by Sugar, Alan
The person who actually gave me the most grief was Jonathan Crystal. As I previously mentioned, Venables had this mental block whereby anything I said or did was in order to line my own pocket or disadvantage him in one way or another. Crystal would, out of blind devotion to Terry, raise these issues at board meetings, acting as Venables’ mouthpiece, aggravating situations, deliberately winding me up and engaging me in arguments. Crystal was so far up Terry’s arse it was sickening to see. In fact, on one of the occasions I met Terry’s wife, Toots, she made me laugh by telling Ann and me how Crystal would appear everywhere and drive her nuts sucking up to Terry. She said she had nightmares that Crystal would appear at the end of their bed.
It was clear, from some of the discussions we’d had, that Crystal didn’t know much about public company life from a corporate law stance, yet he would always say, ‘I’m a lawyer, I know these things.’ Actually, he knew sweet FA and I wouldn’t have used him to get me off a parking fine. Some of his tactics and ideas were outrageous.
On one occasion, Venables had agreed to enter Spurs into a tournament with a few foreign clubs, to be played at White Hart Lane. We would receive a fee for taking part in the tournament on one condition: the tournament had to be televised. Crystal told me the deal had been struck, but the problem he faced was finding a broadcaster. The opponents we were going to be playing weren’t top-notch teams such as Real Madrid or Barcelona, so there wasn’t much interest from ITV or the BBC. Crystal asked me to enquire whether Sky would like to transmit this tournament. I called the director of sport at Sky, but once he heard who the opponents were, he politely turned it down.
Crystal reiterated that unless we got this tournament broadcast by somebody, the whole deal would be off. He pointed out that it didn’t actually say in the contract that there had to be a fee from the broadcaster, merely that it had to be broadcast.
On that basis, we agreed that I would go back to Sky and ask them to do me a favour and broadcast the event for no fee. Even that turned out to be a difficult job. Sky explained that the amount of viewers they’d get wouldn’t warrant the cost of sending out cameras and crew and putting the event on the air. I pleaded with the director of sport and told him he’d be doing me a great favour if he did it for me, as a friend of the company, and finally they agreed.
The tournament went ahead and Sky broadcast the games, but then a week or so later, Venables called me up, shouting and screaming down the phone. ‘Why is it that Sky got the deal and didn’t pay a penny for it? Why are you helping out your friends?’
I was dumbfounded. ‘What are you talking about, Terry? Talk to Crystal – he’ll tell you everything that happened. No one wanted to take the bloody tournament and because of Crystal’s genius in drafting the contract, we were lumbered with having to get it shown on TV. The only people prepared to do it were Sky and at one point they were actually asking us for payment for sending out the camera crew.’ Venables was so thick, he couldn’t grasp what was going on. He had it in his head that, some way or another, me arranging this deal with Sky was lining my own pocket.
I was really frustrated and angry. I got hold of Crystal and asked him, ‘What the hell is going on? How dare Venables call me up and make such accusations?’ I reminded Crystal that he was completely responsible for this mess and told him to go and sort it out immediately.
A couple of days later, I got the pair of them in a room to have this out. To my utter amazement, Crystal said he’d never discussed broadcasting for no fee with me. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It showed me what an absolute liar and cheat Crystal was and how he’d say anything to remain in Venables’ good books.
From that moment on, I decided this arrangement with Venables was not going to work. It seemed the man loved to have an enemy. In the past, Venables had constantly harped on to me about how bad Irving Scholar was, how he’d messed up this and ruined that. It seemed that Venables was not happy unless he had a fight of some kind on his hands – a ‘them and us’ situation. His allies were people like Crystal, Hall and Brian Fugler, all boosting his ego, and it seemed, now that Scholar had gone, that I was the enemy he had to fend off.
To be fair to Ashby, he was always silent when these altercations were playing out. In hindsight, I believe that his silence was because he could see I was right, but as Venables’ right-hand man, he obviously found it embarrassing to contradict him. From time to time, Ashby would tell me, ‘Just ignore Crystal – he’s an idiot.’
I wasn’t prepared to take any more of this nonsense. I’d previously spoken to Margaret Mountford at Herbert Smith about the goings-on at the club and the things I wasn’t happy with and now I decided to call her and ask her to explain exactly what the legal position was if I wanted to dismiss Venables as chief executive.
At the time, I held 44 per cent of the shares in the club while Venables held about 27 per cent. The rest were held by people like Berry (who had about 8 per cent) and the fan base. There were hardly any institutional investors, as they had no interest whatsoever in football clubs at the time.
I explained to Margaret that I wanted to try to be fair and give Venables a clean way out of the situation – I’d offer to give him his £3m back and pay off the remainder of his outstanding contract. Together, we drafted a letter to Venables spelling out my reasons for asking him to resign and outlining my offer to pay him back all his money. There was a board meeting coming up in a few days and I was planning to give it to Venables after the meeting. But during the meeting, Crystal started to wind me up over some issue where, once again, he didn’t know what he was talking about. I ended up losing my temper with Crystal, almost to the stage of actually getting up and whacking him! He was such an annoying fart. Venables was smirking at my ranting and, I guess, was quite enjoying seeing Crystal wind me up. I was so fired up, I knew I had to get out, otherwise I would have definitely hit Crystal and maybe put him in hospital. So I stood up, opened my briefcase, drew out the letter and threw it at Venables, telling him he’d better read it and call me back later that day.
The letter obviously came as a shock to everybody. I’d been told by Margaret that technically the board of directors was capable of firing Venables and that if certain members of the board voted for it, it would be a straightforward transaction. During the course of the next week, many phone calls were made to try to resolve the situation. Venables knew I was serious, but arrogantly believed he would be able to outride this challenge of mine. I’d hoped it might dawn on him that his previous contemptuous treatment of me was wrong, but he had a power complex.
Sometimes I used Venables’ office at the club to discuss commercial or legal matters with visitors. On more than one occasion, he asked his secretary what I was doing in his office. He would then hide behind her as she popped in to say that Terry needed his office back for some important matters he had to deal with and would I please relocate my meeting somewhere else. There was nowhere else at the time – there weren’t any other offices, as everything was open plan. I recall once having to stand in the hospitality room with a senior barrister to finish a meeting. This was Terry’s pathetic attempt to exert his seniority.
I was told by Herbert Smith to call a board meeting where the item on the agenda would be the removal of Terry Venables as chief executive of the company. The date was set for Friday 14 May 1993. On the evening before, an event was taking place at one of the big hotels in London – the annual Football Writers’ Dinner. Venables and his associates leaked his imminent dismissal at the dinner and the next day the newspapers were full of‘Venables about to be sacked’ stories.
As we arrived for the board meeting, the forecourt of the club was packed with press, cameramen and fans, all screaming for my head. I was forewarned about this by Peter Barnes, the club secretary, who told me to get my driver to drop me at the back entrance of the stadium in the East Stand rather than attempt to come in by the main entrance.
In the week leading up to the meeting, Berry had made it plain to
me that his vote would be in my favour. With Colin Sandy and Berry voting with me (and Venables having to abstain), I believed the result would be a formality. To my surprise, Berry turned up at the meeting with Peter Leaver, a senior barrister, one-time club director and mad Tottenham fan. Berry told me Leaver was there as his legal adviser.
When the agenda to remove Venables from the company was read out, the board was asked to vote. Crystal and Igal Yawetz voted against removing Venables, while Colin Sandy and I voted for. Berry abstained. He said I didn’t need his vote, that in my capacity as chairman, I would have the casting vote, which was correct. But it showed me for the first time a new side of Berry. It seemed to me that, not knowing how this would pan out, he simply sat on the fence in order to keep his options open. Venables was officially fired there and then, but still maintained his director status. As soon as the decision was made, Venables got up and walked out.
After the meeting, Nick Hewer drove out through the baying mob at the main entrance relatively easily (as no one recognised him) and came round to the East Stand to pick me up and take me home. To the disappointment of the fans and thugs at the main gate, my driver, who had positioned my car inside the ground, drove out of the main gate alone – the mob could see there was no one in the car other than him, so he escaped relatively unscathed.
At 5 p.m. that Friday, I received a call on my mobile phone from David Gold, chief of Herbert Smith’s litigation department. Gold told me that Venables had gone to his lawyers and they had served an ex parte application to the court to have the decision overturned. This came as a big shock to Herbert Smith, and particularly Margaret Mountford, not to mention myself. A hearing was called for around 6 p.m. that night, giving us hardly any time to prepare our counter-arguments and engage a barrister.
The hearing took place in front of a judge who was completely out of her depth with regard to football matters. Venables’ lawyers put forward the argument that the club would be badly disadvantaged, that players would leave the club on the announcement of Venables’ dismissal. On top of that, they claimed there was a tournament the club had agreed to play in South Africa where Venables’ presence was a contractual requirement. All of this was a pack of lies. What made it worse was that these lies had been given credibility by being included in a statement by Brian Fugler, a solicitor, who had presumably sworn this on the basis of what he had been told. Venables employed the lawyers Kanter Jules, a small firm known to be difficult. Bombarded with all this nonsense, the judge reinstated Venables!
Margaret was very embarrassed over this situation and felt sorry that the thing had gone so badly wrong. The dismissal of Venables as chief executive should have been a formality in accordance with the Companies Act, but the unprecedented decision of this judge had completely thrown a spanner in the works. There was nothing we could do about it.
As we had a disaster on our hands, David Gold agreed that he and another litigator would come and visit me at my home on Sunday to start compiling evidence to put forward to appeal and overturn this judge’s decision. Meanwhile, Eric Hall got together a bunch of people, including a load of thugs and some players’ wives, to form a protest group outside my house. My driver slowly edged the car past them. I told him to just drive – they would get out of the way. When I got in that Friday night, Daniel told me that this time I really had caused World War Three. Never mind Bambi’s mum – I was the man who’d shot Bambi! The Adonis of football, God’s gift to the game, the chirpy chappy Venables was culled by the money-man Sugar.
Daniel told me, ‘Give it all up, Dad. Let Venables give you your money back and get out.’ Apart from the fact that Venables had no way of paying the £8m I’d injected into the club so far, I was adamant I was not going to be pushed out of this situation and was determined to fight the matter.
That Sunday, David Gold introduced me to Alan Watts, one of the younger litigators in the firm. Gold had chosen him as his credentials in this matter, apart from being a good litigator, were that he liked football and was a Liverpool supporter! At least it wasn’t Arsenal.
I explained to Gold and Watts that the judge had been lied to. It was obvious that players wouldn’t leave the club, as they were contracted to us – they couldn’t simply walk out. Anyone who knew anything about football would have known this.
Gold agreed that the judge didn’t understand this point and most probably thought the players were like any other group of workers, who could simply leave. Of course, if players did decide to walk out, they wouldn’t be able to play for another club unless they had Tottenham’s permission.
I also told Gold and Watts that this so-called South African tournament had been cancelled over a week earlier. I even showed them a memo from Peter Barnes to that effect, proving they’d lied to the court. And not only had they lied, but Fugler’s statement had misled the court.
Gold asked me if I knew how to contact Fugler. I found his phone number, called him and asked why he had done such an outrageous thing. Fugler started to waffle about how he’d been assured that Spurs were going to South Africa. The following Monday, Fugler sent a notification to the court to cover his arse, excusing himself and saying he’d made a mistake. Gold had coached me to tell Fugler a few home truths on how he was compromising his position as a lawyer and how I could report him to the Law Society. However, despite Fugler’s letter to the judge, the judgement was cast in concrete.
It took two weeks to get a new hearing in front of another judge. Throughout the course of that fortnight, I put together a witness statement, as did Colin Sandy. Included in this witness statement was every single thing that had happened to date concerning my involvement with Tottenham. I also disclosed to Herbert Smith the ‘Cloughie wants a bung’ incident and the McLintock arrangement. Herbert Smith wanted a copy of the McLintock invoice to add to the witness statement, but when Colin asked Tottenham’s accounts department for a copy of it, they said they had lost it. We kicked up merry hell until someone, who must have had a conscience, anonymously dropped it into Colin’s in-tray a day later.
Herbert Smith had employed the services of a brilliant barrister by the name of Philip Hislop. We met with him prior to the hearing and he told me that while I’d gone into great detail in my witness statement, most of it was irrelevant, as he would be arguing this matter purely on company law. All the issues about bungs and Venables’ other wrongdoings were actually a sideshow and he had no intention of presenting these to the judge. He was going to stick to the letter of the law as far as the Companies Act was concerned and he told me we had a 99 per cent chance of winning. As for the judge who had been hijacked a few Fridays ago, she was totally and absolutely wrong.
On arrival at the High Court in the Strand for the first day of the hearing, there were huge crowds standing outside, screaming my name, snarling abuse at me and calling me ‘Judas’. As we walked up the staircase inside the court building, crowds of fans were standing above, spitting on me and Ann, who’d decided to be there to support me, as the whole world had ganged up on me. As we entered the courtroom, we needed security to clear a pathway, as the fans’ abuse was increasing.
As soon as proceedings started, Venables’ lawyers, Kanter Jules, a firm made up of Jewish partners, stood up and declared they hadn’t had enough time to prepare for the case due to the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. They requested more time and, frustratingly, the judge granted it to them. Unbelievable! If they were so observant of Jewish law, they wouldn’t have been in court on Friday night two weeks earlier.
It would take another three weeks to get a hearing. Kanter Jules’s people were constantly making excuses and delaying matters, saying it wasn’t convenient for one particular partner or another. Eventually, however, we pinned them down and got to court. Once again, the street outside was packed with fans. Venables had employed a public relations company, who had probably printed the banners saying, ‘SUGAR OUT!’ that appeared everywhere.
Crystal had delayed putting his witness statement in
and, one day at White Hart Lane, I bumped into him and suggested that he was purposely holding up the court hearing. I also reminded him, half-jokingly, to make sure he didn’t put a pack of lies in the statement, bearing in mind he was a barrister. I mentioned this to David Gold in a casual conversation, at which point Gold explained to me that what I had done was tantamount to tampering with a witness. I couldn’t understand what he was talking about. He said that I wasn’t allowed to intimidate or interfere with witnesses and now he felt that he needed to write to Crystal and tell him that his client, namely me, had meant no wrong.
I protested to Gold that this was nonsense – such a letter would pour more oil on the fire. I told him it was just a throwaway remark on the stairs at Tottenham, but he insisted on writing this letter. As I expected, this opened up a whole new can of worms. It was manna from heaven for Crystal. He knew I’d meant nothing by what I’d said, but because Herbert Smith had gone to the trouble of writing to him, he sensed they were worried. Lawyers have no bloody common sense sometimes – they can’t see their actions will cause trouble, they can’t adapt and use a bit of shrewdness. They are trained robots who do things according to procedure! In hindsight, I was lucky I hadn’t whacked Crystal in the boardroom a few weeks earlier, as he’d have done me for GBH.
Crystal employed the services of a solicitor in Manchester to issue contempt of court proceedings against me on the basis of my trying to intimidate and tamper with a witness, namely him. Margaret told me that this was a very serious matter which, if proven true, could mean imprisonment. She said I would need to be represented by a separate set of barristers at this contempt of court hearing, which would have to take place before the main case could continue. This was the first time Margaret really worked with Nick Hewer and she told me, in a way only Margaret could, ‘Now look here, Alan, you keep that Nick fellow right out of this; he’s done nothing but cause you trouble, what with the privatisation media circus, and now he could land you right in it.’ Funny how things work out – they are the best of pals now.