just happened to be in the bar and decided to make himself a few bob. But really, it wasn’t all that bad. It just looked bad when the reporters put their own interpretation on it in the papers.
A couple of days later it was my birthday. I got some flowers from Regan, which was very touching. So I had to celebrate that, even if we were supposed to stay indoors and be sensible after all the bad publicity. I went out on my own for a quiet drink. Yes, I was wearing my England tracksuit and a big pair of Doc Martens, so I suppose you could say I was drawing attention to myself, but I didn’t think of it that way. I just wanted to go out and have a bit of fun – I wasn’t thinking about my clothes.
I found a little hotel and went to the bar, where there was a load of locals, all smoking big cigars. I joined in, and some of them gave me a few cig
ars. I went back to the England hotel smoking a big cigar, strode into the dining room, where the FA officials were all eating, and ordered champagne all round. That was one occasion when Terry did tell me to calm down.
On the plane home, we were all knackered. I had a few drinks and soon fell into a very deep sleep – until some bastard gave me a hard slap on the face. I woke up with a start, really furious. I went round trying to make somebody tell me who had slapped me, but nobody would. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Welcome to hell. Unless yous tell me who did it, no one is going to sleep on this plane.’
I went up and down the aisles, kicking all the seats, throwing cushions around. We were on the top deck of a Cathay Pacific plane, in the first-class cabin, which had been reserved for the England squad. Dennis Wise climbed into one of the overhead lockers to try to get some sleep and escape my attentions. Jamie Redknapp got down under two of the seats. I suspected it was Steve McManaman who had slapped me, so I gave his seat and his TV screen a good punch. His screen did go a bit blurry, but it seemed to still be working, after a fashion. Then I did the same to Les Ferdinand’s.
While I was going around shouting at everyone, an FA official came up the stairs from their seats on the lower deck, and told me to stop all the noise, sit down and go to sleep. I told him to fuck off. ‘Don’t you dare tell any England player what to do,’ I shouted at him. ‘We do the playing, you do fuck all.’ It was a bit out of order, I admit, but then, I was a bit tipsy.
During the ten days or so we had been away, I had only actually been drunk on two nights. I didn’t think that was so bad. Plus, of course, the plane home. So I suppose that makes three times. Still, it wasn’t a lot in a ten-day period.
It wasn’t till much later that I was told it was Alan Shearer who had slapped my face on the plane. He denied it when I asked him. Not that I would hold it against him. I would probably have done the same myself, seeing some mate fast asleep. It’s what you do. A bit of harmless fun. But it wasn’t so funny when the bill appeared for two broken TVs. It turned out they were new models and cost a fortune. And as I said, I didn’t think I’d actually broken them, just made them go a bit fuzzy.
Tony Adams, as captain, decided that the whole squad should share the bill, as quite a few of the lads had been, shall we say, a bit boisterous on the plane, even though it was me who had damaged the TVs. We had to pay £500 each. I thought that was good of Tony. When you’re in a team, you should all stick together. I gather that in his autobiography, Psycho, Stuart Pearce wrote that he didn’t think it was fair. He went along with it for the sake of harmony, but his wife didn’t agree with it. He didn’t name me as the culprit, which was very decent of him, though he added: ‘I had a good idea who caused the damage.’ Oooh.
When I got home, I decided to have a really abstemious, sensible week at a health farm to get ready for the finals. I was told about this place in Wales, which was supposed to be very remote. No press people would ever find you there, or the public, they said. The word was that Hugh Grant had gone there, after his sex scandal in the USA, to get away from people. But when I arrived, I found sixteen cameramen and pressmen waiting for me. So I immediately turned round and went home to Newcastle instead, and had a quiet time there. I can, when I put my mind to it. I quite enjoy being on my own, if I’m tucked away, and no one bothers me.
By the time Euro 96 was due to start, I was feeling very fit. I remember hearing the Euro 96 theme song, ‘Three Lions’, the first time. ‘It’s coming home, it’s coming home, football’s coming home,’ we used to sing on the team coach, and I would play it in my room all the time.
Our first match was against Switzerland, on 8 June at Wembley. I hadn’t slept well for a couple of nights beforehand. A silly worry had got into my head about my form, and I was scared that I might not get picked, which I knew was daft, since my form was so good. I asked Terry, privately, if I would be in the team, and he told me, privately, that I was. I said, ‘In that case, I’m up for it.’ I immediately felt so much better.
We didn’t actually play very well against Switzerland, but we managed a 1–1 draw. I was taken off about fifteen minutes before the end. Against Scotland, I was much better, and I got our second goal, the one that is often still shown on TV. I remember it came just after Scotland had missed a penalty – well, more like David Seaman had saved their penalty. We’d gone one up in the second half but the Scots were fighting back. I suppose the penalty miss knocked them a bit but they were definitely coming back into the game. Playing well. Anyway, Darren Anderton had the ball out on the wing and passed it through to me. I was about on the corner of the Scotland box. In between two defenders. When the ball came through to me Colin Hendry was moving over to close me down. I just knew where he’d be, when he’d commit himself, so I knew what to do. It felt brilliant when it all worked. I went to look like I’d knock it past him and try and go round the outside, but I changed direction and flicked it over his head with my left foot. Hendry tried to get back to me, but ended up on the deck, and I volleyed the ball with my right, into the corner of the goal, past Andy Goram, my Rangers team-mate. I think Hendry was still on his knees when the ball hit the back of the net.
Before the match, I suggested that if someone scored the winner, we would celebrate by taking the piss out of the dentist’s chair incident, as it had been in all the papers. I would have done it to whoever scored the vital goal, but it happened to be me. So I lay down on the Wembley turf and Alan Shearer and the others poured drink down my gob. It was Lucozade, of course. Nothing stronger.
For the previous few months, I’d taken so much stick in the Rangers dressing room. They told me all the time how they were going to stuff England. So that made me relish the result even more, though I have to admit we depended on a few of Seaman’s saves to keep us in the game. Afterwards, I cut out all the reports and headlines, and when we got back to pre-season training, I sneaked early into the Rangers dressing room and pinned them all up on the noticeboard.
That goal against Scotland was rated the Goal of the Century in a television poll. The third choice was mine as well: my free kick against Seaman and Arsenal in the FA Cup semi-final of 1991. I was pretty pleased by that.
Before we played Holland, Terry gave us the most brilliant team talk. He made it clear this was going to be one of the biggest games in any of our lives. To get any result against Holland we would need to be on our best form, because, of course, they had some brilliant, world-class players. After we all got off the coach at Wembley, I got back on again, on my own, just to hear the ‘Coming home’ song being belted out one more time.
We thrashed them 4–1, one of England’s best-ever victories. It was just a shame Holland got their one goal, otherwise Scotland would have gone through instead of them. I might have been rubbishing the Scottish boys, taking the piss, but I loved them, and the Scottish people. So I really wanted them to do well and go through – as long as it wasn’t at our expense – and I was very disappointed for them when they didn’t make it.
Throughout the Holland game I could hear the whole Wembley crowd singing, ‘There’s only one Paul Gascoigne.’ Towards the end, David Platt said to me, as he was passing to me, ‘Here’s the ball – it’s your game.’ And yet none of our four goals came from me.
We met Spain in the quarter-finals. It was still 0–0 after extra time, so the game went to penalties. Seaman made some brilliant saves – Old Beaver Face, I used to call him, because of his big ’tache. I got my penalty, and so did Stuart Pearce, which was great as it helped him get rid of the demons that had plagued him after missing that penalty in the 1990 World Cup semi-final. When I scored with mine, I remember looking up into the stands, searching for Shel. I couldn’t see her, of course, though I knew she was there.
In the semi-final, we were drawn against Germany, once again. I seemed to have spent my whole life playing them. I had a good game, we all did, but we were level at 1–1 after 90 minutes. Shearer had scored for us, after Tony Adams flicked on my corne
r. Then it went to the golden goal – the first team to score in extra time would take the match.
I so nearly got a winner. A cross from Shearer went across the box, to the spot where Alan was usually to be found. I ran forward to try and get it, but checked myself when I saw the keeper coming out for it. Because I hesitated, I missed it by inches. I was really sick. If I’d been a proper striker, like Shearer, I would have gone for it without thinking, regardless of what the goalkeeper was doing.
Instead, with no further scoring, it was penalties again. I scored mine, even though I changed my mind at the last moment. It was Gareth Southgate who missed this time, poor sod. I couldn’t believe it. Yet again we had been beaten by Germany on penalties. It all seemed so unfair. I was choked.
Back at the England hotel at Burnham Beeches, I drank to drown my sorrows, along with Robbie Fowler. We started squirting tomato ketchup over each other. We’d found a couple of tubes on a table and soon finished them off. I went into the kitchens and found a monster carton of ketchup, which I emptied all over Robbie. Then I ran to my room and had a good cry.
Next day, when we were all packing to go home, I found that someone had put a lump of shit in my washbag. I tried to find out who it was, without success. Some time later, Trevor Steven told me he’d heard it was Steve Stone. When I confronted him, he denied it, but he smiled and said, ‘Divvent give us it back.’
Germany met Czechoslovakia in the final on 30 June and they were dead jammy yet again, winning with a golden goal in extra time. We’d really believed it would be us playing for the trophy at our national stadium. We had such a good team, and such a good manager, we felt we could go all the way. ‘It’s coming home, it’s coming home, football’s coming home …’ We were just devastated.
Gazza: My Story Page 17