Do You Know What?

by Andrew Flintoff

  I go into this room and the girl says, ‘Right, lie on the bed and put your knees up.’ She gets this pipe out and plugs it in, so to speak, and starts asking me how I feel. I reply, ‘Lovely, cracking, really nice.’ She turns the tap on and says, ‘Tell me when you can’t take any more and I’ll turn it off.’ I’m lying there thinking, ‘How much is acceptable? Should I be taking two litres? Ten litres?’ When my eyes feel like they’re swimming, I start shouting, ‘Enough! Enough!’

  She turns it off, pulls out this shaving mirror and says, ‘You can watch what comes out.’ So I start pushing it out and it feels like I’m pooing the bed, while she’s rubbing my tummy and chatting as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.

  As I’m watching this brown water running through the pipe, she says, ‘Are you a fast eater?’

  ‘Yes, I am, I love my food and chuck it down.’

  ‘You can tell. Did you have Sunday lunch this week?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, there’s a carrot, there’s a bit of beef…’

  I was dying inside. She filled me up and flushed me out again and let me go. But what do you say as a way of goodbye to a woman who has just stuck a pipe up your clacker and given you a running commentary of your Sunday lunch leaving your body? When I weighed myself, it hadn’t made a bit of difference.

  Another thing I’ll never have again is a massage. I gave up on massages after a tour of Pakistan. I went into this room, got stripped off, lay on the bed and this fella started slapping me on the forehead. I thought, ‘Ignore it, this is just what they do in these parts.’ But when he switched to my legs, things got a bit awkward. He made his way up my thighs and suddenly – Ding! – flicked my balls. I didn’t know whether to hit him or kiss him.

  One of the reasons I enjoy doing the podcast, probably more than anything else I do, is because I don’t have to worry about what I look like, so I can just rock up in a hoodie and a pair of shorts. Second, I just sit around in a studio with Robbie, who’s one of my best mates, and Matthew, who has also become a really good friend, and talk about whatever we fancy. The producers, Michael and Stanley, are nice to be around, which is more important to me than the money, and I don’t know what’s going to happen every time we do it. We don’t rehearse anything, and if we get into a subject that seems worth exploring, we’ll run with it. We do it on a Monday, talk until we reach a natural conclusion, and then the producers do what they do and release it the same day.

  Usually, the first thing that comes out of your mouth is truly what you believe, so while I do take it seriously in my own way, I don’t like to give it too much thought beforehand. It allows me to have a say on a wide variety of subjects, but not in any official capacity. It’s not the same as doing an interview with a journalist or saying something as a pundit. When we started doing it, the editor kept taking bits out, because it’s the BBC and they err on the side of caution. But my point was, if you’re telling a story and there’s something a bit risqué in it, it’s the risqué bit that’s usually the crux of the story. If you start taking the risqué bits out, you might as well not bother. So now we keep the risqué bits in, and it seems to have worked.

  I have to have a public persona, because I’m quite quiet, I don’t really speak. That wouldn’t work too well on A League of Their Own, just sitting there for half an hour, saying nothing, week after week. The only time I didn’t really have to put on a persona was in I’m a Celeb. I could tell that other people in the jungle were putting on an act because they thought that would make the public see them in a better light, but you can only keep that up for so long. After a period of time, you revert to type and become yourself again.

  Take work out of the equation and my life is quite simple. It’s not simple enough at the moment, but I’m getting there. I know a lot of people, but I’ve not got many proper mates. Even the mates I do have I never phone up just for a chat. I could quite easily become a recluse. That’s one of the reasons I like travelling on planes. I don’t like the queuing-up bit, but once you’re on it, you’ve got your food and movies and nobody can get to you. That’s also why we’ve moved to where we have, a small town in Cheshire. I’ll walk to the gym, potter around the market, see my mates back in Preston every now and again, and that’s about it. The rest of my time is spent with the family.

  I don’t buy a newspaper and don’t really watch the news. I used to watch Corrie all the time, grew up on it, but it’s gone a bit daft, people are dying every week. I watch Take Me Out with the kids on a Saturday night – ‘No lighty, no likey’ – it should be rubbish but it’s brilliant. I tried explaining it to Matthew Syed once and it was like teaching early man about the concept of the wheel. I watch a bit of cricket, but mainly box sets, although I’m a bit over Game of Thrones. The first series was good, mainly because of Sean Bean. You know where you are with Sean Bean – the North! Bean won’t put on an accent for anyone: this is him, this is how he speaks, live with it. The rest of it, all those dragons and fantasy stuff, is a bit fancy for me. I watch other stuff, like Breaking Bad, and don’t know if I enjoy them or not. If you don’t get me in the first ten minutes, I’m done. But if I get past those first ten minutes and get sucked in, it becomes something I’ve got to do, like a mission. If I start something, I have to finish it, whether it’s a box set or a giant bag of Doritos.

  My attention span is bad and, although it sounds terrible, people bore me. I’m better with animals and kids. I can’t do inane chat. Dinner parties – what’s the point? It’s just people talking for the sake of talking, because they happen to be sat around a table. I’m exaggerating. But only slightly.

  People have holiday friends, but I don’t understand the point of them. If they’re that much fun, why don’t you see them all the time, instead of once a year in Tenerife? ‘Mick and Sue are going to back to Tenerife this summer, shall we?’ No! I go on holiday because I don’t want to see my friends for a week, I don’t want to pick up any new ones. Sometimes I wonder how I make any friends in the first place.

  Certain social situations kill me. I can’t stand weddings, because you end up being trapped on a table with people I don’t know. They think it’s genius to make the seating plan boy-girl, boy-girl, but why would I want to sit next to some strange woman? Sometimes I’ll turn up early and move the names around, so that I’m sitting next to someone I already know. It’s not just the bride and groom’s day, it’s my day as well! I’ve made the effort to come, taken time off work, paid for flights and a hotel, and now you want me to sit next to a stranger? That’s not going to happen.

  And you want a present! Wedding lists are the cheekiest things I’ve seen in my life. I understood it back in the day, when people were moving in together and genuinely needed pots and pans and cutlery. But nowadays, people have holiday vouchers. I’m not paying for you to go on holiday! If you want to go on holiday, go on holiday, you earn £100 grand a year!

  I might have a few mates round for the boxing, get a curry in, which I enjoy, but I like my house to be for me. It’s my castle, my domain. I can’t have it when people stay over, and I don’t like staying over at other people’s houses. Why would I want to stay in another person’s house? It’s awkward, I’d sooner stay in a hotel. There’s too much pressure to do the right thing in another person’s house. You’ve got to ask to have a drink or get something out of the fridge. I don’t need the aggravation, I’d sooner phone room service.

  And whoever invented the downstairs loo needs shooting. Taking a dump is one of the most natural things you can do, but it’s fraught with danger, especially when the downstairs toilet is just off the lounge. You’ll be in there, running the taps, coughing, anything to cover up the sound of you having this massive dump, and the whole time you’re worrying about the smell, whether you’ll be able to get rid of it and whether it will follow you out. Toilets on aeroplanes are even worse, because you’re taking a dump about two feet away from people preparing food or eating their tea, and when you open the door
, the smell trails out after you like a creeping fog.

  The whole concept of toilet seats is wrong. You wander into a service station toilet, pull your pants and trousers down, rest your cheeks on a seat that someone else’s sweaty arse was resting on just seconds earlier, unleash everything you’ve got, wipe your arse and pull your pants and trousers back on. Seconds later, someone else goes in and does exactly the same thing. Repeat and repeat. I’d rather just do it in a hole in the ground, at least then I wouldn’t have to deal with someone winking at me as they come out of the trap, as if to say, ‘That might be the best dump I’ve ever done – follow that…’

  Things that other people think are brilliant, I don’t. Getting a backstage pass to meet someone famous at a festival doesn’t excite me in the slightest. People would kill to play football at Old Trafford, but I’m honestly not bothered. I don’t know whether it’s my northern upbringing, but I’ve still got an idea of what things should cost and won’t pay more than that, whether it’s a pair of trainers or a T-shirt. I buy some things and feel really guilty. If I spent a fortune on a pair of jeans, I think I’d be scared to wear them. I was happy with my free chinos from Reiss, and when my missus shrank them, I was gutted. I even get excited when I see a tub of half-price Haagen-Dazs ice cream in a petrol garage. I’ll be clutching it with a big grin on my face, like a metal detectorist who’s just unearthed an ancient artefact.

  I like cycling and have a few bikes in the garage, but I’ve probably done about 5,000 miles on my old bike from Halfords. When I was in Australia, someone gave me this fancy bike with deep-set wheels and electric gears, but on the couple of occasions I’ve taken it out, I’ve felt like a proper bellend. People say, ‘Oh, but this bike is lighter.’ I’m 16 stone, for God’s sake! As if a bike that’s two pounds lighter is going to make any difference to how I cycle. I could put a load of bricks on my back and it wouldn’t make much difference. And anyway, I go out on my bike for training, so I don’t want it to be easy, I want it to be hard!

  I’ll admit to being a bit of a contradiction, because while I’m not really into material things, I do like my cars. I’ve only driven the Lamborghini three times since I bought it. It’s a slightly older one, an investment, and I look at it and think, ‘That’s a nice car.’ But, let’s be honest: a car only makes you happy for about ten minutes. You drive a Lamborghini a couple of times and it just becomes a car, like any other car, except with an annoyingly loud engine.

  The Lambo is a complete nightmare. I have to put two pieces of wood on my drive to get it out, because it’s too steep. When I get in it, my head sticks out the top, so I look like one of the Ant Hill Mob from Wacky Races, or High-tower from Police Academy. I’m constantly on the lookout for potholes, and I’m paranoid about kerbing it. When I try to use the indicator, it gets stuck on my knee. I can’t see the satnav because it’s hidden behind my legs. I had to get my hair cut short because my fringe kept getting squashed. The seats are carbon, so my arse gets wedged in and I need a tin opener to get out. When I pull up anywhere, I look like a total knobhead. I have to press this button, move the door up with my elbow, and as I’m climbing out, I look like a giraffe having a drink. If I took it to the supermarket, I could probably fit a small bottle of milk and a loaf of bread in the boot, which is at the front of the car and took me about three weeks to work out how to open. I only bought it because Robbie Savage kept telling me how great it was. Then he started hammering me, for not being a man of the people. It’s the best and worst thing I’ve ever bought.

  Grand gestures and big gifts and words are wasted on me. When I saw Victoria Falls, I thought, ‘That’s nice, a big waterfall. What next?’ When I saw the Taj Mahal, I thought, ‘Wow, that is amazing.’ But the excitement wore off quickly. After looking at it for five minutes, I thought, ‘What next?’ But I’ll travel on the Tube in London, get off at the right stop and want to high-five someone. Someone will give me the smallest of presents, or one of my kids will say something, and it will make me so happy. For the rest of the day I’ll be thinking, ‘That was amazing.’ I find simple things so much more powerful.

  I’ve been so fortunate to travel the world, do all sorts of weird and wonderful things, stay in the best hotels and eat in the best restaurants. And I enjoy eating in nice restaurants. But I’m more comfortable with what I grew up with. I had a roast at a Toby Carvery recently – four meats, a mountain of veg, a bucket of gravy – and it was better than any posh restaurant I’ve ever eaten in. But when I tweeted a picture of it, there were food snobs slagging it off, saying how unsophisticated I was, eating at a Toby Carvery.

  Fish fingers, chips and beans with the family is the best meal in the world. And some of the best times I have are when we’re all sat around together, cuddled up on the couch, watching something on TV, with everyone laughing. That’s better than playing for England. I look around, not at the stuff in the house, but at my family, and think, ‘You know what, you’ve done all right.’

  When I was younger, I thought things like fast cars would make me happy and that success was measured by how much you earned and how big your house was. That’s what society leads us to believe. But I worked out pretty early that money doesn’t buy you happiness. My first wage with Lancashire was £2,500 a year and I thought I was minted. By my late teens I was earning decent money, so I bought a house and a couple of cars, so I could take my mates out. I wanted them to be happy, but I wasn’t happy.

  I wasn’t very good with money, didn’t care how much I spent on a night out and didn’t really take the taxman into account. So I ended up losing it all. I sold the house and the cars and was on the verge of bankruptcy until my agent at the time, Chubby Chandler, paid my tax bill. I still had nothing, so I moved back with my mum and dad and got myself back on my feet. And suddenly I was happy again. Remember what I was saying earlier about feeling content in uncomfortable situations? It makes me feel alive.

  I know people who are so wealthy it’s ridiculous, but they’re not happy, because someone else has three quid more than them, is going on a better holiday or driving a faster car. It’s all about social climbing and competition, peering over the garden fence and getting irritated that your neighbour’s garden is bigger than yours. I played with people like that and know people now in the celebrity world who will never be happy because they suspect someone else is doing better. I find it difficult to understand, because I want all my mates to crack it and be happy doing what they’re doing.

  Being a nice person and comfortable in yourself are the two most important things in life. Otherwise, what’s the point? When your head hits the pillow at night or you look in the mirror in the morning, what else have you got if you’re not decent and content? If you had asked me ten years ago, ‘What would you like to change about yourself?’, my reply would have lasted about ten minutes. But now I’m happier, more relaxed than I’ve ever been. I’ve accepted who I am. Or, perhaps more accurately, I’ve resigned myself to being me.

  CHAPTER 14

  A BEE IN ME BONNET

  Things that get my goat

  Just as I can’t stand people kissing arse, I can’t handle rudeness, it makes my blood boil. Dishonesty really gets me as well. If somebody stitches me up, they’re done, it’s non-negotiable. Through the years, I’ve had plenty of people use me to climb the social ladder. People I thought were friends have used me and then dropped me. I won’t name them, but I hope they get found out.

  I’ve also been betrayed by teammates, coaches and financial advisors. Sportspeople are easy prey, quite naive in a lot of ways. When I retired from cricket at 31, I’d never paid any bills, that was all done for me. I was a sucker, used to lend money to friends willy-nilly and throw myself into things. My money was invested for me, a lot of it in shit. There was a flat in Turnberry I didn’t even know I owned. I was involved in schemes for this, that and the other, none of which I had any knowledge of.

  These financial advisors come to your wedding and your children’s christenings
and are meant to be your mates. Where I live now, I see all these people – businessmen, estate agents, women – trying to get money out of footballers, offering once-in-a-lifetime ‘opportunities’. They tap into them and try to bleed them dry. That’s why footballers are so guarded, don’t want to speak to the public or the press, in case they give anything away. It’s only when I retired that I started unravelling all the mistakes that had been made on my behalf, and now I’m always looking for catches and ulterior motives.

  I had an uneasy relationship with the press when I was playing. I hated being interviewed. I found it pointless, because you could never say what you really wanted to say. The truth rarely seemed like the best option. The press liaison officer would tell you what the journalists were going to ask you and provide you with the correct answers and what not to say. But looking back, I wish I’d just ignored them and been more honest. If you give an honest opinion, it can’t be wrong. If you played rubbish, say you played rubbish.

  I’m fed up with sportspeople taking the positives out of everything. If you got hammered on the field, one person scoring a few runs or taking a couple of wickets aren’t positives, because it’s a team game and you were well beaten. That’s the bottom line. I did it myself, because I was told to, and I hated myself for it. When I was captain and we got beaten – again – I just wanted to say, ‘You know what? We were absolutely rubbish.’ But I had to drag the positives out of it, even though there were none. Now, I listen to them on the telly, talking about taking the positives from a 4–0 defeat in Australia, and I tear my hair out. Let them go a little bit. Just say something real. Be honest.