by devilsadvocate » Sun Oct 09, 2011 8:10 pm
Gazza the once great man, had a loooong article on him in the Guardian over the weekend. Here are a couple of funny bits:
And does he think he has beaten the desire to drink? His smile disappears. "No, I'm never confident. When I finish this interview, I might go on the drink. I just know I'm not going to be drinking in the next 10 minutes. I know that for a fact. I don't know about tonight. Any time I get too confident about not drinking, I end up drinking. So I have to stay on my toes."
Gazza on…
The cheek Nottingham Forest – 18 May 1991. I was way too hyped for the match but there was nothing anyone could have done to calm me down. The night before I couldn't sleep; I was kicking lampshades pretending they were footballs. Eventually someone called the doctor who gave us a Valium. That did the trick, but it was short-lived. It was the FA Cup final. Before the match, I said to the lads I was going to ask Princess Diana for a kiss, but they didn't believe me. Then it came to my turn. "Can I have a kiss, your Majesty?" I didn't really know how to address her. She said yes, so I made a bit of a move to get in there, but she stuck out her hand. Oh, well, better than nothing. Afterwards, I heard that the Queen had put a stop on me meeting Diana again, just in case.
The pranks The Rangers player Gordon Durie had stitched me up over something, so I asked to borrow his car after training one day. I'd been fishing early that morning, and I had a couple of trout with me. I put one in the boot. I knew that's where he would look once the smell started. But I squeezed the second one in between the back seat and the floor. A couple of days later, Durie handed me the trout from the boot. "Good try, mate." Three or four days after, he came up to us again: "My car still stinks. I can't understand it." When he found out, he went mental, but it was worth it. The chairman wasn't too chuffed, though. The car was a sponsored one, provided by the club. I think it had to be scrapped.
The drinking We were due to play Sunderland on 12 January 2002. That night I drank three and a half bottles of wine, took 11 sleeping tablets, woke up at 6am with the shakes, took a couple more tablets, finished off the wine, fell back asleep, woke up again at 9am, had a treble brandy, another sleeping tablet, a smoke and went to the game. I was in a terrible state, so I had another treble brandy, took another tablet and went out and played a blinder. Afterwards, I went home and fell asleep. Next morning I asked Jimmy ["Five Bellies"] how I had done. "Look at the table," he said, pointing to a bottle of champagne. "You won man of the match."