‘You’ve got to, otherwise you’ll upset the others.’
I wasn’t really worried about drinking the blood, I was worried about where their hands had all been. Put it this way, I couldn’t see any rolls of Andrex, and there was no sign of any antiseptic soap. So I was drinking this blood, smacking my lips as if I was absolutely loving it, even though it was disgusting, and all the time thinking, ‘I cannot wait to tell people back home about this…’
We carried on walking for a couple of days. There were Masai running past us the whole time, and we bumped into one of Thomas’s mates. This fella looked confused and said to Thomas, ‘Is he skint?’
‘I don’t think so. Why?’
‘So why is he walking in this heat? Tell him to hire a car.’
We arrived at this boma, which is a little group of houses with an animal pen in the middle. We got inside this hut, and it was pitch black. They gave me a bowl of ugali, which is like a rice porridge that you eat with your hands, and as I was eating it, this woman came out of nowhere and sat next to Thomas. I was looking at Thomas as if to say, ‘You all right there, mate?’ And he was looking at me with this smile on his face, as if to say, ‘She’s for you.’ So I told him that he’d have to tell her that nothing is going to happen, romance-wise.
Later, I was next to the fire, trying to sleep, and there was all this smoke going in my face. Thomas was snoring next to me, so I went outside and slept with the dogs. When I woke up in the morning, I had conjunctivitis and my eyes were in agony. We set off walking again, and by the following night, word had got round that there was a white man walking. We arrived at this village, were met by these tribal elders who had laid on this meat feast. Alas, it wasn’t a meat feast from Pizza Hut (I can only imagine the Serengeti branch had recently closed), it was just piles and piles of unidentifiable meat and this horrible soup.
I was sat there with all these fellas in their robes, trying to get down this soup that’s making me feel sick, and suddenly they all decided to go to bed. I said, ‘What, here? Just on the ground?’ So I was lying on the dirt, with a blanket over me, and it suddenly dawned on me that Thomas was spooning me. I knew Thomas quite well by this point, so I just gave him a nudge, told him to get off and went back to sleep. When I opened my eyes, I saw a cat walking towards me and a spear over my shoulder. It was Thomas’s mate, and he was whispering in my ear to stay still. I thought it was a leopard – I wanted it to be a leopard – but it turned out it was just a civet, which is about the size of a domestic cat, and Thomas’s mate was being dramatic.
The next day, we came across this village full of kids. I had my iPad with me, which had Tetris and this card game on it. The kids got properly into it and were challenging my high score in no time. When they saw themselves on my camera, they thought I’d captured their spirits. And I couldn’t help thinking, ‘My God, I think I’ve destroyed the Masai culture in a few hours…’
In Australia, I spent ten days in the bush with this Aborigine bloke, his missus and their kid. He took us crocodile hunting, and our boat nearly got flipped over. He threw a spear at the crocodile and told me to jump in and drag him out of the water. I declined. This fella’s heart wasn’t really in it. The first night we were there, we stayed in a lodge in the middle of Arnhem Land, which we had to get special permission to be in. The plan was to roam from the lodge and camp out in the bush, but this fella just returned to the lodge every night so he could have a few drinks and sleep in a proper bed.
One night, me and Mungo, my cameraman-director, slept in a cave on our own. Another night, we slept next to a river. It was awful. The only time our guide spoke was when he asked for a gun to shoot some fruit bats, which he then served up for dinner.
In Borneo, we searched for pygmy elephants in the jungle. The big problem was, I’m pretty sure our guide, this fella called Eric, was an absolute chancer. His story was that he’d rescued a baby elephant from a river and returned it to his mum, and the herd was eternally grateful. As we were walking, Eric kept saying, ‘We will find them, because they know me, they like me and never forget.’ When we finally tracked them down, they charged us. I was thinking, ‘Eric, I thought you were meant to be good pals with this lot?’
When I went to Botswana, I filmed it myself. I flew in, took another aeroplane five hours into the bush, spent another hour in a helicopter and was finally dropped off at the camp. I was taught survival techniques for three days, then got dumped somewhere else, with a list of coordinates in my backpack. I didn’t really listen to the survival lessons, which was a bit daft, because all I had to live off for a week was a cup of rice. I was armed with a machete and an air horn, but my biggest friends were a big bag of tobacco and some Rizlas. If I wasn’t going to eat, I’d smoke every plant I could instead.
First night, I ate all the rice. I was meant to boil my water, but it took too long, so I drank it straight from the river. Second night, I was going to get rid of my tent and sleep rough, but it started bucketing down. I could hear hyenas and lions and all sorts, and the hyenas kept getting closer, so every second day I had to move. But I didn’t follow the coordinates, so didn’t know where I was.
Because I love animals, I pitched my tent by a watering hole. Nothing turned up, I got a bit bored, so I went and climbed some trees. From up there, I could see zebras and giraffes and, off in the distance, elephants. It was only when I returned to civilisation that I was told that someone had been tracking me and I’d had a close encounter with a lion. The tracker said to me, ‘You did well there, climbing that tree when the lion walked behind you.’ I said, ‘I didn’t see any lions, I was just climbing trees…’ Up until then, this tracker must have thought I was the lovechild of a Masai warrior and David Attenborough.
While I was walking towards these elephants, I stepped on a termite mound. I was filming this herd while all these termites were biting my legs, when an elephant appeared from behind a tree, about 20 feet away. When it started flapping its ears, waving its trunk about and making these weird noises, I thought it was trying to shoo away flies. But later on, the tracker said, ‘Well done on reading that elephant.’ I thought, ‘Mate, I had no idea, I thought he was annoyed because he had a swarm of flies buzzing around his head.’
The penultimate night, I could feel the atmosphere change. The insects were making a racket, the animals were shouting and screaming, and I suddenly heard these booming sounds, which I realised was lions approaching. I’d been told that if I built a massive fire, the lions wouldn’t come near me. So I built this fire, set two cameras up facing in opposite directions, got in my tent and settled in for the night. When I watched the footage back, there were lions prowling in front of the cameras. Imagine the headlines: ‘Flintoff Eaten by Lions’. Mind you, it’s better than ‘Hard, Fast and Short of a Length’.
When I get home from being on one of these adventures, I’ll drop things into the conversation – ‘There was a lion outside my tent’ – and Rachael will say something like, ‘Oh, nice. Cup of tea?’ What does she think of my life? Probably not much, but it’s better that way, it keeps you grounded.
The conversations I have with my mum and dad are weird. My mum will say, ‘What you been up to?’
‘Me and Jamie were performing in cabaret at the Lido in Paris.’
‘Oh, nice. What have you got on next?’
‘Me and Jamie are taking penalties in the San Siro in Milan.’
‘Oh, nice…’
I’d like to share the experiences I’ve had with my friends and family but I’m scared of sounding like a dick. It sounds like I’m bragging, but it’s just my life, weird as it is.
CHAPTER 20
STRIKING A BALANCE
Family comes first
There have been times when I haven’t got my work–life balance right, especially recently. But I’m not the only one. Most people don’t have a choice, they just work as hard as they can to provide for their families. For them, it’s not about buying luxuries or going on extravagant holi
days, it’s about putting food on the table and paying for gas, electricity and the mortgage. They wish they could watch their kids play football on a Saturday morning or pick them up from school instead of going to work, but I’m more fortunate than that, because I have more choice.
In the last year or so, I’ve taken far too much work on, stuff I don’t really need to do. And now I’m entering middle age, I can tell when I’m working too hard, because I get tired like I never used to. It’s the fear of missing out on something, of not taking a job that might lead to another one, or not meeting someone who might enable me to do something I’d really like to do. It’s taken me a while to understand that I’d sooner miss out on the odd job than miss out on what my kids are doing. My kids might say I still don’t understand it completely. But the plan was always to get myself into a position where I can pick and choose a little bit more, which will hopefully happen soon.
I knew this passage would be challenging, that I’d chuck myself into loads of things, some of it would hit the spot and some of it wouldn’t. There are times when I think, ‘I could do without this at the moment’, especially when I’m chasing my tail here, there and everywhere. Ironically, because I take on too much, I end up saying no to everyone. I swerve it for a day, another day passes, and then I think, ‘Hmmm, is it too late to reply now?’ The worst is when someone sends you a message on WhatsApp and they can see when you’ve read it from the blue tick. Why would anyone invent something like that? And then people will get pissed off when you turn the notifications off. It bothers me that I can’t physically do what everyone wants me to do. But in the end, I hope I’ll have a clearer idea of what direction I want to go in.
It’s been a steep learning curve, especially from a presenting and acting point of view. I’ve got some good commercial deals, done some good TV, but I’ve also done some turkeys. It’s hard when you’re doing something you know is crap, and there are a few shows I’ve done that I look back on and cringe a bit.
I’ve sold things in the past and thought, ‘Why would anyone want this?’ I sold petrol once, for a 50p weekly reduction. I was in the back of a car, explaining to this journalist why it was such a special deal, thinking, ‘There must be more to life than this…’ I speak at the odd corporate do, but I’ve got a price, because I did one a few years ago which was absolutely awful, one of the worst experiences of my life.
I’d just kicked off a stand-up tour and the opening night in Preston had gone great. It was a home crowd and I killed it. This corporate do was at Lord’s, only about 70 people, and I was thinking, ‘This will be a piece of piss, they’re obviously cricket people, why else would they be at Lord’s?’ The plan was to shorten the routine I’d done the night before but, as a wise man once said, no plan survives first contact with the enemy.
Before I got changed, I had a bath in the away dressing room, and while there, a tour group came through and started taking photos. I thought, ‘Perfect, I’ll open up with that, embellish it a bit, crack on.’ But it turned out the do was for a manufacturing company, and I quickly realised there was absolutely no crossover between their worlds and mine. I did the story about the bath, not a murmur. I hit them with one of my bankers early, not a peep. There was a function next door in the Long Room, and there were all these ex-players standing at the window making faces at me, knowing I was dying on my feet. I could feel sweat running down my back, soaking my shirt, and because I was now panicking about sweating, I was sweating even more.
I tried more funny, didn’t work. I tried sincere, didn’t work. I tried factual, didn’t work either. Literally, no one was interested. I opened it up to the floor for questions, not one. All they were here for was the free food and drink, I was just an inconvenience for half an hour. I vowed never to do another corporate do until someone made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. To borrow an expression from Jamie Redknapp, who probably borrowed it from his dad, just grin and bank it.
There is a danger of being overexposed, but I’ve got my team around me looking out for that. That’s another reason you’ve got to keep reinventing yourself, because people get bored of you. And when that happens, you’ve got to disappear for a bit or go off and do something different. I’m living on a crest of a wave at the minute, doing all these things and getting away with them. I feel lucky doing the TV and I’m pleased that most of it goes well and gives me and my family a nice life, which is the main thing. But it will come to an end, there will be a time when I get found out. I don’t know when that’s going to be, but I’ll get the message that people have had enough of me and withdraw gracefully. I’ll get over it, probably have a laugh about the fact I got away with it for so long. I’ve retired once from something I loved doing, so I’m not worried about retiring from something I never even dreamed of doing.
I turned 40 in 2017 and it didn’t bother me. People keep saying to me, ‘Are you having a mid-life crisis?’ I’m not, but it still sounds weird when I tell people how old I am. I don’t understand how it’s happened. I look in the mirror sometimes and think, ‘How have I got here? How have I already had a career?’ It’s strange to think that I’m halfway through my life and I’ve already done what I really wanted to do, which was to play cricket for Lancashire and England. I remember looking at my dad when he was 40 and thinking, ‘Jesus, he’s ancient.’ That’s weird, because I don’t think I’ve lost my youth, and when I look in the mirror, I think I’ll always look like I do.
I stand next to people my own age and feel like a child. I’ll be milling about at the school gates and feel more like the kids than the parents. I like feeling like that. I’ll get a reality check every now and again, when my head is willing and my body isn’t. I’ll go to the gym, my back will be killing me and I’ll walk out stiff, as if I’ve got a piano on my back. My missus will ask if I’m all right and I’ll sound like an old martyr – ‘I’m fine! I’m fine!’ – and I really am. There’s no hiding from the fact my knees and ankles have gone, but I’ll plough on regardless, won’t give in. Maybe when I’m 50 things will be different, but you’ll not find me sat in front of a fire with a rug over my legs any time soon.
I look at my daughter and think, ‘How are you my kid? How did you get that big? You’re more like my mate than a child.’ But my kids are only just starting out on their lives, and I want them to have every opportunity to realise their ambitions. If that means me missing out on something, that’s just the way it will have to be. I recently took my boys to the nets at Old Trafford and I loved those two hours more than any job I could do. I take them swimming, to the gym. I watch my daughter play netball, and afterwards I’ll get a cuddle, some love and affection. Or we might just spend some time in the car together and have a nice chat. That small thing is better than anything I do for a living.
There’s a quote I like: ‘Some people are so poor, all they have is money.’ Never a truer word was spoken. I’ve got what I need in terms of material wealth, which I am lucky and grateful for, and now I want to spend more time with my kids. When you’re a professional sportsperson, there are lots of times when you put your family second. I didn’t consider myself a selfish cricketer, but I was selfish about my career. When I took my cap or helmet off and saw the three lions, I might feel a pang of pride, and obviously it’s great to represent your country at anything. But when I was batting or bowling, I never thought I was doing it for England. I never played cricket for my country, my family, the crowd or anyone else, I was doing it for myself. I scored runs because I liked scoring runs. And when I failed, I felt embarrassed, rather than feeling that I’d let anybody down.
I loved the feeling of winning and hated the feeling of losing. I’ll watch the Olympics, see people standing on the podium with a silver medal around their neck and a big smile on their face and think, ‘How can anyone lose and be happy?’ I remember watching the diver Tom Daley winning bronze at the 2012 Olympics, and everyone was going mad and jumping in the pool. I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t see the Chinese lad who won
the silver celebrating, he was probably in the shower crying. Sport is beautiful for so many reasons, but when you get to the highest level it’s all about winning.
I don’t understand people – sportspeople, businesspeople, whatever line of work they’re in – entering into something and not wanting to be the best at it. I don’t understand how a cricketer or a footballer can be happy being a squad player. Either it’s not for you or you’re not trying hard enough. In a way, I’m jealous of jobbing county cricketers – if they’re happy with their lot, good luck to them. I just don’t get how they can be. I had a go at boxing but quickly realised I was never going to be a world champion. So I wasn’t going to waste any more time with it. I don’t understand why people hang in there, doing things they’re not going to be the best at.
When I was 11 years old, I was playing chess for Lancashire against Staffordshire, and they had this kid who wore a duffel coat and was the best player ever to walk the earth. I was basically put up against him as a sacrificial lamb, but he made this move and forgot to press his clock. The correct thing would have been to say, ‘Mate, you’ve not pressed your clock.’ But I knew I had no chance of beating him the conventional way, so I sat there, staring at the board and scratching my head. Forty minutes went by, the little flag on his clock dropped, and he started bellowing and crying. I got hauled up in front of the chess federation for unsportsmanlike behaviour, but when we left the place, I was high-fiving my teammates because we’d won. Nowadays I shy away from competition, because it brings out the worst in me.
Because cricket seemed so important, I sometimes took the simple pleasures for granted, or forgot about them completely. There were times, as terrible as it sounds, that playing for Lancashire and England became this blasé thing, and it should never be that way. I also got caught up in myself at times, especially after the 2005 Ashes. I got carried away, surrounded myself with the wrong people and became a bit narcissistic.
Do You Know What? Page 17