Along Oxford Street, after I’d given the bus driver his bus back, I saw some workmen mending the road, with pneumatic drills and all the gear. I thought, I’ve never done that – I wonder what it’s like? So I asked one of them to let me have a go. I put on his hard hat and his earphones and had a good go with his drill. I hadn’t realised they were so heavy.
I then stopped a taxi driver and told him I’d give him a signed England shirt if he’d let me have a drive of his cab. He agreed and got into the back with Chris. I drove the taxi down the street a little way before stopping to ask someone on the pavement for directions.
‘You won’t believe who I’ve got in the back of my cab,’ I said to this pedestrian. Of course, he leaned forward to have a look in the back of the cab.
‘It’s Chris Evans!’ I shouted.
The bloke stared hard into the cab. ‘Nah, it fucking isn’t,’ he said. ‘It’s a wind-up.’ And he just walked away.
The next evening we went out again in Chris’s chauffeur-driven car. Chris was in shorts and slippers and a T-shirt and I was wearing a dressing gown and nothing else.
We were driving around, drinking in the back seat and shouting at passers-by through the windows. As we went through Hampstead I recognised the pop star Noel Gallagher’s house. I told Chris I’d met him somewhere and had once been to his place for a few drinks.
‘If you know him so well,’ said Chris, ‘go and knock on his front door and ask him to come out to play.’
I was hardly out of the car before it drove off at speed. Chris had left me on my own to knock on Noel Gallagher’s front door in my dressing gown. I banged and banged and nobody answered. I was starting to get cold and Chris had totally disappeared.
Someone came out of a house two doors along and I stopped him and asked if I could come into his house for a bit to warm up. ‘Certainly not,’ he said.
‘I’m Paul Gascoigne,’ I explained. ‘You know, Gazza.’
‘Never heard of him,’ said the bloke, walking away.
There was a guy watching me from an upstairs window of a house across the road. I waved at him and tried to indicate in sign language that I wanted to come in for a cup of tea. I was miming pouring out a cup of tea from a teapot and sipping it. But the man just laughed and waved back, and didn’t come to his front door.
I was beginning to get worried. I was bloody cold now, and I had no money on me for a taxi.
Just as desperation set in, Chris cruised back into the street in his Bentley, pissing himself. I discovered later that the house from which the man had been watching me belonged to the actor Bob Hoskins. But I don’t know whether it was him or not.
I got a bollocking from Walter when I returned to Rangers. Someone had rung Sky TV about the pneumatic drill business and driving the bus and they’d sent a crew out to follow me. Some of the papers had found out as well.
I had so many great times with Chris and Danny, but it wasn’t just a matter of getting drunk. We didn’t really do that as much as people imagined. A lot of our dafter tricks were played at 11.30 in the morning, when we were bored, and hadn’t even thought of having a drink. Much of the time I just stayed in their houses, relaxing, lolling around.
It was all just a laugh, a game of daring each other to do mad things. And of course, when you’ve got money, and your face is well known, you can get away with a lot more than other people can.
Perhaps the stupidest thing I ever did was while I was at Rangers, during the Old Firm’s New Year league game at Parkhead on 2 January 1998. In the previous Celtic league game, I’d been sent off, and this time I was only sub. When I was warming up, all the Celtic fans were giving me a load of stick, most of them shouting variations on the ‘wife-beater’ theme. They wound me up so much that to annoy them in return, I pretended to play the flute again. Mad? It was suicidal. I was just so furious with them for shouting abuse at me that I did the only thing I could think of that would shut them up.
The first time I had done it, in that friendly at home to Steaua Bucharest when I’d first arrived, I honestly hadn’t appreciated its significance, as I’ve said. This time I did – and I had done it in the heartland of Celtic, in front of all their supporters. Worse still, the game was being shown live, nationwide, on Sky TV. So there was a hell of a stink. Celtic were raging, and so were Rangers. They fined me £20,000.
The next day I was in my car and a bloke drove up beside me, wound down his window, pulled out a knife, and said: ‘Gascoigne, I’m going to slit your fucking throat.’ I was shit-scared. Then death threats started arriving in the post.
One letter was from someone claiming to be writing on behalf of the IRA, and said they would get me. I was so terrified that I reported it to the police. They took it very seriously and tracked down the bloke who had written it. He was living in Dublin, and apparently wasn’t a proper member of the IRA. They couldn’t do anything about his threat to kill me as he was living in another country, but they said if he ever came over to Scotland or England, they could do him the moment he set foot on these shores for making death threats.
The police came to my house and showed me how to open letters and packages, in case there might be a letter bomb. I was taught how to look under my car before getting into it, in case someone had attached an explosive. I was worried, and sometimes scared, and then suddenly, after about six months, the police came to see me one day. They said they’d had a call from the bloke – and they were sure it was him – who now said I could forget it, they weren’t going to get me after all. So that was a relief.
I’ve got no interest in religion either way, and I’ve never taken sides. I’ve certainly never hated Celtic or their fans. Once, when I was off injured, I was in New York and went into a bar there to watch a Celtic v Rangers game wearing a Celtic scarf. Does that sound like someone who’s prejudiced? And of course my own father was born a Catholic, so I am half Catholic myself. But that’s not to say the flute-playing thing wasn’t really stupid. I wish I’d never done it.
At Christmas, I’d bought Chris Evans a special massage chair which cost me £5,000. For Danny Baker, I’d bought the biggest possible hamper from Harrods, at £3,500. Guess what they then bought me? A T-shirt that cost about a quid. It had a target on the front for the IRA to shoot at. Mean bastards. I spent a fortune on their presents. But it was a funny T-shirt all the same.
Shel had started divorce proceedings, but we spent that Christmas together, with all the kids. She also came to see me a couple of times, and turned up to a game to watch me play. It looked for a while as if we might get back together, but then, as ever, we fell out again.
Rangers’ season was starting to collapse. In the Champions League we had once again failed to get past the qualifying round. New rules meant we were able to go on into the UEFA Cup, but we were beaten there, home and away, by Strasbourg. So by the beginning of October 1997, we were out of Europe. We’d also been knocked out of the League Cup in the quarter-finals by Dundee United.
In February 1998, with quite a way still to go, Walter Smith told us he would be packing it in as manager at the end of the season. He was already a director of the club, so he was effectively kicking himself upstairs. We then found out that Dick Advocaat, the former coach of Holland, was the man who would be taking over.
Walter told me there had been interest from several clubs for me, including Crystal Palace. Then Middlesbrough came in with what Walter thought was a good offer, for me and for Rangers. He felt it was likely I wouldn’t be a part of Advocaat’s plans, so it seemed the right opportunity at the right time. Rangers’ officials had probably had enough of me anyway, after the wife-beating and now the flute incident.
When the deal was finally done, in March 1998, the Rangers chairman, David Murray, at first said I had to return the club Range Rover or pay them £24,000, which is what it was then worth. Then he suggested we could toss a coin for it. In the end, though, he said I could keep it.
The rest of the season turned out badly for R
angers, with Celtic winning the league and then Hearts beating them in the final of the Cup. But by the time all that happened, I had left Glasgow.
As I’ve said, I’ll always be grateful to Walter Smith for everything he did for me. I remember one Christmas time, I was on my own, having fallen out with Shel. Walter must have found out because he rang me up on Christmas morning and invited me round to his place for Christmas dinner with all his family. His wife just set another place for me. That was typical of Walter.
I left the club on good terms with everyone, officials, players and fans. My excellent and very fluent Italian had come in handy when Gattuso joined us and I was able to assist in translating things for him, and help him get to know his way around the club.
I also, on one occasion, tried to be a big help to one of Scotland’s better-known referees. In December 1995, when we were playing Hibs, and were coasting 2–0, Dougie Smith, the ref, happened to drop his yellow card from his pocket. I picked it up and pretended to book myself, holding it up in the air.
That seemed to go down well with the fans, so I then held it up over Mr Smith’s head, looking very severe and serious, indicating that I was now booking him for having dropped his yellow card. The crowd loved it, but he didn’t think it was quite so funny. He immediately booked me for real. Even the Hibs fans jeered him when he did that. And the Hibs players.
During those two full seasons with Rangers, we won so much. Looking back, from a playing point of view, they were some of my happiest times ever in football. But in my third season at Rangers, things weren’t so good, especially the last few months. I didn’t score as many goals. I wasn’t playing as well. Oh, for lots of reasons, mainly to do with Shel. What I’d done to her, what had happened, and all the rows and problems over the divorce. My head wasn’t right. I also got worried about the IRA and other things. So I was trying to escape from all my problems in drink.
Looking back, it was really at Rangers that my drinking became serious. I can see that now. And even at Spurs, going out on the piss with the lads, messing about, it hadn’t really been a problem, just the normal thing, the sort of thing lots of young lads, and young lasses, do on the occasional night out. In Italy, of course, there wasn’t a drink culture and for three months, sometimes six, I hardly got drunk at all. It was binge-eating rather than binge-drinking in Italy, when I was injured or not playing. But towards the end of my third season at Rangers, it all seemed to come together and get me down. My head seemed to be about to explode with all the things nagging me. I just wanted to forget everything, as quickly and as often as possible.
I never drank in the mornings, didn’t hide bottles of vodka in kitchen drawers the way alcoholics are supposed to. I never touched a drop till training was over for the day. Then at about six o’clock each evening, I would start drinking, carrying on till I passed out. Not on the two days before a game, which usually meant not on Thursday or Friday evenings. But it meant I got into the habit of getting drunk on five nights a week – Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
I drank mostly at home. I only went now and again to a pub, usually the Duck Bay near my lodge on Loch Lomond, which I returned to after Shel had left Scotland. I might start there with a few drinks, and then go home. It wasn’t really social drinking. I never went out much with the other Rangers lads. I mainly drank on my own. Jimmy would often be with me, but he wasn’t drinking much. It was just me. He didn’t try to stop me. He knew he couldn’t. He knew why I was doing it. I would drink two bottles of wine on my own, red or white, it didn’t matter which, then about nine or ten o’clock, I’d pass out. Jimmy would put me to bed. But I wouldn’t be able to sleep, so I’d take sleeping pills.
I didn’t realise at the time, but alcohol is a depressant. It might make you feel good for a while, get you out of yourself, but it doesn’t help in the long run. Drink can actually make you more depressed, so I’ve since been told. But at the time, it was all I wanted to do. Anything to stop my head going round and round.
It was also at Rangers that my pill-popping got worse. Because I couldn’t sleep, which has been a problem my whole life, I was on sleeping pills. This is when I discovered Zimovane, which seemed to be good at first, then I needed more and more to have any effect. So I went up from one to two to three a night and became addicted to them.
So, while I loved Rangers, and those first two years were probably about my best ever for football, the last few months were about the worst in my life personally. The worst up until then, anyway. So I was quite pleased to get away.
“If you read the papers, people think Gascoigne and I have a father-and-son relationship. Well, I’ve got two sons and I have never felt like hitting them, but I have certainly felt like smacking Gascoigne a couple of times.”
Walter Smith, his manager at Everton and Rangers, 2000
“It is almost as if he gets into scrapes in order to extort forgiveness from the people he has let down.”
Simon Barnes, The Times, 16 February 2000
21
BORO AND FAMILY AFFAIRS
I arrived at Middlesbrough in March 1998, just in time to get fitted for my Cup final suit. Good timing, eh? This was for the League Cup final, or the Coca-Cola Cup final as it was called that year, or that week. I do find it hard to keep up with all the name changes. Boro had beaten Liverpool in the semi-finals and were due to meet Chelsea at Wembley on 29 March.
Boro were lying in third position in the First Division when I turned out for my first league game for them. I had joined to help them get into the Premiership, and also because of Bryan Robson, their manager. It was strange to be calling him Gaffer after all those years of playing alongside him. I was also attracted by the thought of playing with Paul Merson, another friend from the England team, and Andy Townsend. The transfer fee was pretty good as well. Middlesbrough paid Rangers £3.45 million for me, which meant that Rangers got most of their money back. I was on a basic wage of £16,000 per week but if we did well and got promoted I was on course to make a million a year.
In my last three months at Rangers, I’d had ankle and groin problems and had only played one full game, so I was still recovering and getting fully fit again. Bryan Robson told me it was a perfect opportunity for me, having a new challenge, at a new club, to get back to my best form. I should then be able to secure my place in the England squad for the 1998 World Cup in France. When people asked him about my record off the pitch, he said he expected I would give him a bit of grief, but he was sure it would be worth it, which was good of him.
It was exciting going to Wembley again for a Cup final, my first since 1991 with Spurs, which we don’t talk about any more, but I felt a bit of a fraud being in the Boro squad. I hadn’t played any part in getting the lads there, and on the day I only came on as sub, for Ricard. Chelsea beat us 2–0 in extra time. I got a medal, as a member of the losing team, but I gave it away to Craig Hignett. He deserved it more than I did. He’d made all the games and yet hadn’t even been named as sub for the final.
My first league game for Boro was away to West Brom on 4 April. Their crowd gave me some abuse, of course, and it didn’t help when I fell over with my first touch of the ball, and then, with my second touch, gave the ball away. I came into it more later, but I didn’t do that much and we lost 2–1. Not a good start. Presumably some Boro supporters were wondering why they’d bought me.
After that, though, I played in six of the last seven league games of the season, missing one through injury. We won five of the last six and drew one, finishing runners-up in the league to Nottingham Forest. So Boro were back in the Premiership. I’d achieved what I’d set out to do: help Boro win promotion.
It was nice to be back in the north-east again after ten years away. Middlesbrough was very handy for Dunston, so I could see the family, and it was very easy for Jimmy to come and see me. I went back to my old school several times and gave them some kit and stuff.
I’d first returned there after the 1990 World Cup. I happ
ened to be in Gateshead, having a drink with some friends, and realised we were near my old school, Heathfield High. ‘Keep an eye on my pint, man,’ I said to my mates. ‘I’m just going out for a bit.’ I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. I went into my old school, found the old classrooms where I’d sat, and tracked down Mr Hepworth, still giving his geography lessons. I marched into his class and said, ‘Mr Hepworth. Remember me?’
‘Yes, I remember you, Gascoigne,’ he said.
‘And do you remember what you said to me?’
‘Yes, Gascoigne. And you were the one in a million who did make it.’
I made another unannounced visit after that, just to mess around and give the kids a bit of excitement. I walked along each corridor, sticking my face against the window of each classroom, making silly expressions till everyone in the class had seen me – except the teacher. Once I’d reduced the whole class to uproar, I moved on to the next classroom and did the same thing, till the whole school was in uproar. Then I went out and stood in the main playground and waved to the entire school, all watching me through their classroom windows.
After I moved to Boro I became friends with many of the staff, and used to pop in for a game of five-a-side football with the teachers.
When I first arrived at Middlesbrough, while a house was being found for me, I stayed in a hotel. One of the tabloids sent a reporter and photographer, posing as a real couple, to book into the same hotel and keep an eye on me. They were convinced I would be binge-drinking, shagging all the chambermaids, wrecking every bedroom, and they tried hard to get something on me. They got fuck all, and left after three weeks, empty-handed. I didn’t, of course, know they were there until they had gone. If I’d realised they were spying on me, I would have thumped them.
Gazza: My Story Page 19