When I was trying to build a new career in broadcasting, doing some summarising for Five Live and presenting a few shows of my own in the Midlands, it gave me intense satisfaction, a real buzz that was as good as the buzz I got from football. But, even before they dropped me like a hot potato when The Sun revealed I was involved in dogging activities, I still felt obstacles were put in my way because of that terrible night in Paris that had happened six years previously. The truth is, some people still remember it as if it was yesterday.
I’m not complaining about the criticism I got at the time. Even if it was all a bit bewildering, even if it felt as if I was about to be ripped to pieces by a lynch mob, I accept that what I did was an appallingly stupid, misguided and awful thing. I had built myself into a state about various things surrounding our relationship. I was jealous. I was deeply in love with her. But those are not excuses. They are just meant as statements of fact.
I realised how hard the struggle to rebuild my reputation was going to be one Saturday night before the 2002 World Cup when I was doing the 606 phone-in show with the radio commentator Alan Green on Five Live. We had got to the last few minutes of the programme when a punter rang in and said he thought I should be in Sven-Goran Eriksson’s World Cup squad. England were due to face Sweden, Argentina and Nigeria in the group phase but this was obviously a set-up because I had retired by then. Anyway, like an idiot I gave the guy his cue and asked him why he thought that. ‘Because you’re good at beating Swedes,’ he said. I was embarrassed. In fact, I was mortified. Greenie got rid of the guy straight away but it was awkward. Afterwards, the producers said not to worry about it and I did my best to put it out of my mind.
I was due to do a third consecutive 606 the following Saturday, too, but some time in the middle of the week, I got a call from Peter Salmon, the BBC’s Head of Sport. He said there had been a change of plan. They weren’t going to give me the show because there was no time delay and they didn’t want to risk any more dodgy calls.
I was desperately, desperately disappointed. And I was angry. I just felt so insulted. I was doing the job well, but because this thing reared its head they just caved in and took me off the air. I thought that was the end of it. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to broadcast. I thought if people were going to knock me at every opportunity, what was the point. I thought that if I wasn’t even going to be allowed to get past ‘Go’, what was I going to do?
For a while, I had tried to be whiter than white. When I was summarising for the BBC, I made sure I got to the game two hours early. I behaved like Mary Poppins, basically, which didn’t give me too much scope for having a bad day or coming down with the flu or something like that. I was professionalism personified, but even before the dogging scandal I was still blackballed by the BBC governors for a celebrity Come Dancing programme they were putting on. The programme-makers wanted me but the people higher up put a veto on me. They binned me and chose Martin Offiah, the former rugby-league player, in my place.
I know I did wrong that night in Paris, but sometimes the punishments that I am still suffering seem out of all proportion. Look at people like Johnny Vaughan and Leslie Grantham who have been rehabilitated after crimes they committed many, many years ago. My crime was to hit a woman, a woman who happens to be a very popular and attractive television personality. It was wrong and I will regret it bitterly until the day I die. But I didn’t put anyone in hospital. I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t run somebody over when I was drunk behind the wheel. And yet, sometimes it feels that some people treat me as if I had.
The fresh bout of depression the 606 incident plunged me into led me to the brink of suicide. I had lost the joy I used to get from football long before that, and from the time I joined Liverpool right through to when I went into the Priory and beyond, it felt like I was having to endure on a weekly basis the kind of crises most people only have to deal with once or twice in their lives.
Perhaps that sounds self-pitying. Maybe it is. But it felt like I was having to put up with a lot. The media impinging on my private life. All the shit that went with that. And I knew I was barely dealing with it. I knew I was barely keeping a lid on everything. I had to do something about it or I knew I wouldn’t see 40. Ending it all was starting to seem increasingly tempting. But I also thought about all the things that would be a waste if I ended up topping myself.
I thought about my son, Tom, my child from a relationship with a Cannock girl called Michelle Green. Tom was born in 1996 while I was away with England at Burnham Beeches. You want to know how I met Michelle? I saw her washing her car in the driveway of her parents’ home. I was driving past but I stopped my car, wound down the window and asked her out. We only had a brief relationship, but she got pregnant and we had Tom.
The relationship with Michelle hasn’t exactly been plain sailing either. I suppose with my attitude towards fidelity, plain sailing is never really going to be too high on the agenda. I had a blazing row with her about access to Tom just before Christmas in 1997. It ended with me storming out of the house I had bought for her and slamming the door hard on my way out. I drove my car round the corner to talk it all through with my mates Paul and Caroline at their house and parked outside.
Half an hour later, the police arrived and arrested me on suspicion of assault. Michelle had called them and claimed I had knocked her out cold and kicked the door off its hinges to get to her. I was released and then re-arrested on Christmas Eve. The second time, you could have been forgiven for thinking they’d just found Osama Bin Laden. I walked out of the door and there was one black maria parked on the pavement to my right and another to the left. Both full of coppers. The only thing missing was a sniper on the roof and a helicopter circling overhead.
I pleaded not guilty and the case went to Crown Court and a two-day trial. We both gave evidence and the jury found me innocent. There was no evidence against me because I had not done any of the things she said. There was no damage to the door and there was certainly no damage to Michelle. The judge said there was no stain on my character and I could go. However, when Paris happened people remembered the false charges Michelle had made and wondered whether there had been some substance to them after all.
Michelle and I don’t talk about any of that now. We treat it as if it never happened. We have a good relationship. I pay her Child Support and I see Tom, who is eight now, whenever I want. Tom was one of the reasons I decided to quit playing football and move back to Cannock in 2001. I wanted to see more of him. I resent the years I missed when he was growing up. I had him a lot when he was a baby, but then, as what was left of the relationship between Michelle and me degenerated into wrangles about pay-offs and maintenance, I hardly saw him again until he was five.
More than that, I resent the years my mum missed because she was caught up in the bitterness between us. Michelle used to say my mum could see Tom as long as she didn’t take him anywhere near my house. So she used to push him around Cannock in his pram in the pouring rain just to snatch a few precious hours with him.
Tom’s growing up fast now and I love him to bits. He plays for one of the kids teams at Cannock. I think he might have the talent to make it as a professional if things go his way. When I was thinking about suicide, I didn’t want to leave him. I thought about Tom, and about my mum who had suffered so much and sacrificed so much. I thought about my wife, Estelle. For some of the time when I first began what has become a recurring flirtation with suicide, she was pregnant with our daughter, Mia. Estelle had stood by me for so long and weathered so many storms and tolerated so many indiscretions.
From the time I went into the Priory in January 1999 until the beginning of 2003, I was so low generally that thinking about suicide actually gave me a lift. It was a way out that was a clean no-brainer. I think that’s why a lot of people do it. Part of me wanted it because I knew that if I did it I wouldn’t have to think about the things that were torturing me any more.
I was a total mess back then. I couldn’t get out of bed.