Rio was waiting for me – I didn’t expect him to leave his comfort zone – and we just started dancing. It was very spontaneous. Afterwards, people thought we had prepared it. But we hadn’t. We had been to Cyprus that summer and Rio was fond of doing this mad dance where he lifted one leg up, kind of like a demented flamingo. I stood in front of him and copied it. Actually, he still does that dance even now when he’s on a night out. I couldn’t have cared less if he had waltzed me round the pitch. I had just scored my first goal for the club.
We calmed down and as the ball came back to be kicked off I looked to the bench and saw the smile on my Dad’s face. I think it was pride rather than amusement at the celebration, though there was probably a bit of both. It was an incredible high but unfortunately it was followed by the predictable low.
I was sub for the next few games and didn’t get a look-in until there was an injury in midfield which meant I got a run of games. I was still just a young kid. I would come on and try to get involved. There were times when I might have been pushed off the ball or whatever but I was trying my best. Harry kept putting me in there and soon I started to score. I got a hat-trick against Walsall in the League Cup which was amazing in my first full season. I was 19 and happy as Larry. I finished with ten goals to my name and had established myself as a regular in the first team squad. To be honest I thought I had made it. I was wrong.
My Dad went to meet the chairman, Terence Brown, and Harry to talk about a new deal. The chairman had a habit of reading fanzines and listening to the views of more extreme supporters – some of whom had started to turn on me. I had been aware of it but tried to ignore it and just get my head down and play. There was a conspiracy theory among them that the manager had been putting me on late in games to get me appearance money because I was his nephew. The punters read these things and I think there was a small group who decided to make it their cause when the team was playing badly. It started with a few people from the local area who thought I was getting an easy run. Things like that spread around the ground like a cancer and other people jumped on the bandwagon, though to be honest, I never dreamed the chairman of the club would be among them.
Once again, I was wrong. Brown brought this nonsense up claiming that there had been allegations of nepotism. He asked Harry to explain it.
‘What the f*** are you going on about?’ Harry responded angrily. ‘Do you think I bring a player on to get him five hundred quid? Frank is a very good player who we need to get on a long-term deal.’
When I was told about all of this I was pissed off and a bit shocked. I had been slogging my guts out for the club and was desperate to do well for West Ham. I was a West Ham boy, born and bred. I had come here to support the team as a child. I had signed for that reason.
For the first time I felt suspicious about the people running the club and from that moment I would never trust them again. I began to question the way they looked at me and the way they viewed Harry and Dad. I had thought Brown was a genuinely good guy but he wasn’t a football man and we all called him ‘Mr Dead’ – a character on the Harry Enfield show at that time. Brown wore the same pinstripe suit and had a very serious demeanor when he came into the dressing room.
After he mentioned nepotism I was more sensitive about what was going on around me. A couple of times I heard murmurs from the punters behind the dugout when I was called to warm up or was about to go on. But it got worse. It had been getting worse from two seasons earlier when I made my debut. There was booing from a certain section of the crowd behind the dugout when I was told to leave the bench and stretch. That wasn’t even the worst part of Upton Park. That was on the other side at the ‘chicken run’. I wasn’t being paranoid. It was becoming an ordeal for me just to be a sub, to the point where I didn’t want to be there. I still had my pride and my determination to succeed but I couldn’t tell Harry how I felt. When you are playing away and the punters give you stick it’s fine – it’s different, it’s what you expect. Not at home. I was extremely conscious of what was going on. It was very clear. Shouts of ‘Sit down, you!’ and ‘Go sit down with your Daddy!’ were common.
Sometimes it was worse than others. Sometimes it was so bad that I would rather have been sitting in the stand, or at home well away from it. Hodgey was on the bench with me for one game. Harry had told me to get stripped and it started almost immediately, the odd shout and rumble of discontent; I was expecting it. Hodgey grabbed my arm. ‘You have to get out of here as quick as you can mate,’ he said. ‘You don’t need this s***. You don’t deserve it and you’re better than this.’
I didn’t say anything. He was right. I knew he was but you can’t just wipe away your childhood supporting a club or the love you have for it. I am a loyal person by nature and I wanted to do well for West Ham and for my Dad and Harry who found their professional integrity being questioned. I didn’t feel sorry for myself; I felt sorry for them. I thought about all the years they had been good players there, loyal servants. They had brought success and they were doing their best to bring success again. So was I. We were in this together whether we liked it or not and I felt reassured by the fact that I had people I could trust with my life fighting for me. I would never give anything less than everything for them and they knew that.
I understood that they were in an awkward position but they are both strong and sometimes quite foreboding characters. When I was young I was quite wary of Harry. I was also in awe of him. Between the ages of 8 and 14 there was no real football relationship between us. Like most kids that age, I kept my distance from adults when the conversation turned to serious stuff. From my point of view, even as his nephew, he was exactly the same person that people outside of the family knew him to be. He was outspoken and a real character. Though desperate to learn about football I was scared to say anything in front of him in case I would embarrass myself even though as an uncle he was very loveable. That made what happened when I was older all the more difficult.
I never really lost that innate apprehension after he became my manager at West Ham. Somewhere deep inside me I was still that little boy and he was still Uncle Harry. There were times at the club when I would have the hump with him like every player has with their manager but of course everything was so much more complicated by our relationship.
There was a time when I wanted an explanation about why I wasn’t playing. Instead of just knocking on the door and confronting him like anyone else I found myself outside his office pacing around. I was scared to go in and I know that stems from the days of being in his company as a child and feeling inhibited.
He and my Dad had their disagreements. There were times when I was dropped from the team and Dad would make a case for me playing. Maybe he was taking my side as a father, that’s only human nature, while Harry was protective of his own position.
I understood that. I sensed when Harry was feeling uncomfortable about something to do with me. It became still more complicated though when the fans started to have a go as well. When I look back now I have a lot more sympathy for the situation Harry found himself in at that time. He protected me when he thought I needed protecting. He also stood up for me when it really mattered in situations with Terence Brown and the likes. It’s part of our nature, our family. The culture of London’s East End means looking after your own, which is fine. But when it’s carried into professional football, where the environment is very cut-throat, it changes. You have to act differently. That was tough on the family at times, though they tried to hide it from me.
People just looked at the fact that my Dad and uncle were in charge and they thought the worst of it. That was where the agitation and aggravation came from. When they saw the unique situation which existed at West Ham they were not happy with it. I know what it’s like from the other side. Jamie will speak to me after a game now and I know that he is talking from my point of view rather than an objective one. It’s our point of view, the Lampard/Redknapp point of view.
There