On occasion I would overdo it. Just like anyone else, a few too many could lead to embarrassing incidents. I had a particularly late Saturday night/Sunday morning after a game. We had won and I was up for enjoying myself. I slept it off for a few hours but was still feeling pretty rough and decided to call my agent, Steve Kutner, for something.
I had known Kutner since I was 18. Dad dealt with him when West Ham were trying to buy Steve Bould from Arsenal. Kutner had represented Bouldy who was interested in making the move to Upton Park. Though the transfer never materialized, something about the way Kutner had handled himself impressed Dad. I didn’t have an agent at the time and was looking to appoint one so Dad and I met Kutner at the Swallow Hotel near Chadwell Heath.
The three of us talked and I began to understand the importance of having a really good agent to look after you. Kutner made a lot of sense. He wasn’t pushy or flash. His company is very small and he specializes in dealing with his clients’ every need. I see young players now signing up to agencies which have 200 other guys on the books because they think that’s impressive. I have also seen players get terrible advice from their agents because the underlying motive was not to do what was best for the player’s career. With Kutner, I don’t just have the best agent in the business, I also have a very good and loyal friend. There is no conflict of interest either because we became mates after we had a business arrangement. Some players employ a friend as their agent, and this I think is asking for trouble. I would hate to feel I was getting bad advice from a mate, never mind a mate who also happened to be handling my business and career. I have disagreements with Kutner and he with me but I can be absolutely sure that the end result is what is best for me without either of us feeling compromised. I know where I stand with Kuts though and so does he – side by side. Some people find him a little odd when they first meet him. He is very individual, can dress embarrassingly, is quite eccentric, and is often disarmingly blunt. However, I felt that I could trust him and that was the most important thing for me.
At the time in question, he had a routine of playing tennis with George Graham every Sunday morning. George was manager of Spurs and at this particular time, I was playing well and Spurs were interested enough in me to have started talking to West Ham about a transfer fee. George had just upped his offer for me to over £5 million. I dialled Kutner’s mobile number and started to recount the events of the night before. I must have sounded a bit hazy. And loud. Normally, he would shout back at me, slag me off or whatever but on this occasion he was very quiet. After a couple of minutes I realized that he had cut me off. I wasn’t bothered. But I should have been.
Kutner called me back a few hours later.
‘You sobered up yet?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. Why?’
‘When you called me this morning George Graham was sitting in my car and you were on speakerphone. It didn’t make for good listening to a manager who has just bid over five million quid for you.’
‘Oh s***. Did he know it was me?’
‘Thankfully I realized it was you and cut you off. George was all right. He just said “Stevie. Who the hell was that?” but I told him it was one of my music industry mates who’d obviously been on the lash.’
I came off the phone feeling sick. And a bit stupid. It was one of those things but it wasn’t one of the things I wanted to be happening on a regular basis. To be a successful footballer means being in the right place at the right time. I hadn’t even arrived yet. Kutner didn’t give me a lecture. He didn’t have to. I knew from his tone of voice he wasn’t impressed. He still loves telling the story and I have even heard him tell it to George. Thankfully, George regrets not getting me for £5 million but the whole episode reminds me of the thin line between success and failure.
Sometimes you have to learn the hard way. Being a footballer means you have to live your life by a different rule book to most other people. There are things you can and can’t do because of the demands of the job and others which you need to be aware of because of the rules of celebrity.
I have always been very conscious about my health and fitness but when I went on my first lads’ holiday I was oblivious to the second. I went to Ayia Napa in Cyprus with Jamie when I was 17 and our group was pretty sensible – though I had to assure Mum that Stan Collymore wasn’t with us!
Back in 1996 Ayia Napa was the place to go if you were young and wanted a laugh. I wasn’t disappointed and went back five years on the trot. When I went with Jamie I was completely unknown. There was no pressure of people coming up and asking for autographs. I was just a kid and in complete awe of everything.
In the following years Tel, Billy and I went there together. Then it was just Rio and I, but we weren’t big-hitters at the time. I had played Under-21s and we had both made our West Ham debuts by then but we were still well below the radar in terms of being hassled. We certainly weren’t the target of any tabloids – just two young lads enjoying our holiday the same as anyone else.
Rio, Tel and Billy returned the year after and had a good week but I was shocked a few days after I got home when a girl I had met there sold a story to a newspaper. It was embarrassing. I was 19 and had gone on holiday and I had done what every lad my age was doing but it’s not the kind of thing you want your Mum and Dad to be reading over Sunday breakfast.
It jolted me but I was naive and Ayia Napa was the place to go and the place I knew best. I should have gone somewhere else because it had very much become the destination of choice for young footballers. I’m not sure if the Premier League had started running package tours but you saw so many faces on the beach and in the main square it certainly felt like it.
Inevitably, anywhere the cream of England’s young football talent go to let their hair down will also be infested by the dregs of the scandal sheets. Lads having a laugh, having a few beers in a venue where the girls are doing the same. In retrospect, it was the ultimate honey trap and therefore only a matter of time before there would be a sting.
For our next visit in 2000 I was on my toes a little and at the beginning of the week I was nervous when we were in bars and when people came up to our group because they recognized us. But of course I became more comfortable and more relaxed after a couple of drinks and joined in the holiday spirit. I was out one night with a couple of mates and another lad who was someone we had met as part of another group of friends.
We met some girls and worked our way from a bar to a club and then back to one of our hotel rooms. We were mucking around having a laugh getting carried away on the booze and the freedom of being on holiday. Clothes were discarded and we were fooling around. I didn’t think much of it and in that kind of situation I think most people just go with the flow.
Then I realized that the guy who we knew less well had produced a camcorder and was doing a running commentary of jokes. Well, it seemed funny at the time. Though we were all tired and hung over the next day, by the time we got out in the sun we were winding each other up about the night before. There was no fear of any consequences, no worries because we hadn’t done anything wrong.
We flew home a couple of days later having enjoyed ourselves and I went to the Punch and Judy pub in Covent Garden the following Saturday to meet with Tel and couple of the lads for some lunch. We had just finished eating when Dad called me. His voice seemed a bit panicked but I couldn’t make out what he was saying for the noise. I went outside and what he told me was the last thing I wanted to hear.
He explained that a newspaper had a copy of the video from the night in Ayia Napa and were running a story the following day. Dad was angry and disappointed.
‘How could you be so stupid?’ he said. How could I.