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You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications bell so you are notified for when my next podcast goes live. Thank you so much for watching this video. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you enjoyed it. Before we get into it I would like to go back to the start of my guest where you grew up and how it all began. Well from a little place outside of Liverpool about 8.5 miles outside called Highton which is when the slums of Liverpool were cleared and the aftermath of the Second World War all the families that were in all those densely populated areas were moved out into these new council territories of kind of Gnowsley which is kind of made up of a few different bullers but Highton's one of them, St John's is an estate within that and Caby. And that's kind of, as I say, where a lot of footballers from Liverpool come out of those two areas. You've got obviously Phil Thompson and some big players who've come from Caby and obviously Stevie Gerrard's, the biggest probably Peter Reed, probably the biggest two have come from Highton so fortunate to grow up in a football household in a hotbed of football in a fantastic football and city. So the die was pretty much cast for me James, like yourself. How was family life? Yeah, I mean you just know what you know as a kid, don't you? We went to the local school, loved playing footy in the street but when we couldn't play football it was two men and Highton's seeking all that. We lived at the end of a bus terminus and beyond that bus terminus is an industrial estate so there was a lot of space to get into climbing into trees and building dens and stuff like that and when I looked back at it, we had a fantastic childhood, we were never in the house. You were either out at school, out with your mates, climbing in trees, parks, up to no good and as I say, because we lived at the end of a bus terminus, we'd worked out relatively early if you waited for the buses to finish the shift and go to turn round and go into the depot when you're through mud at the buses, the drivers had to clean it before they clocked off and would give you an incredible chase. So we spent a lot of time, so I was so fit and had a great engine as a kid, getting chased out by the busies, all bus drivers on our estate for being up to no good. You don't know any difference, only now you look back and you think there was mad stuff going on round you but at the time, you thought that's how everybody lived. You thought everybody got up on a Sunday morning and you couldn't have a game of footy because there was a band, a car on footy pitch, you thought this must be happening to every kid this age because it was happening to you and your mates. What were you like at school? I was always switched on. I was quite fiery in terms of... I remember getting sent home from school or had run-on from school. So if the teachers didn't listen to me or stuff like that I would occasionally kick the classroom, emergency exit open and just go home to the point where I almost got expelled off the back of it because the teachers were like, you can't just get off every time you don't agree with what's going on because that was my thing because I got quite emotional about stuff. It was either do something stupid, throw a chair at a teacher or stuff like that which would happen in our school. I didn't do that and I had to channel that anger into leaving the classroom. Obviously, it got to the point where my mum was like, look, they're going to expel you from the school because they can't account for your safety because it's like the third time you've left the classroom and this was before the age of... this is still in junior school so this is before the age of kind of 10, 11. And as I say, my grandmother said I've just always been dead-ed strong so I've always been switched on. I've always found learning and school and stuff really simple and I've always known I wanted to be a footballer so I'd do my work quite quick and then I'd write out my world 11 and I'd make a 40-kit and then I'd be trying to coerce a few of my mates to do it and the teachers would come over and be like, you've done your work, you're now distracting them so then they'd put me in a separate table from my mates and I'd act up a bit more and then I'd get throughout the classroom before you know it. How easy I found school became a deterrent to me because if you ask questions and you finish your work quite quick and you can get distracted, this was before kind of ADHD or any kind of stuff was spoken about with kids. You were just seen as being a kind of energetic kid and their way of dealing with you was to send you out the classroom or isolate you, which I found strange but as I say, I found school quite simple and I just wanted to play 40-some constantly looking out the window going can't wait to get on the playground at break time to have a game of 40. Can't wait to get on lunchtime to have a game of 40. Can't wait for school to finish to have a game of 40. I can't really be listening to these about RE because I'm going to play in the Premier League. I don't need to be aware of some of the stories in the Bible and I came from a Roman Catholic background and singing songs in school was part of the curriculum and as I say, for me there was better times I felt I could be utilising this singing praise Hosanna. I could have an extra five minutes on the playground to get them in a game of 40 between me and my mates. That didn't make sense to me. I'm a young boy and I think now I'm a bit older to put young lads in the classroom at that young age and not let them run wild is not great for them. Young lads need to be outside because it's just such full of energy and I'm not sure the schooling system is quite designed. Certainly on the council of states where I went to school I'm quite designed to get the maximum amount of the resources that the individuals have available to them. My belief is, and we were talking about this on the way over because I've been to prison and I told you I was in the Royal Enclosure I believe everybody's got something that they're brilliant at if they meet a good mentor or a parent or a grandparent or a teacher as I say. They can encourage that and coax that out of them. For you it's, you thought it was football it's turned out it's podcasting that. You don't know what it's going to be. For me I was lucky in terms of I knew quite early what I was good at and had good role models around me and people who kept me on the straight and narrow and give me good examples and I managed to get an opportunity at a football club and by the skin of my teeth as well and I was a talented kid by the skin of my teeth I ended up to go on and have a half decent career. More than half decent career like I say any footballer out there will bite your hand I have to be playing for man's cities in new castles and playing with the best players in the world that's an unbelievable career. Even the schooling system that we touch on you're right it's the system it doesn't fulfill your maximum potential I don't know everybody's got a genius I think it was Einstein it says everybody's a genius everybody's got so much potential but if you're sitting at a desk and you're looking at the window and thinking about the Premier League you're the one who's getting called crazy and not good enough making you feel down and eventually if that isn't your psyche you end up thinking that where did you end up getting that belief system from though from young kid from Liverpool to then thinking about playing in the Premier League where does that come from? I think you're a product of your environment nature-nature kind of argument do you have a certain constitution as a young person where and when is your personality formulated I don't know I'm not smart enough to answer those questions but I think having good people around you so the first protocol at your mum and dad isn't it they bring you into the world siblings, family members for me I always remember my grandmother Julia my dad's mum she worked like four jobs she wanted better things for herself and for the kids and she worked in Silver Service so she used to do the waiting on and she'd do all different functions and she'd come back from all the different functions and she'd talk about the characters that she'd met and people who were cateus and polite and people who weren't and the different kind of classes that were in this country she waits on the Queen a few times the fact that the Queen would kind of crumb up for herself and what a lovely lady she was and how polite she was and she said they're no better than us lad they've been born into that world and they are nice people but it doesn't make them any better or worse than us I'm from a family that were kind of abattoir workers in Liverpool you know as I say we kind of moved to Highton which is a little bit outside the city centre and a family are all kind of salt in the streets and the slum clearances of Liverpool but they were I think someone's doing a family tree or something and I'd love to do who do you think you are they asked me to do it when I was a player but I didn't want to do it because I thought I'll have Jack the Brick but it's something in our family I still know my love that's the last thing I need to get to the media or the on my case the last thing I need to see and Danny Dyer pull out Henry Dier and I thought they'll pull some right over out of my family like somewhere some bar and pot but now like I'm interested in it since I've had kids and I'm like it's actually fascinating to understand where you come from and you know is the dye kind of cast or how much can the environment and the nature change the nature and as I say my grandmother gave me that belief that greatness is for you if you want it you've got to work hard at it but if you truly dedicate your life to whatever it is that you're passionate about you're as capable as anybody else and as I say there wasn't a lot of people around me at that time saying that you know there was more people around me saying you can't do it or there was a lot of people with more talent than me that were getting pulled in by the distractions that life can throw at you know you've grown up in that space so you know when you're a young kid and it's pure football's quite easy you become really good at it when you're 14, 15 and you know a few airs start to sprout in different places and it changes your focus for me it never my focus always remained football and you know Fanny drifted into the background now some of my mates were boss of football you know they got that sense for many young men I was skinny and small so I didn't like I was in school at 14 and 15 and like all my mates got hairy chests and all that and I wasn't I was like God what's happening to me yeah so I didn't really I didn't really have an interest in anything other than football they all started you know started to have a baby for the first time started having a joint for the first time started taking trips for the first time you know started hanging around with the wrong crowd started trying to get into night clubs and all that and I was lucky in terms of I was unlucky my mum and dad divorced but when they divorced I went to live with my dad because there was three kids two my mum kept me two younger brothers and I went with my dad to my nanns and my nann was a bit of a disciplinarian my mum was a bit like liberal and whatever goes goes and my nann wasn't so if I said I was out at 14 or 15 James she was like where are you where are you staying who's out steering right I need to speak to their mum so I just had nowhere to go I couldn't say I'm going to a party like some of my mates could my nann had knocked on the door pulled me out of parties so you know the temp take it wasn't like I was a saint and I had no temptation it was like I had a really strong maternal presence in my life who was like you're not getting off the beaten track she'd take me to football and she'd just had this belief in me and I thought if she believes in me I can do it check out how she was saving grace yeah for sure yeah because I never had that discipline my dad was a bouncer so I used to go to the night clubs front of the queue tell all the birds I played for the first team I just fucking loved that that pretended to be somebody when you were how old are you there 15 see we're all like that everyone wants to be everyone wants to be that everyone wants to be that boss footballer who all are birds love who can make any bird who get in the night clubs who people all think are more mature than what they are and when I think about that I think you're forgetting to be a kid like they're the best years of your life damn I say to my kids now all the time these are the best years of your life you don't pay a bill you've got to get up and go to school and learn you get your dinner fed for you your man washes your clothes makes your bed and you smash three I've been saying five years time you're getting a job he's like what I'm like you're getting a job in five years you're starting work he's going I went out to work for myself you have to go to go and work on the roof put me half on my own computer when I was 16 I was doing a YTS as well and in the summer I'd have to go and get on the and this was before they had bumpers and they were all roofers so you're having to sling the tiles on after about a week I thought fuck this for the game I sold just get me a 40 I'm having a game of 40 I was fucking doing this for in the winter and I was doing it in the summer to supplement me YTS wages and honestly after three weeks my hands like my hands are like silk pierces my hands were cabaged this episode is sponsored by fire away pizza the fastest growing pizza company in the UK with over 150 stores with their fresh quality ingredients and unique pizzas they will have you coming back for more use code james20 for 20% off that's james20 for 20% off I thought fuck this I'm not doing that in the freezing cold and that that for me I thought right I'm getting in the gym I'm doing me extras if I need to not go out on a Friday night if I need to stay out on nightclubs and when I seen all the good players who I'd play against and I'd say he was out shagging he was out laging it I'd just be sitting there going pfft I'm getting it and I'd just seen it as incremental steps of getting it because I thought I'm not the most talented kid I knew I was talented or I knew I wasn't the most talented and I thought I've got to do everything right here and I'd add an uncle Tony Kelly who'd played all the way up to a division one for like Stoke and Bolton Wunderers with like John McGinley when they went on a couple of good cup runs but he'd never played in the Premier League and he was incredible footballer but loved the ale the mad bastard stopped fucking playing and went sober I went you've done it the fucking wrong way you crackpot you shoulda you'd be a multi-millionaire now you've done it the other way but like you know with some lads I like that I see lads now I played with who weren't the greatest bros who were now into all mad weightlifting and all in like ridiculous body and I'm like if you'd have done that when you played you'd be you'd have ended up having another 50 million quid there but life doesn't unfold here the way you know the way it's meant to go everybody's life is unique to them as I said to you know for me I always remember listening to to Morris he was a big influence on me as a kid now I always remember the song and in the song it's you know Irish Blood English Art which obviously the North West of England is very much you know I think I'm a quarter Irish a quarter Jewish definitely a quarter English and so my granddad said I think there's a bit of Spanish in there so I'm like I'm a proper mongrel like I don't no wonder you know you're a bit tapped in terms of you know that's a combination of all different people and all different belief systems but the one thing all of those communities share is an honesty and a fairness and I think if you'd have your life a different way you might have grown up in a better house on a more affluent part of Britain but would you have had the same principles and you know when I look at it some of the greatest people I've ever met you know you'd stand on or off them council estates and you know you've met in prison you've got what a human being that is some of the biggest pricks I've ever met in my life are people who are meant to be you know people who are smashing life setting with a few quid you've got a couple of plums in the mouth and a few titles behind them and they're the biggest ball back you're ever likely to come across so if you I just have a free life that open minded I think there's good and bad people everywhere I don't see you know people's religion or football team or race or I just think what we know about the world you know what we've watched in the history of you know what's been recorded for us you know the documentaries about what happens if we don't get on you know whether that's the troubles in Northern Ireland in my lifetime you know I can remember Northern Ireland the Volklands Bosnia Iraq face war Second Twin Towers you know the Iraq into Afghanistan Syria you know I'm like you know when I grew up reading George Orwell I'm like when does this ever stop in 1984 you know you're from Glasgow you understand that you know that religious nonsense because that's what it is you know seeing kids being killed and you know I'm going I've won the bare flottery being born in in item which is I think labor heartland but it's got the second highest unemployment rising in the country no six-form provision so once you're 16 you've got to leave the borough to get further education or a different chance in life and these these are historically votes for labor you know Harrod Wilson was Prime Minister of the country and he was his local constituency was heightened was nosely and they've been you know left behind and then we get into Brexit we leave the EU Liverpool the city centre Liverpool has been massively regenerated done about Glasgow but certainly Liverpool and might say well I spent time been regenerated from the EU money and now we're out the EU what's what you know I'm lucky I'm a multimillionaire played foot it's life's great for me but what chances have the other kids got sorry mate and society grows great when men plant trees of which the fruit they'll never ever get a sample everyone's just taking like this crew we're in government now no one's voted for them his own party didn't even vote for them they've robbed the working man of this country you know of the British Isles blind and there's no comeuppance for it you do that in in the business you're working or you do that in in your local area you go into jail you know you know and these are people who are pontificating about how we should live our lives and you know they've been telling people you know what vaccinations they need to stick in the body and you know it's tough for kids growing up and I think you know I see the work you're doing trying to highlight different opinions different voices and I think it's admirable it's admirable now to take a stance and tell the truth you know because if we all don't and we all just sit in silence like what are we going to leave the James Englishers who are out there now growing up or the young Joey Bartons who are out there on council estate who are looking for role models and as I say I think what you do is great mate and yeah I appreciate that brother raising awareness to kids and you know all the different options and things that are out in their life because you know for us I think once you think everybody thinks the same way as you you know you start to become a little bit closed in your mind and I think the more open minded you remain I think I think the better look it came from a city of that like the Beatles were big growing up listening to the Beatles and obviously what they got up to in terms of you know and then my grandmother saying to me I could be something and having a talent and nature and that talent and having a bit of luck and I think we should be out there saying to loads of kids hey you can be well better than me you should be kids or kids out there are capable of brilliance like they just are the problem that you get is teachers and people going you can't do this you can't do that you're not good enough who the fuck you just helped someone you're not good enough I remember a creative advisor in my secondary school said to me I went in she's like what do you want to be and I'm like 13 or 14 I'm like you know you can have a crisis of confidence at that age I said I'm you know I'm going to be a footballer and bear in mind I've been in Evans Academy for eight and I'm 13 I'm still in Evans Academy I almost I got down to the last time for a little show for the national school and I'm going to be a footballer and she laughed at me face and she was like people from around here don't do that I just remember thinking you cheeky cunt like who the fuck are you who the fuck are you you're wearing in a fucking secondary school in the middle of fucking hiding and you tell them you're pissing on people's dreams and luckily I had that mindset but I think of how many kids who'd gone whoa maybe I'm not good enough like you said you did I thought that because people need to understand people's opinion of you doesn't have to be a reality because other people are living shit of lives and they only see one dimension what does it mean you have to and it's so important for your nan to say you are good enough you can be anything if people could just understand that people can be anything James, Steve Jobs famously said those that are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who fucking do it if you just think you're going to work in the nine to five job then you're probably going to be right on that Steve Black one of my great mentors if you think you can or you think you can't you will invariably be right so I knew I couldn't be a footballer like it's just a mindset you know some lads again you know they need an influence around them a coach to take them under the wing and go you're not doing that a parent to go no no you're not getting off the straight and narrow look at Jude Bellingham I think this kid's going to be up there in the pantheon of footballers you know I would imagine he's going to be in the kind of soonest category look what he's doing at Real Madrid at his age I mean I've never seen a kid you know when he is a kid he's 18, he's 19 I've never seen a kid even Stevie Gerard who was in Liverpool's first team playing right back at 19 it was a phenomenon Michael Owen maybe Ryan Giggs maybe but it's Bellingham to go to Dortmund and Germany's a big physical league and you know excel now he's gone to Real Madrid and you can't imagine an excel but it's no coincidence isn't his dad an FBI a MI5 or a police hostage negotiator you know so and his brother looks like he's a real talent as well the kid who's signed for Sunderland so these lads have had an incredible talent and then had really strong parental guidance that's developed that talent not lots of kids get that and I look at certainly my sport football it's historically a working man's game in terms of a lot of the talent comes out of the working class of the country and you know when you look at the hotbeds you know whether it's Newcastle South London the North West or kind of Glasgow for players you know they all come with the right bit of firing and right edge to them and we've got to be careful that we don't sanitise it you know nobody's perfect everybody makes mistakes some of the best people I've ever met have made more mistakes than anybody some of the greatest you know psychologists drug alcohol counsellors are reformed maniacs and drugies and alcoholics because there's a lot to be said for life experience and the way we live in now I think with social media is trying to make you can only do and say stuff if you squeaky clean there's not many people like that about and that's why like you like what you's are doing and as I said I think Joe Rogan's been a huge influence on popular culture but again you're kind of you're the British version of Joe Rogan lad aren't you so it's an almost responsibility but he's left the blueprint and it's only to see what can be done maybe giving people a voice without trying to fucking talk down your room without trying to put words on people's mouth because I tell people question what I say question what you say just question what you've been taught what you've learnt over the years everybody can be better to keep raising the bar and be a better individual no matter if you're stuck and you're not addicted or abusive relationship whatever the fuck it is you can make the changes to better the life than the circumstances that you're in if you keep telling people that enough then they'll go the light bulb moment will happen and people go wait a minute you can you can no matter if you're 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 I speak to people in their 70s and 80s who are learning new languages playing new instruments just constantly try to progress running marathons your life's not over at ever and did you think boyhood team that was that was that your whole life is that you just feel for me yeah obviously grew up in a household of Evertonians like my granddad Peter huge Evertonian everyone my dad massive Evertonian but obviously played so it didn't really go the game my granddad would have gone the game and was brought up on the kind of golden vision obviously you know Harvey Kindle and Ball and you know the school of science and you know Everton were a a big side in my granddad's era and then you know they obviously had a bit of a spell in the 80s under Howard Kindle but I'm born 82 Everton's kind of last great side kind of disperses in around Heisel kind of 85, 86 so grew up with DVDs weren't DVDs they were fucking VHSs I'm actually that whole lot VHSs of like you know the glory teams of Everton you know your DVDs your Linuxers you know Andy Gray all that kind of era but never actually seen it by the time I can remember Everton kind of 87, 87, 88, 89 it's not a fantastic version of Everton and then you know you bang into it then I remember the Italian 90s World Cup vividly getting a sticker book obviously Toto Scalacci Roger Miller Badger Badger was more 94 for me Scalacci for me 90 Roger Miller remember the RG he's got beat by Cameroon Maradona was he in that World Cup? Maradona, yeah Was he in that World Cup? Yeah, Maradona he's famously scored the goal against Napoli against Italy and Naples in the semi-final and the tonne against them yeah, he didn't yeah, he changed his life that goal but if you remember he played Italy in the semi-final England obviously lost on pins to West Germany Chris Waddell and Stuart Pierce Gaza Bad bastard and all and then I didn't even watch the final I was that but that was like I remember so I can remember the struggles in terms of England not being that good and it was only watching the Bobby Robson film about his life that you realised how much heat Bobby was getting before the tournament obviously Gaza became a huge figure in in English football after that tournament but I always remember Toto Scalacci was like he scored he just came from nowhere he was like a periphery figure in the Italian squad and just scored loads of goals I think he won the golden boot in it but it was Germany won the World Cup in the loads on the tyres beat the Argyz in the final and obviously there was a lot of anti-Argyz feeling I can't remember 86 Mexico but obviously that was under God so for me you know I don't remember 86 World Cup I can't remember any of it you know more at the time I used to remember the Italian guy running across when there was a goal he was running across the street like a mad thing like a mad stick man and doing some ourselves and shit so I had the stickers and all that I used to get a lot of correctness and me half of them when me half of them was made Chrissie Dresd used to do the paper deliveries now in the morning he dropped all the papers off to the news agents that was his job and he used to get the stickers I used to always say fucking robbers a box of stickers and every six months or whatever a box of stickers had fallen off his wagon and you'd go into school and it was like you'd won the fucking lottery because it was like you had old swaps and that like yeah yeah yeah honestly you had the thing was to complete your sticker that's what I used to carry on as soon as you got your pocket money off your mar we had a shop on top of our road Max so it's ten penns a bit of penns five packs of stickers bang straight away and you're like go go but then that's how you build your football kind of knowledge because you know you go to Kemmon Cow about 38 times you had every pack of that Kemmon Cow players you had Steve Pops Ori and Dawey but obviously the shinies and all that and then swapping them in school and that's your first real learning how to deal in currency when my brothers were growing up that was all Pokemon and I'm like what the fuck's going on here we were all stickers everything I can remember James was football football football so I'm out of it and then in around Italian 90 is about eight I've realised six seven eight I'm decent at 40 you know I always remember saying to Steve Black who's a great mentor of mine who's passed away now got the rest of the soul who was quite close with Johnny Wilkinson and loads of other sport sporting organisations but renowned for the way he'd done with Johnny and I said to him how'd you become the best in the world Blackie like how the fuck does Johnny become the best fly off in like world rugby and he said steady easy Joe actually when you think about it and we just sat over a coffee and he went through the seven stages to become the best in the world and afterwards you were like yeah it actually isn't that hard you know alright there's going to be there's moments where you might need a load of talent here no matter how much you train but actually you're still going to be really good there because he was like well first you've got to be the best footballer in your street or rugby player in your street then you have to be the best in your school then you have to be the best in your butter then you have to be the best in the side that you then you'll have to get selected for like a representational a regional team then that'll get you selected for your country your country then gets you to a European championship and then a European championship gets you to a world championship you're winning that you're the best in the world kind of like fucking hell yeah he's right and meeting people like that make you realise how capable everybody is if given the right exposure at the right time for some people their talent might be collecting stamps for some people it might be podcasting for some people it might be teaching for some people it might be sport and I think it's the adults responsibility to find what the young people are good at and help them on the way not the other way round tell them all the stuff they can't do you shit at that don't do that well that's not good is it tell me what I can do tell me what I can be good at and I think back to the old youth clubs I went to where you played all sports and you were encouraging you had to canoe and kayak on these councillor states but you realise I'm not just good at footy I'm actually good at climbing I'm good at navigating I'm good at leading I'm good at being in a canoe and getting a canoe organised and you know we had the kind of that exposure and I can build a sense in that and then you realise that there's more to life than just the councillor states and as I said in these Tory governments and etc come in and they shut down all these community stuff and just take people away from it and then what options do the kids get and it must be really tough time now to be a young person not just social media and the challenges are that and the challenges of having to be perfect and I always say I can't imagine if I was 15, 16, 17 and you had Instagram and Facebook you know I was I didn't get spots till I left school and I used to laugh at everybody because I didn't get puberty until quite late and everyone was getting all beads and spots and all that and buzzing off them and then it got me about 17, 18 I became like one of the world's most clumsy just beekeepers beekeepers after 18 I just had a mad outbreak and I can't imagine if that's getting recorded in a you know you've got to then put a filter on if you want to get a beard it must be an incredibly pressurised situation for these young people yet you can pull bards now from Argentina or you can meet friends from Australia in a heartbeat but also you're in a global market and you're constantly under this pressure where when we were kids we were just just left to your own devices like you kind of had enough space to grow up and make mistakes and I wouldn't want to live in a world now where my thoughts are being recorded from being a young person I mean I cringe sometimes at some of the stuff I said in the early outset of Twitter it was like 23, 24 so I can't imagine walking up and barming she had to have been saying 15, 16 like you know what I mean What was it like getting released from Everton? Tough because I'd gone from as I say when you get to like 13 or 14 you start to get like schoolboy forms don't know whether you're after that in Scotland is the same no for the border so you get schoolboy forms like 12 so you're signing one year deals from like 8 yeah one year, one year centre of excellence one year extension one year extension and you're evaluated all the time and then about 13 they give you your first two years it's called the schoolboy form in England so they have to make a two year commitment to you so it's kind of schoolboy form so that takes you from 12 or 13 to 14, 15 then 15, 16 they work out whether you're going to get a YTS when you leave or a pro if you're good you get a YT, two year YT and a two year pro or something that's like a Michael Owens sign a one year YT but you're after signing YT until you're 17 you can't sign pro I think until you're 18 in England so they obviously just give you the YTS up until you're eligible and then once you hit 18 you're right into the pro deals that's if you're mega talented so I get to Everton 14 they sign this contract I think until like 14 and then I go to the national schools trials so they have a north west trial in I think we played that Edgeley Park, Stockport County and I played up front that game I scored two for the north west of England and then I got to the north of England trials I played up front in that game I think that was that crew scored again then you get to the national trial which was now at Little Shore in Shropshire so I think it was like 60 of us our age group from like Arsenal, Chelsea like the following Leon Knight I can remember they all came in in these blazers and shitting tires and all that big purple blazer always remember we were in England under 21 they always remember saying that you mean I can always remember he turned up with a black shirt black tightness big lime green blazer and obviously the north and south was a real big split country in terms of flash flash loving us and obviously a little bit more humble origin kind of north in us and we were all in that Everton Trachys or Liverpool Trachys or whoever you black been Trachys or ever the northern lads was and then all these flash cockney cunts are coming in and he's fucking big blazer and you're like right this is on and you're competing you're going to go from 60 of yous down to 18 outfield and three goalies so it's going to be and it's on and you're mixing your teams and it's like the scouts are all there with the no pads evaluating so you're going to imagine at the time I didn't even feel it just like you know for me I was just looking for verification and I'm one of the best 18 players my age group in the country I don't know but at that point I'm the last one from Everton so there was me two scousers in there Neil Dans who's Tony Bell who's my Danzy who was at Liverpool at the time and myself at Everton I never got from the 60 to the 18 I got from the 60 to the 18 and then I got cut 30 to 18 so I've missed out on it so I go back to Everton then thinking well I'm the best I got the third the start of Everton Danzy got in in the school and was at Liverpool and he ended up leaving Liverpool and signing a two year YT and a three year pro at Blackburn who'd given him a right few shillings to turn pro because he got to the national school and then I think he ran for one year after us or we might have been the last year of it nor for the border you have like a kind of centre of excellence for the for the international team and go back to Everton and in the midst of that Ray Hall was running the academy and when I was a young kid at Everton we had an academy director who left to go with the FA someone else had been in his spot in the midst of coming back from Lilla Shawl the academy director had changed back to the fella who'd been with the FA for four or five years and he'd come back and there was a different philosophy in place and within six six months I'd gone from the last Everton lad to get to the national style to getting told you're too small you're not good enough and we're going to release you and he always remember the phone rang in my hands I was living in my hands at the time and at that time there was a phone upstairs it was the landline owner took a mobiles then so it was a phone in the kitchen and a phone upstairs but obviously if someone picked it up in the kitchen and someone picked it up upstairs you had to listen in you'd have to say fuck him put the phone down whoever was on there but your dad knows you're past and sometimes you can't see your phone cross the pigs are living in the council the council house lab and the phone goes and you know just get that feeling in your stomach it was like we're going to have an evaluation and we don't want any of the kids to go it's just the parents and you go fuck there's some shady going on here but never ever thinking what was coming and anyway my nan's gone with my dad to Everton to meet the coaches and released but there's been I think 14 of us got released out of 18 I think the KF4 lads on so there's been a wholesale changing of the guard so obviously my nan's phoned me as soon as she's come out she's gone through a pay phone for us I need to tell this kid like right now so she's phoned as soon as the phone rang my granddad's picked the phone up and I've picked the phone up upstairs and I've heard my nan says Joe there and I've heard him stay on the line and I've spoke to my nan and she said listen lad they've released ya and I just remember like gone like that was like crushing do you know what I mean because I'm like an Evertonian like I had to play for Everton for not I was on the terrace junior Evertonian on the Gladys 3 trying to bunk in any way I could get in games bunking on the trains to get to like Sunderland away with my mates from school just to watch Everton and then I thought I'm gonna play for Everton like I'm definitely and then all of a sudden I'm not good enough and then I just remember thinking they're fucking wrong like the minute the phone went down I just remember this you know the weight of like I'm not wavy I'm not good enough like Everton has told me that I just remember thinking I don't know what came over me but they're wrong these are fucking wrong and it was me lack of respect for the people who'd made the decision I thought these are fucking shit he's shit a footy when he does his demos he can't kick the fucking ball he's a fucking pee teacher he doesn't know football if I asked him to do keep ups or if I had to play him now I'd fucking empty him and he's a man so while you listen to this cunt he's nowhere near as good as you he doesn't know his ass from his elbow and he's fucking made the mistake and you can either sulk here and prove that he was right to get rid of you or you can prove this cunt wrong and I just remember I didn't say anything to anyone went downstairs and my granddad's not a he's not a man of emotion do you know what I mean he's no emotion at all like yeah old school and he'd been he kind of formulated differently my granddad he'd been smart enough to get into a grammar school at a young age but he'd come from like seven brothers and as I said he would all work in the abattoir and you know a bell would get rung in the morning and all the lads would have to get up and go out to work and come in and give my granddad's dad the wages and then the house was locked after a very very old school working class family and two of the youngest brothers my granddad Peter and I think his brother Terry were clever enough in the schools they were in they got selected to go to grammar school by whatever tests it was so they went away from their siblings to this grammar school in Prescott but obviously they were from a really poor family so the teachers are going right lads we've got cricket tomorrow and you need your cricket whites well obviously my granddad and my uncle Terry the moment dad haven't got a pot to piss in there was no cricket whites so they'd have to make an excuse to not without getting ridiculed by the other kids and my granddad was a clever man and grew up hating anybody lifting their head above the pulpit he was like keep your head down and like he didn't like but even when I became famous he didn't like like everything that came with it he was very much I always tell a story James make me nans the opposite she's like fuck everybody you're as good as anybody very proud of him big matriarch very like if you work for it and you're proper and you're principled don't take no notice of anybody like she's someone you want on your side and if she sees an injustice she takes it on she won't and she doesn't even have to say something she just looks at you sometimes or she's just got that presence that's all great matriarchs have and my granddad was so my nan tells a story that she wanted to learn to drive and this is just give you some pitch to my grandfather she wants to learn to drive and my granddad's like why the fuck do you want to learn to drive like what the fuck be happy getting a bus he'd walk everywhere so she's like shut up she just didn't listen to him so she starts getting lessons and all that and he's going fuck say fucking she's going out now doing the driving lessons pull it when they live in a close mall new close and he's like all the fucking neighbors will be looking out the window and all that so he's giving her a tie for these driving lessons ah fucking she ends up passing the test and all that mean nan gets a little car and all that and so she can take the kids around and all that because she's a cracker and I won't be going in that car everyone will be looking at me thinking where's Selen drugs he was saying to me nan because she's got this white maestro she bought this white maestro and he's saying so everyone will be thinking I'm Selen drugs he's just a fucking crack bot and I won't be going in the car and all that anyway two weeks after me nan passing the test there he is fucking going to get in the bathroom when he is she couldn't get him out of the bathroom he got ferried everywhere but that was his mindset and she was the same when he got the telly because she got the telly but these were the days when you couldn't afford the telly and you had to sling a pound note a pound coin in the back of it to you don't remember the boxes to keep it going so you don't even want to telly for like an hour and 20 or something if you're slung a nigger in the back and obviously scousers being scousers you'd always find a few ways there's a few ways to get in and that was a bit like do you know what I mean you know where where there's a will there's a way I mean I'm not like that though but do you know what I mean but like obviously that was the mindset and I always remember he kicked off a bad this telly he was like fucking big fucking flash telly and fucking everyone I think were fucking drug dealers and all that all he used to care about was what the neighbors taught of him I mean I had to say don't care what anyone thinks who cares like why shouldn't you want to do well and as I say she went out and got extra jobs she worked for jobs I mean and to make sure her kids had everything they wanted in their life and then she did the same for us as a grandmother and as I say she just set her on that course grandfather was always saying I like play it down and didn't and I was never like me me granddad never would never overly close me me now we're always mega close and I think she's natured that kind of headstrong self determined personality and me she's seen something in me and natured it and as I say I think you know I'm very very fortunate to have had that influence and I think I think we all need that in our lives you know certainly if you're going to go on to fulfill your potential and I think the more of that we've got and that doesn't always have to for me that doesn't always have to be family members like I see I call it fake fake book like Instagram of oh yeah I'm having a fucking great day today look at these fucking sick pictures of me yeah and then pictures get sent in and then they're just sitting there thinking right I might have to slip my wrist here and it's just this nonsense well people living the good stuff is now loads of people are doing you know these podcasts and people are talking like openly and honestly about the life experience and I think the more people do that it just brings down barriers everyone realises they're as troubled as anybody else and if you don't pay the rent on it you know for me my mental health is massively intertwined with having a papers in the morning keeping myself active keeping myself fit learning trying to learn as much as I can whether that's reading a book watching a documentary tuning into all the different various media sources that are out there or actually getting out and just meeting people like Steve Black always said to me you know smile at people when you're walking around and watch the world reflected back at you so whenever I'm out running or mooching about I just make eye contact with people and go alright mate you're okay and you can see and then you just watch all the other people who are walking around with their heads in the phone or the heads on the ground taking part in the rat race and just try it next time you're out and about just walk around and just keep your head held high be proud of the person you are and just make contact with people don't have to say anything sometimes just a look and you get on the people who are on it and then there's all these other people and as I say when life gets hard what do we all do we all isolate whether that's with the drink whether that's with the bet whether that's with all the other baits that are out there for all of us and I think if you've got a circle of friends that you can rely on that you count on one hand I think you've smashed life's head and if you've got a few people who'll say to you hey, stop being a cunt you're acting like a cunt here fucking behave yourself if you've got four or five people like that in your life you're a lot of the winner for me you went to Liverpool after that but I was like no, no this Wikipedia shite isn't it well, because you went to Liverpool but you never told me no, so what happened with me was when I was 13 my nan lived in Monuclosum off St John's estate my nan lived just off the estate on the kind of intersection between Moscroft and the Johns called the Hag kind of near Hightam Village and there's a our school, Thomas Beckett it's the Roman Catholic school and there was another big senior school there's Seal Road, Noseley Hight and at Noseley Hight the secretary of the school was the wife of member Steve Highway who played for Liverpool who ended up being Liverpool's academy director obviously brought through foul on Machman and I think Michael Owen and all that category Steve and Gerard Crop and she'd their school used to play on a Saturday morning and we'd play mid-week we didn't play in a Saturday league so I played Saturday afternoon for the team Sunday morning for the team Saturday afternoon Sunday afternoon for the team and I just wanted a game of footy our school played during the week I had the Tuesday or Thursday that was just the Roman Catholic schools so they had a good footy team and it was lads from our road who were really good who were like playing for like crew, Liverpool there was none of that with us but in our school team there was only me who was at a team there was loads of other lads who played good amateur footy but they weren't that signed up by clubs and our teacher wasn't really that bothered in the seniors Mr Reynolds and Mr Lally about football so the other school their teacher was bothered about footy and they used to play like blue coat and all the boss like Cardlean and all the really good footy schools because they were in Protestant league and they were all like more difficult leagues so my best mate was their best player the other school so I'd say to him listen as your teacher can I play for you on a Saturday because they were getting beat by these big schools so their teacher's gone you can play for us on a Saturday so I used to play for our school during the week I'd play for the opposite school the Protestant school sat the morning then I'd play for my own Saturday team January and Saturday afternoon then I'd finish that afternoon game I'd try and get a good listen if it was an own game if not I'd try and get to me our fellow's game if he was playing for Nose the United Sunday morning I'd play a game for St. Andrew's Rovers and then I had another team a team of our state that was set up by a few of the fellows from the community centre they called themselves Milan who I played for on a Sunday afternoon and as I say like when you think like lads have met in my life Matthew Said who's a good writer wrote a book called Bounce which thinks good for people to read certainly young formulating minds and Matthew had taken a lot of the principle from kind of Malcolm Gladwell's books you know bastardised a little bit here James but the theory of kind of ten thousand hours of purposeful practice makes you elite or world world-classer your pursuit and it was a study done on chess players by a couple of scientists who ended up having kids and at the time the only thing they could come up with with the test of the intellect or the intelligence was chess because it didn't require your physical attributes and then he had daughters so the experiment at that point in time women were considered not to have the same learning capacity as men and that you know they could never be at that point there'd been no chess grandmasters and he ends up teaching his daughters and I think they become like the third highest chess score ever one of them's got multiple world-level chess champions and again it was a an intellectual exercise by scientists to prove that people are capable of anything and that ten thousand hours when I think back to it the council of state streets and the youth club and all the football that was going on we were just a massive hours and hours and hours of practice almost like golfers going on the range and chipping and chipping and chipping and street football is just playing on the streets I mean the prime example of I think Liverpool's street football culture is 16 year old Wayne Rooney slamming off the crossbar against Arsenal at Goodison you know Wayne is from Crockstaff probably the best player, natural talent Liverpool have produced but again you look at Glasgow similar circumstances as the south London's got similar and the Jordies the north east is a bit of a hotbed as well so you look at it and you go alright you haven't been born with all these privileges in life but how lucky you was if you want to be a young footballer to be born to be eight in 1990 when Italian 90s the first World Cup then it's 92 the Premier League and then it's Sky Sports and the big money starts coming and then all the best foreigners come over and the teachers about diet and training and discipline and then to grow up and play in the Premier League as an 1920 year old and you're playing against you know my debut is against J.J. Karchef, Fernando Hierro, Ivan Campo next week then you know you're playing at Spurs and it's Gus Puey and Jamie Redknapp and then you've got to play against Rui Keane, Gerard Vieira, Michael Ailey Lampard, I mean I could be here all day and I go what a lucky bastard you know in terms of just born at a great time and actually you know you weren't but you didn't have everything to give it to you in terms of the cards and it was tough and you had to rein your stripes and Gerard Vieira but also I believe you can make whatever you want to yourself like people always say and especially with my rap sheep they go oh he's done the same again Lepid can't change his spots I'm like I'm not a fucking Lepid you know do you know what I mean? Peter Kay who's probably the biggest influence on my life who was Sport and Chance Clinic who was a clinical psychologist really but became a great friend of mine and he taught me about the brain and the way it works and you know when I think back to it he was he told me a story one time I think he was about 33, 34 and his thing was drinking drugs he drank himself to the point where I think his pancreas had packed up on him so he was on a life support machine at 33, 34 I think he had three kids at the time and he says it was about the fifth to sixth time I'd been broken up in hospital he said but this time like everyone's faces around me when I came round it wasn't like it wasn't the norm and he said you've look you've been in a coma here for like two weeks you've been giving your last rights like four times like if you drink again you're going to die and he said my first four he said yo honestly my first four was as soon as these people leave the room I'm going the off license and I'm getting back on the Scotch like and he said everyone left the room and he said this big Nigerian nurse came in he said she must have been about to any stone he said I'd never seen her before he said I'd never seen this woman before and he said in my mind I'm thinking as soon as these fuck off and I can get out and I've got he said I've got the tubes in my nose catheter he said you know what I'm thinking I'm taking for the drink and he told him you're going to die if you drink he said but such is the power of the illness it's telling him it's telling him he said in this Nigerian nurse pulls him and she says Peter she says I've worked at this hospital X amongst the years and I've seen a lot of people come in in all different states and she said I've never seen anybody as far gone as what you was and she said and I don't know how you've managed to pull through and I don't know how you're still here but somebody somewhere wants you to be alive there's a calling for you and it's important that you get in touch with her and he said that was the first time I thought I'm not going to drink just today he said after she spoke down he said and then she left the room he said and then I just thought right I'm not when I get I'm going to have one day sober I was going to try for one day sober I think he had 83 years sober Peter and became a drug and alcohol counselor I don't know he definitely changed my life like irreconcilably like I wasn't capable of like empathy at the level I now am because you know it just formulated my personality survive the rough and ready council estate of Liverpool you know for me to think about somebody's feelings was not how I was brought up and as I say very very fortunate through the chaos in my life and being a young footballer with notoriety that I met this incredible man who changed my life for the better because he'd lived such a colourful life himself what was it like signing for Man City it was quite straightforward I said to you that story there where I get released by Everton so the guy who'd left Everton had gone to Manchester City Barry Poiton who was the scout when I told you the resume had changed well he found out he was really good within 25 minutes he was really good massively responsible with a few others Jim Cassell, Alex Gibson and Frankie Bunfer the success of Manchester City's academy I think we had from myself Sean Ry Phillips Daniel Sturridge, Stevie Eil and Glenn Wielneck I think we had 26 full internationals whether England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales who came out of that academy in about a five or six year cycle so no doubt before the oil the Abu Dhabi money came into city you know it was the academy and the city's belief in that academy that get the club in its existence and as I say give me a fantastic opportunity but also many other talents of their footy players and Barry phoned me, the phone went down and I told you they had that resolve of the Falka Day and I don't know 25 minutes later maybe phone call Barry Poiton I've heard he've released you what the Falka Day doing come up to the train at Manchester City tomorrow now Evan were in the Premier League at the time Man City at the time were in the championship and in my time at Man City they went in, before I signed Whitey, they went to league one and I remember I was signing I was starting Whitey in the summer of the Jillingham, Nicky Weaver Paul Dickoff, playoff final you know for City and so I was going back as a first time left school Whitey as footballer first season back in the championship after that mad final and then I was there then you know they got in the and I think they went again, Joe Royal the next year they got promoted to Blackbane at the last game of the season then they went down and they sacked Joe Royal and Kevin Keegan took over came back up and then they established themselves as a Premier League club and I got my debut off Kevin Keegan in the Prem so I was lucky that Barry Poiton believed in me at the time they put though were you not getting put on and they stole your strap, was that true? Yeah, so I made my debut at 20 and at 19 I was in the first team squad so six months before I made my debut it might have been five or six months I had to check the dates, I had had too many balls, I was at the near poster I remember them vividly but I got put in the squad we were playing Middlesbrough and now I was the youngest so Sean Wright Phillips was the year older than me he was a year above me all the time at Man City and a team right to get in the first team and do really, really well and at a similar time Stephen Gerrard was in Liverpool's first team who I knew I'm from St John's Estate Stevie's from the Bluebell and as I say Tom Kulshore who's Stevie's good mate, I got into Little Shorty he's my cousin and they lived in the same road and I'd seen Stevie getting Liverpool's first team and I thought if I could if I could get in Liverpool's first team I could get in Man City's because I'd been disrespectful to City at the time Liverpool would have been a man United it's harder to get in them first teams then maybe it is to get in some of the first teams so I remember thinking he's just a kid off he's a sporty kid off the John's like mate off the Bluebell, off the John's I knew all his family had known Stevie, grown up, never played against him because he's three years older than me I couldn't do it, I couldn't do it and then I've seen Shaun Wright Phillips do it he was a year above and I thought and he was smashing it in the first team and I thought if he can do it, I can do it and then getting in the first team 19, Middlesbrough away and I've not been on the bench or anything and he puts me on the bench, Kevin Keegan and then we're 2-0 down and he turns around and he says get warmed up, you're going on Mike, I can't, Premier League and my dad had always said to me Premier League level, the margin of error is that you'll get one chance and you've got to take it so you've got to be prepared at all times it might be when you least expect it to take it so I'm like fucking wired in this is my chance unbeknown to me a first team player got injured on the first team I'm putting the squad light I haven't been on the first team squad before and the kitman's got to print up a number 42 or something like that, 41 and he prints up one chair for me Lez Chapman, 41 so I'm on the bench in the game and I've come out and I'm watching the first I'm like what, I've not been on the benches in the first team and they all used to carry the pads and the sheets and the tie ups and the type so I thought oh this is what you do in the first team so I've just copied them sat on the bench with my thing warmed up at half time, second half he's gone right, you're going on so I've gone out to warm up, come back got my pads on, gone down for my sheets I left them under my seat on the bench and my sheets, gone gone, so I'm thinking this is the lads on the news, up as you do you're thinking, come on lads I don't know what you're on about I'm like, come on Keegan's now gone, are you ready I'm like, I haven't got my sheets he's like, whoa I haven't got my sheets so he's gone to Chapman fucking go and get him and all the sheets so Chapman's ran down into the dressing room he's gone, where's your sheets I've got my pads there because I thought that's what you're doing warmed up at half time, I'm off though I'm unbeknownst to me at half time one of the middle of the fans has leaned over and fucking Billy whizzed my sheets you know what's that happen to, I was going to so my sheets been, so now I'm turning around pleading to the crowd, Les comes back out of the changing room and goes to the manager, gaffer, listen I've only had one chair for him, he got in the squad late notice, I've only printed one chair there's no chair for him, so he looks at me and goes sit down you fucking dickhead, you're not going on so I'm turning around to the crowd whoever's robbed my sheets, I'll give you my sheets and my boots back at the end of the game gives me fucking shit back, I'll give you them not even arse you've took it and they're all just sitting there going I had a bad six chances to sign for Middlesbrough and I never signed for them because I had a dwarf because I got told they had one chance right so don't get on we end up losing the game so he puts Ali Barnaby or one of them and I'm like, did you just draw it I'm like, as low as I felt since I got released I thought that's my chance at the time, Robbie Fowler and Machman they kind of took me under the wing looking after me as a kind of young scouser and I used to sit with the lads in that and I've just sat down in front of the couch on my own and I was just fucking sobbing, just going that's my chance that like and no one like he didn't even have a go at me Keegan like he didn't even fucking say anything and then he just left me out of the squad he never put me in another squad for four months he never used to speak to me so I look back at it now but I had him again didn't I I was lucky that we got a second go we got a second go over so doesn't speak to me and I'm playing in the reserves now now I'm doubled down, I'm playing even better than what it was when I got the first team chance because I'm at my best when my chips are down we sent in mid well I play anyway, just that game yeah brothers play anyway you know what I mean, just love footy I play anyway, just love a game of footy back in the resies and I'm captain of the reserves then Ace of the half it's our coach and Ace of the was brilliant, just keep your head down keep doing what you don't, I got you that opportunity if you keep doing it, can't ignore you so he keeps doing it and I had a big champion in half a cock remember half of the Al Dabi County Newcastle manager who was Kevin Keegan's assistant at England and Newcastle and City half are really like me and he was a bit of old school half he really championed my course and then I go out the team and Jay-Z four months doesn't put me in a squad but in about the last six weeks before I go in a squad they're not playing that well and that coming on on Sunday or Monday and I'm with the reserves and half a cock, I'll be passing them in the corridor and he'd go, why aren't you in the first team and I'd say fuck knows what you might be fucking picks the team I'm ready to go he'd just walk off five weeks out and he'd like grab me and I loved half of it but he's not a fella and you just grab your pin your up against the wall why you call her, she'll be in the first team because they've been beat I'd say, well tell the manager I'm good to go I'm ready to go this continues for four more weeks to the point where I'm now going for fuck's sake half you need to fucking go in another word I'm ready to go and I'd never swear at half anyway he goes, I make sure you're ready I get put in a squad playing Bolton away and like the April always remember it was Grand National Day Bolton away and I think Mark Vivian Fowler someone had had the flu and I'd never been on the bench for the first team since the chairs had been robbed so I hadn't been in a squad I hadn't been on the bench and now I'm in a squad so I'm thinking I might be on the bench again here we've done the team shape you know what I mean I'm not in the team I might be on the bench again here I'm not in the team keegan in the dressing room old school and I'm gone to myself I've gone I fucking sure he just said my name in the start 11 now but like no one said anything to me do you know what I mean I've gone so Robbie Fowler's sitting next to me so I've gone nudged him I've gone he said my fucking name there he's gone fucking hell you're starting it starts laughing so I'm like oh fucking hell like the reality just did you know what I mean so I'm like oh fuck's sake like this is a sink or swim here coming on as a bench you know to get it I'm like in at the deep end here so remember me ass has gone and it was what we were talking about earlier the famous you know we got it from Blackie again the custom art of stuff Blackie was hugely influenced by like custom the old boxing school news to say about the difference between a hero and a coward it's not how they feel it's like what we spoke about your personality you went towards that negative side I went towards the positive side it's what you do with that feeling everyone's scared everyone's shit scared everyone thinks they're not good enough everyone thinks everyone's better than them better looking than them speak better, dress better, cooler everyone's got that imposter syndrome some's imposter syndrome is giant some's is very small some's confidence and ego is giant and some's very small and it's finding what works for you so I always remember he says the hero and the coward in that moment feel exactly the same they're both shitting themselves but it's what they do with that energy that turns the hero into the hero and the coward into the coward so what I find is people avoid those situations where people want to be over prepared for everything now you're a testament to that what you schedule fuck knows I'll just get on with it I'm a good cunt and I know I'm good at what I do but it'll work for me and it's boss to see you smashing it's head in because you're just following your path people who succeed they're the same they just follow it you might start out wanting to be a footballer but you end up being a lifestyle guru or something I've seen a story about there was a Paul McFay who was getting like £15,000 to speak to big businesses now and he starts out as a footballer and I'm like wow what a success that is you're not just a once once rich pony now you're going to have a short career where you can be a footballer until you're 35 and then after that you've got a big life out in front of you like you're a young man if you dream about being a footballer which I did even in your wildest dreams and 40's of age if you've lived like a monk and you've done palaties and yoga and it's so full and you don't know you're breathing and never had the wrong carb in your life and never had a pint of lager you might get to be 40 before you have to knock it on the head but then you've got a huge life out in front of you and for me as I say some days you will act like a coward but that doesn't mean you are a coward the leopard doesn't change its spots you can change your spots I've seen as I say Peter K great mate of mine who said I nearly killed myself through drugs and alcohol abuse become a drugs and alcohol counsellor and changed thousands of people's lives for the better people who he'll never ever meet as I say a society grows great when men plant trees of which the fruit they'll never get a sample and I think the way we live in now you know we've got to do more of that we've got to leave the world a better place than what we found if it's not ours we're just passing through so seeing you've then got your debut see with that fear and the one either you push against or you pull back was that and you're in mind just to give it everything so this is how I knew people talk about I just knew I can't explain this to you I knew I was ready I could play men's football I knew the bigger the challenge every time the challenge got bigger for a young kid so the bigger crowds are playing cup finals and I always got better what age were you in your debut I was 20 I should have made it at 19 but we sure got Billy with his lad but when I went in I never came back out so I never got dipped in I went in and stayed in but I was a bit older so you see people get dipped in at 17, 18, 19 and everyone's different everyone you know Rooney was playing and banging them in Toppins at 16 against an invincible David Seaman you know what I mean when did he retire Rooney 31 where Cristiano is still going so for me everybody gets Delta a set of cards I think if you get a 2-7 off shooting you turn that into a pair of Jacks by the end of the year or not I think you've done well if you get a pair of Aces and you end up with a pair of Sixers at the end then you fuck the job up somehow you've just got to make the best you know you're trying three people how you'd like to be a threat for me if I see someone working hard and being a good console trying to help them out if I see someone acting like a console I ignore them or I might sometimes take them to task because I think someone needs to re-engineer you every now and again someone comes along in all of our lives who goes what the fuck are you up to and hold up a mirror to you and I think we all need that I was a bit disappointed with his stance recently on Israel but Jordan Peterson's really good stuff some really good stuff in recent years in terms of becoming the master of your own destiny how can you do anything if you don't get up and make your bed in the morning and I think the more people are out there talking about good examples like when you're saying you're cleaning sober and what you're up to and how your life's turned and as I say at some point people were saying James Leppard can't change his spots and you've fucking proved them wrong because every drug in alcohol gets up and goes right that's it I'm done for Peter it was a massive intervention in terms of nearly lost his life but he got up and said I'm not drinking again I'm going to take it one day at a time I believe you choose to allow stuff in so offence, I choose to be offended because if someone calls me a fat cunt and I go I'm a bit out of shape at the minute and I accept that offence if I'm not at go I just look down like what the fuck are you on about but now with social media people can just offend you you put a finger up saying where's my podcast with Joey Barton or whatever and there'll just be a load of people offending you a load of people supporting you and just the old gamut in between that because that is the world we now live in where everyone's got an opinion how long were you with 35 years? I was with City for 9 years James 9 years yeah because you went after Evan so I left Evan at about 14 times but you played professional 5 years in the Premier League wasn't you so I left Evan at 14 and I didn't just like make it I nearly didn't make it about 9 or 10 times from 14 to 18 and a half I was touching go all the way every 6 weeks, every 6 months I was like are you going to be big enough and at about 17-18 I was faced with a kind of life like a crossroads in your life there's a representational team from Arbor and Noseley that goes and plays in the Dallas Cup and it's kind of really good semi-pro footballers you know lad do you play for kind of teams below the Vauxhall it's not the Vauxhall Conference like the National League so the Conference in Scotland that they probably play in your Premier League because it's about that standard isn't it in the bottom part the bottom part is the same with that they already ate me the Scottish son flop Joey Barton as I go with Scotland they'll say but no like so our pyramid in terms of full-time professional is kind of Division 2 Division 1 Championship Premier League obviously the National League you get some pro teams with big budget and some semi-pro teams and then the next tier is below that my dad kind of played that level but these lads they'll go and get a scholarship in America and get a degree and they'll play collegiate football in America it's just it's bad not good enough to make it a professional level in the UK but it's still good and go and get an education and a different experience of life by going to the States and it gets them away from Noseley as I say which has got fantastic career prospects for further education and then the Dallas thing for me I'm not really fancy that city and I was training with these lads and then I was easily good enough to go with them when I was younger and I got selected for their team and at the point city are going to release me the same way you touch and go and they remember saying to me dad listen I might as well leave city because city don't really fancy me they haven't fancy me for the last couple of years I'll go to Dallas there might be scouts there from fucking who knows Mexico because like I'm going out there you know I'm going I'll do really well there and I'll get an offer of a scholarship and I might get a team that really fancy me so I was like really torn between it and my dad's like listen you can fucking always go to Dallas like they send me pro stay at city till they kick you out till they say you're no longer any good you're not good enough and you need to leave and he said and use the gym because if you leave there you're going to have to get a gym membership and you're going to have to train on your own they only train twice a week you're training every day a week here so you're going to fall behind the elite level players so stay at city until you've ex like you've over ex overstayed your welcome so I remember him going you know what he's right there so I knocked back on to America and stayed at city and I just I had to get the I wasn't good enough that he would put me up in digs so I was on a non-concert he didn't even give me a YT because he was so unsure about me so I had to get the bus in from Liverpool every morning so I'd get I'd leave our house at night and at half six I'd get to the train station quarter to I was like I'd run to the train station quarter seven saying from there to Red Gill jump off to Red Gill run to the National Express bus station get on the National Express bus to Manchester City Centre from the Rocky get off there get another bus to Moss side the nine bus all the way through Manchester all the way through Moss side to Main Road jump off at Main Road get me kit from the laundry and then run across Moss side through the back alleys to Platt Lane which was in train two sessions morning and afternoon five or six o'clock say I'd have to run across to put me dirty kit back in the laundry back on the bus in the middle of Moss side which was tricky at the time you'd have to have your wits to buy and then back to City Centre back on the National Express so I'd leave our house at quarter to seven and then I'd get in seven or eight o'clock from 16 to 19 so I couldn't get in any trouble so like but then I wasn't doing I wasn't in and I was just about getting by if I had bunk on the National Express and not get me you got like a ten trip fucking pink card like a zoney like a save away and they'd clip off every time and if you could get through without them extra journey and there was four or five of us doing the same journey and you'd have to if you could have half inch paper or a chocolate bar on the way back from a news agent that was not coming out of your X's at the end of the week you know what I mean you were living on some outfit like three or four years and as I say using the gym and I always remember Jim Cassell who was the Academy Director he pulled me in and he said everyone's telling me I should release you like I've I've canvassed everybody about keeping you on and and nobody's in like nobody wants to do it and he said well I'm looking in your eyes and I can see there's a fire and I see you practicing in the dome and I see you going in the gym and I see you leaving here at five when lads are getting off at like two o'clock and he said I'm gonna keep you on for six more six more months and that happened to me about three times and then I just grew and caught everyone up and then I'd had this training because I was doing X's and then I filled into my size that I was gonna be and then once I got ahead of everybody I had the the black sheep kind of mindset about training and being okay with you know in football you're busy cunt oh look at that busy cunt doing his X's and look at that busy cunt going to gym I was cool with that because my dad said to me listen you're in a team of 20 lads there if you's a really talented group one of your lads will get in the first team so you might think they're all your mates and all that now but it's gonna be him or you for the first team Jay-Z and I came off a rough and ready council estate where I knew it was close margins See when you broke into the first team and you established yourself as a first team player because you got yourself in a bit of a hassle when was the first time you got in trouble you're not fainting with the team first pre-season I think I had a ding dong didn't I at Doncaster did I not start like a 22 man brawl or something like that so okay you know that summer I played made my debut against Bolton we lost 2 nil but it must have done well because he's kept me in the start 11 so the second game I played against Tottenham at White Art Lane and scored and my dad's just meant to be this big a case was at the game and fainted because he'd seen me score big emotional shite fainted in the crowd so I always say to him you remember me first go on the count because he was fucking unconscious I understand at White Art Lane and then I think my sixth game was at Amfield first time I'd ever played at Amfield and we beat them 2-1 and I always told me it's mythical you can't win at Amfield first time we go on Nicholas and Elchus scores 2 we beat them 2-1 I've seen Peter Schmeichel make the best save I've ever seen live in the same game from Milan Barros and I thought fucking hell it's easy I'd been to Amfield in the reserves and played them one there and I played against Liverpool's teams all the way through growing up and always had the number but I'd never played the first team the first time I ever played there we dusted them 2-1 they don't make the Champions League I never fucking won there again I thought fucking easy they should have cracked it I think the best they ever got there again was a draw and you know I didn't come out the first team so I played in all of them games started played 90 minutes in them all got to the end of the season and I thought you know no one's really spoke to yet it's not like now where people have talked to you at all different levels signed a new deal went from like 600 quid a week playing in the first team to the end of that season I think they put me on like 6 grand so that's like life changing money for me you know I'm like the highest earner that's ever lived in our family you know I can think about like buying a house and like moving out of my hands spare bedroom and all that and then you know Keegan signs Claudio Rainer that's something and funnily enough he just texted me this afternoon Paul Bosfeld so Claudio Rainer sent him in Fielder, American captain and Paul Bosfeld two years before was a Dutch international and was captain of Feyenoord and lifted the Europe UEFA Cup as it was known then I think it's the Europa League now so I thought this fucking doesn't fancy me he's fucking bringing in these cunts that he plays me unbeknown to me I got Keegan the second time at Newcastle when he came back to Newcastle and he said no no you were a young lad he'd only played seven games I didn't know whether I could rely on your body for I said well why don't you fuckers shit me down and tell me because I thought you didn't fancy me and I fucking hated you because I thought you're bringing in these but I just seen it as a challenge and to be fair I played over all of them that season and that pre-season I was fighting for me existence because they'd come in we played Doncaster in a friendly and I don't do friendlies I don't do anything like I play to win in everything if I like playing my kids on FIFA I can't let them win like I go now if you beat me you're better than me so I have to have competition and you know the pre-season friendly you know sometimes when you're a Premier League club and you play them kind of league one championship clubs a few of the knobs get carried away don't do you know especially if you're a young player like Grace respected them like they try and fucking mark the territory certainly they did them days and especially in central areas so I always remember I think the strikers name and he was about 6 foot 9 Leo 4 Tune West had gone in for a ball but he was like just a ridiculous tackle for pre-season really high so I remember giving it to him like and he was massive like he was able to spot and he's 6 foot 9 man pay 80 and I'm giving it to him saying you fucking big shitbag and the next tackle he's come in and he's properly tried to do me but obviously being as coming in as I was you know I grew up in a rough and ready part of the world and certainly playing football you've got to be tough to survive fucking seeing it coming especially big dope centre forward like that and managed to ride this tackle and you know where you just landed on them so I've landed on them and anyway the captain or something is fluid anyway separated 5 minutes after that there's a centre mid for them who's you know looks like the milky bar kid as I'm pressurising them and he's done that one you know where you fall on the ball and you put the ball in between the legs so they're like obstructing you but it's not a foul and instead of letting them get up or letting the ref stop I've just continued to kick through him and the ball while the ball's on the floor obviously it's on now so all players are having it and obviously I've started it and I think the captain's got there's a famous picture of him like gripping me around the neck but like he's like a 36 year old fella I'm 20 and he's waited to like have like you know preseason friendly to grip up a young kid like I'd never think of doing that as a 35 year old senior to a young player I'd be like come on kid but obviously you know everyone's different so I get in the dressing room at halftime preseason friendly and Kevin Keegan's the manager and he absolutely gets like right after me just like fucking takes me off starts having to go because I've started at 22 man fucking scrapping a preseason friendly pretty much and then after that James the guy was pretty much cast that was Joey Barton pan to my villain and in every story that came after that that was the narrative like that was like that's the character you're going to be there's good cop and bad cop you know Batman and the Joker and that's where we're going with you like and then obviously you know the stuff you get into afterwards becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy did you feel that though as soon as that happened you had to play up to that character because were you like that before any of that stuff happened you always had that fire yeah I've always been rough and ready like even as a young kid before I was that just my personality I've always been abrasive in terms of I stand up for what I believe in as I say I come from Liverpool come from Highton which is a set of very very principle people grew up in a time where we're coming off the back of you know Thatcher's Tory austerity in our area coming into seven years of age when Hillsborough happens and seeing the aftermath of that so you grow up very anti establishment and very anti authority and you form your own view of the world and as I say some of the greatest people I've ever met come from that area really principled fantastic people and again you know the difference between right and wrong and for me there's a little bit of an area Liverpool certainly our area where if you act like a cunt there's a ramification of that you're not allowed to just behave and say what you want it's the same to you on the way in the world it's gone a bit weird because people have forgotten what it's like to get punched in the face I think they can just say whatever they want to people online and in these different things and you know where I grew up if you had a very very strong opinion and you wasn't able to back that up then you wasn't able to have that opinion seeing your brother as well was involved in a murder how did that affect you was the media came after you for that because we can't stop and affect what other people do in their lives but being a professional footballer known as a hot head that they use that against you was at a moment where they came back in for you things happened don't they like you know a look back at it you can't chart your course like it's so app-azid like it's so you know you try and make plans and these people and I'm doing my pro license by head this week and they talk about planning into the future and I'm like I'm 41 here but like it's so tough to plan it it's such a random journey and highs and lows and everything in between so for me you know the area I grew up in as I say I can remember you know my mum's side of the family you know my dad's side of the family not crime orientated and quite working you know working colour always working jobs and roofers and abattoir butchers etc my nan always worked and then my mum's side of the family you know uncles involved in post offices, robin banks led them into I think becoming heroin addicts you know certainly as I've got older they've had struggles with heroin and just life for crime so I've seen the contrast of both a family trying to work their way out you know huge life experience I just put it down so it's fantastic tool tools to have available to deal with the world as it presents itself to me now so I always remember being in ours in the school all of these and we used to have a slide and patio door in boundary road and my dad wouldn't ever let any, my dad didn't really get on with my mum's family particularly well I know why now and it's not for airing in this podcast but I didn't understand it at the time but he wouldn't let my uncles come down the path and all that he wouldn't lad near our house if he came to see me he'd have to shout from the end of the gate my mum's name and my mum had come out and she'd sometimes let them in but if my dad found out he'd been in the house he'd be like don't have them for whatever reason he's just never gone on with them as I say I understand why now and I always remember this afternoon school all of these and I was checking the fucking tele-text because that's how I used to find out what was happening before social media you had to sling the tele-text on to see if Evan was saying anyone and you'd have all the rumours in the papers the tele-text on I just remember this banging on the patio window so I've opened the patio it's my uncle Eddie and he's flustered in that so I've let him in and as I've opened the door I've heard like the helicopter he's come running in with all these things he's only based I think a post office and he's had all this so he's upstairs now in ass and I'm having to follow him because I'm thinking I'm only about 12 at the time I'm thinking if one of us is going to kill me because so I've gone upstairs now and he's obviously got this bag with all notes in and he's like listen I was into Sabuti own stickers at the time and he's gone listen don't fucking tell your dad I've been here I've had to say chase from the business there just robbed a post office I'm keeping all the notes he kept all the notes and he said if you don't tell your dad I've been in here you can keep all the coins so at the time you know 12 it must have only been about fucking 40 quidding in coins but that was like winning the lottery so for fuck and I'll write a better keeps to me so I've obviously got the coins and obviously allowed me to get a few new Sabuti old teams and goals and that for me Sabuti old get stickers or whatever I was into shoot magazine or match magazine so I remember that at a young age you remain in terms of like crime was just around us you know as I say there was kind of smack heads were kind of forbidden on the estate so as kids we'd had car blanch to kind of attack any smack heads so have you seen anybody like tooting up or whatever and there was flats and all that by us you know you could throw bricks at them or they were like a sub species of of creature on our estate and like the brand was just forbidden on St John's there was other estates where that happened but heroin was just a no-no and that was the local art cases who enforced that you know the police didn't really come on our estate if they did you know they were made unwelcome relatively quickly I mean I remember finding an undercover we used to climb in the flats above the shops where our school was and you obviously make dens in there and we'd knocked through wall after wall you know just kids playing in the school holidays or whatever and remember we broke in through a wall into one of the flats and there was a full surveillance kit set up and geared pointing out the windows one of the houses of someone we knew so obviously we didn't touch it because you know you're widen at the time you know the difference between being a grass and not being a grass you know from a very young age and obviously when they made you know the feathers out it was pointed that away and obviously I remember them coming in and giving us all the drops but they went in and obviously took all the equipment out you know remember seeing a kid getting stabbed at 17 and remember me half of his mate Ego getting made at 14 15 and remember me uncle Joe got made it in the blue bell pub got it over the head of the pool queue I must have only been 10-11 so but you thought it was normal you thought oh everybody must be seeing this and don't forget on TV at the time we're watching the Iraq war, watching Kosovo watching Serbia watching Sarajevo be bombed so you're going canal it's rough on the guns but at least we're not fucking getting bombed you know you didn't know that this other world was out there and I presumed it was we're thinking kids in Glasgow the same they love the 40 and it's rough and ready kids in every other big town in the city or in the same bouton you know for us it was perfectly normal you know it's only when you look back at it now you go fucking hell like we must have been strong my size getting through there like you mean but you know no different James do you you just fucking make the best of what you've got and listen you know who knows if the cards have been dealt enough you know you might have turned out to be a fucking right wanker yeah what happened after man city why did they release you is it he didn't release me you're saying for Newcastle 5.8 yeah so I went to city why did you why did you well I had a few scrapes didn't I so I had I had you becoming a problem because all this shit that you were causing because like I say it never affected your football but when you seem to have lost that you fucking lost it and nothing really you couldn't really reign it back so I don't think I did you know that's a scary thing about it isn't it that that's the perception of it buddy like you yeah that's not so obviously because you've got to have that clean cut I mean to be in the Premier League you know that yourself maybe now but you look at now you do yeah clean cut where you reign it and they're speaking properly you never seem you seem to have stayed love a pill mindset you seem to where you grew up where I'm fighting any cunt who says anything or goes against it because obviously the trouble outside that must affect you as well because getting the jail getting sent off and then causing fucking riots like did nobody ever say to you look you're just young fucking screw the head or was it just a case he can listen if you're playing good football as long as you're playing well on a saty I mean a little bit less now because you got the old cancel culture you know I think just seeing that with the kind of you know football step out of line now it's there's a different tolerance level from when we were young you know obviously the media introspection into your life is completely different with social medias you know put a huge magnifying glass on the lads you know for us it was kind of like they're just young lads being young lads you know young boys young men act like dicks sometimes especially if you're putting a right few shilling in the pocket and a bit of fame and a bit of notoriety all of a sudden you know you just start to believe that you are the reincarnation you know you are sent from the gods to you know own the world you know we all get this megalomania kind of I'm the centre of the universe kind of mindset as a young person and then obviously your wings get clipped because you make a few mistakes or you're getting a few scrapes and as I say then you make your way through life and then you know the more and more I live life the more and more I realise that oh I'm not having the same life experiences as other people like most other people don't want to achieve everything they've dreamt of achieving by the age of 23 24 like you know most people spend their whole lives chasing something and then changing and then changing and changing and changing but when you do something and you set out on a course and there's all sorts going on around you all kinds of different things going on around you and you manage to stay steadfast in that when you're 15, 16, 17, 18 and there's women and there's drugs and there's all them temptations and you manage to go no, not for me, I know where I'm going all your mates are going to parties and they're telling you all these great stories and you're in the house and you watch a match today and you're having tea and toast with your nan and you're going to bed at 10 o'clock on a Saturday and on a Friday night and you know and you're going is this going to pay me back I'm not guaranteed to make it is this going to pay me back and then you want to play in the Premier League and then you play in the Premier League and then you want to play for England you play for England and then you realise not only do I never have to work again my kids are never going to have to work again and even their kids might have to keep going here and then you just think wow the cards I was dealt and the tools I was giving him the toolbox and now I've smashed it I remember signing for Newcastle signed a five-year deal What was that decision before it leaves? City, just outgrown city at the time I got really frustrated I was trying to I had Frank Lampard, Steve and Gerard I had a me in the England national team and I had been captain in the February five or six teams I tried to buy me in the summer and the window before that City were fighting to stay up John Waldo was a great guy was the chairman at the time and he was keeping the club going the sale of Sean Ray Phillips kept the club going and the lads who were coming through the academy were keeping the clubs head above the water then we started trading in everyone was buying foreign players but you then get in the shit at the end of the stick you're not getting the top boys and they were good lads but there were some maggots in there as well and then the culture just started slowly to erode and I just thought if I want to fade my career selfishly I need to leave Man City I want to get in the England squads Frank and Steve and Gerard they're paying for Chelsea and Liverpool respectively scoring every week I've got no chance if I'm happy to I was City's top scorer the season before I left with nine goals I'm not known for scoring goals James and we stayed up comfortably in the Premier League which is bonkers when you think of it now and I had the ding dong with Usman Darbow I'd had the face so we had the pre-season friendly with Don Caster that was the kind of fuse was lit after that the cigar in the eye so then what was I 21-22 we've had I'm in the first team we had the Christmas party so the lad who that happened Jamie Tandy's the year below me we played in the same FA youth cup team so I knew him all the way through he's a whiffin' sure boy I'm a Liverpool boy whiffin' sure's I think the biggest counsellor state in Europe so rough and ready I'm from the Johns rough and ready I don't know like with Tandy but he was a bit leery he was like a little bit of a beefcake a little bit leery but didn't really have as I say you know I grew up not into boxing but Peter Colshaw my second cousin was Straw Whitewell champion my granddad was one of the key people in starting a boxing club in the area I'm from Highton my granddad was navy boxing champion even though I played football my uncle Paul was a good ABA boxer I mean next door one but one neighbour Frankie Lachan's half fellow was a good England schoolboy boxer and you're fighting every day in school you're fighting in rival as well drilled as you were for the game of 40,000 hours of personal practice we probably had a good 8,000 of them we had the fighting amongst ourselves or fighting in that young youth space in rough and readiness of working class Liverpool at that time you had to defend the space that you stood up in because if you got yourself caught in the wrong part of town at the wrong time you got taxed whatever you had on you got took off we didn't have much but it's still stung if you got filled in and got taxed you got your gear took off so you had to have your wits about it you're at all times the toolbox you're developing for is to survive my dad was teaching me how to survive in the rough and ready world he was surviving and he didn't ever think I was going to be a footballer and have to behave in a different way and then obviously you get that exposure and I say the Tandy one we're in a nightclub in Manchester I think we were dressed as the Beatles you know the old Sargent Peppers there was four of us, Mila's, Chapman, James Black and someone else Robbie Fowler, Machman, I remember Army I can't remember what Tandy was dressed as all the players were there fancy dress we were on the booze all day Sunday morning so all on the booze and then I think poor Bossfels or Fowler started it but they were all in fancy dress in this bar and they started setting each other's costume a light so it was the seniors who started just banning the edge of it or whatever and quickly in five or ten minutes it went round the whole group and then it stopped and then there was a karaoke and people were singing and Bane's Tandy's costume so someone had got me and I ended up getting Tandy back not Malus in it he didn't have the opportunity to get me back so everything gets calm down lighters are confiscated off everybody right, by the security we have a karaoke, karaoke on drink and this is like three or four in the afternoon now six o'clock we've all gone for a team meal and you have to go and change out your fancy dress to get changed into your smart casual so we go back to the hotel change out the fancy dress meal still boozing seven or eight o'clock now we're in a nightclub now Danny Mills, who's right back at the time had gone to Jimmy's Savile so I was walking around dressed as Jimmy Savile unappropriate now as you can imagine you wouldn't do it now loads did go as Jimmy's fucking Savile in the fancy dress didn't he fucking crazy nonsense so we're in this nightclub and Mills is still smoking a cigar so we're just sitting at the table talking and all that and I always remember they had this white nylon fucking Prada T-shirt on like just dead plain T-shirt I just remember sitting here talking like across the glass table like this and I thought the ashtray moved but it was actually stuck to the table Mills is sitting here smoking a cigar show and I fill up some of the LCR and everyone just mingling around in this bar thinking what the fuck's that and I've looked like that and it's just a light here and my T-shirt's on fire like it's like obviously flammable material it's on fire like so I've had to like rag it off and stomp it out and as I've looked like that Tandy's, Jimmy Tandy's standing here now I know I've set fire to his fancy dress costume four hours earlier so he's obviously got me back but I'm in my normal club so I'm got my top off so now I'm needing to go home and get changed and there's an ashtray so I've gone for the ashtray and I couldn't get the ashtray off the table so I've managed to take Mills's cigar off it so as I've as I've tamed Tandy's standing right next to me but he's looking the other way as if by the way I haven't done that so for some bizarre reason unknown to me to this day I've thought it'd be a fantastic idea as a payback to him to stomp the cigar out on the back of his head that was my logic, makes no sense now but at the time, a bane for a bane he's getting this on the back of his head as I've gone like that to stick it on the back of his head he's naturally felt me coming and turned towards me and it's managed to graze his eyelid right he's gone down as you would if somebody fucking grazes your eyelid I haven't, I think how hard it is if someone moves towards your eye with the finger you move but anyway, graze his eyelid, stupid thing to do Tandy's in this all players party with his brother he's brought his brother to the party and Tandy and his brother, scarper off to the toilet he's had this cigar put out on his head Danny Mills has gone with me what the fuck have you done? I'm like what's going on? I'm like listen he's fucking set fire to my shirt so I've just fucking stumped the cigar out on him I don't know, I've covered him in the eye because I've just gone like that and as I've done it he's turned so Sylvan distance, I'm a captain at the time big Sylvan's come over and I've gone on great with Sylvan he's gone fucking hell what have you done I'm like, I think I'm in the right here so I'm a fumer I'm after feeling Tandy in I'm still after punching his head in for setting fire to me so he's gone you better come and sort this out so I'm like the red mists now come down and I'm like fucking hell some materials must have happened here so I walk along with Sylvan to go and make sure Tandy's alright he's gone in the toilet so as I'm walking and I get to the toilet there's like a walkway of about 20 yards from like the toilet walkway to the toilet door but it was like lit up it was fucking learning to think back to it now it was almost like it was meant to be so it's like lit like dead glamourously and there's just nobody in this 20 yard space and Tandy's brother comes fucking steaming out the toilet door where is he and going to fucking kill him right because he's obviously seen his brothers had a cigar por out on him so as he says this and opens the door I'm walking along the passageway with Sylvan distance so he sees me and he's older than Tandy and comes steaming towards me obviously you know I'm in relatively quickly so he's fast a kip and after him Tandy comes flying out now so not only have I stuck a cigar out on him he sees the kid fast a kip on the floor so loses it comes flying at me so obviously he gets another couple distan and the lads jump in between it and that's the end of the matter so Tandy and his brother the rest of the lads get together throw Tandy and his brother out the door you've been acting like fucking console knight the light has got fucking put away four hours ago you've acted the cunt, you shouldn't have been here anyway you've both been filled in, get the fuck so Tandy and his brother are launched out of our players do Machan and Fowler and the lads I'm like fucking hell they have done what's happening but it's kicked off but they're like just sit there have a baby with sand John Machan it's ever so unclear everything's sand calm down about two hours after this the most violent bar brawl I have ever seen in my life takes off in this bar our goalkeeper for the youth team at the time was a Danish kick called Kevin Elegard 6 for 4, 6 for 5 built like a brick shit, I was taught he was hard as nails lovely kid you wouldn't want to mess with them just on pure bulk alone ends up in an argument with someone next to me with this Elegard snoozing on the floor this lad hits him with one dig and he's fast to kip there's chairs going bottles, nicholas and elkers is there with all his mates, the most violent bar fights I've ever seen the whole bar gets smashed up I'm not in to do with it it had absolutely nothing to do with me I'm sitting in the corner, I've gone I've best get out of here I've got home so I'm thinking next day in the Manchester Evening News is this bar fight, nicholas and elkers the big star of the city of this bar fight so I'm going fuck now I've got away with that I've had to fight myself in there with Tandy I've got away with it so that's the Sunday Monday we're back in training so I've phoned Tandy to say listen I'm playing in the first team every week here I'm not going to fuck for me it's the end of it you've had a crack, you shouldn't have done that that's the end of it and I was prepared to square it off with the kid I wasn't going to go on site with the manager which I could have done, listen he's a fucking dick he ain't training with us, I'm first team player so I was going to be dead sad and get in unbeknown to me he's already sold stories at the papers on Sunday fucking of course right at the papers on Sunday so it's out now no that was Darbow, so that came afterwards so Tandy's gone fully in and obviously the manager's put me in, Keegan what the fuck's happened, so I've told him what's happened as I always am, they're cards on the table so anyway Tandy ends up getting loaned out, we're fucked off and he was a bit of a mad kid anyway he wasn't no angel so now I've started this 22 man brawl, now I've put a cigar out into somebody's eye and obviously the story about that was incredible the fucking transaction it made and then the next one's Darbow so at the back end of that city cycle which accelerated me in terms of leaving we'd signed a few foreigners who were as I say maybe not doing everything right smoking in the training ground and they had a fucking smoking room and not turning up the training in the correct spot, not doing what they needed to do and then the manager was not great at the time P.S. Keegan had left there was a bit of a bad feeling in the club, P.S. had gone in and was acting a bit weird and then Darbow and me ended up having a war of words on the training ground and it kind of got on as I say it's good mate with Sylvan Distan who's a good palomar and we were in competition for places and we weren't overly close because I never ever respected this the way he trained or the way he prepared and he'd had a good career plate for Inter Milan I think Latio and France but he'd just come for a payday I think, he was acting a bit of a tit and then it just went off in training one day where he's left a bit on me this is 2-3 days before the Manchester Derby are all trafficked back end of the season in April we're safe, we're not going down not needed to play for other than pride and he's lamped me in training or I've lamped him or something one's lamped I've passed the ball and clipped me a bit late so the next time he does it obviously I'm leaving him on and it just escalated in terms of no one's taking a back foot and then it ends up in a war of words where I was a young kid I'm only 23-24 at the time and he's 28-29 and he's obviously start having a bit of a verbal and before me I'd seen Nicholas and Elche punch Steve Jordan who's a year above me four times in the face on the training pitch and scarred in his face and the manager doing nothing just had to take his stitches because and Elche was the top player and I've seen Paul Bossfelt throw a dig at somebody so Paul Bossfelt had slapped me sorry on the training pitch I'd been arguing with Bossfelt and just had the blue he just slapped me across the face and by the time he had chances to respond everyone's in the middle of it I was f***ing fuming thought you cheeky cunt but he dumbed me in terms of I never thought anyone would f***ing raise their hands on the training pitch and he f***ing caught me and I thought you cheeky cunt he's going on we're having a war of words I'm saying to Darbo you s*** you f***ing crap you can't even get a game you f***ing crap and he's in French and all that and as you know I'm fluent in French now but away is at the time away is at the time so he's f***ing giving me down the banks in French so we're walking off the training session's finished do you know what I mean we're walking off he's f***ing giving it to me in French f***ing crap which to a footballer if you're not playing in the first team and someone who is playing saying that's the worst thing so you can get I'm going like you know you're f***ing crap and he just lost his head so we're walking off in the variables and from nowhere he's flipped over so he turned around and he's sprinted towards me so I'm thinking I'm getting a crack here because the way he's running at me I knew he wasn't coming for a f***ing to tickle me so he's turned and ran 15 yards just to turn the pitch he'd bare in mind he's ahead of me so he's turned and ran backwards towards me he gets a bar f***ing within range 2 foot away from me 3 foot away from me so I'm like what the f*** going on here and his arm comes back soon as his arm comes back I don't know what happened after that you know your natal instinct kicks in this fight or flight and my instinct is to fight and my natal instinct kicks in there and I disarm him relatively quickly but wouldn't be known to me I've knocked him out so he's out on his feet the first punch he's gone like that he says to slap me but as that's you know you don't wait to rank down where I'm from and I've the first jab I've hit him with right on the money and it's stunned him the second one I've hit him with to put him away so he's on the floor and actually there's a scrap in tails I'm down with him and I ain't coming off here until the referee stops the contest you know or you don't like now get up and you f***ing kick f*** out of me like you can't take them chances so within a few seconds it's over bang bang bang and obviously Ousmane's had the shot of his life because he's bigger bigger than me and he thought he was capable of imparting his belief system on me and obviously he's had a reality check and you know for me that was the end of the matter you know we finished saying and we go in after he's been up and told what's going on you know I went in and said look do you want round two here we'll get on the astro tape again if you want to sort this out he didn't want any part of that I'm sent home then no problem shouldn't be having a fight with your team mates and then next minute he's gone the papers the next day with a f***ing big piece of sticky tape on his finger his beard to take a picture of him the f***ing you know you have to defend yourself against that there but again I said to him loads of times like I I was 23 at the time I'm 41 now someone had filled me in and he went and said to the policeman that I did something from behind and that which was f***ing lies absolute lies why were they allowed to go to the corpus and other teams listen there's always scraps we've had scraps in the picture and it's done shake hands sorry Cudo that's it but why was those guys allowed to go to the papers because it was you maybe someone goes to the papers or the authorities where I'm from yeah that's actually getting them off the team as well you know for me it says more about him than me if he'd have filled me in I wouldn't have gone to the papers I wouldn't have gone to the busies if he'd have filled me in and I felt it was unjust I'd have done a bit of training and I'd have come back and gone come on you bollocks round two that's how it's sorted by us if someone says something about you you know you're not on you know no weapons which is the way it should be no weapons get yourself in the car park get yourself in the back garden, get yourself on the bowling green wherever it is and you know sort your differences out I grew up in that world, my dad taught me that's how my dad solved his problems that's how his dad solved his problems that's how my granddad solved their problems and then all of a sudden I'm the first generation that's like you know you have to solve your problems in a different way was that the final new in the corporate mode setting that was for me though I decided to leave so city suspended me and then just the way they supported Darbo who for me had done nothing for the football team and I thought I just didn't like the way they behaved in the aftermath of that event and I thought no that's me done I'm you know I don't know use anything you give me a chance I think I've paid you back with four to five years as a senior you're going to command a decent transfer fee for me you know I had a clause in my contract for five and a half million that I'd negotiated two years before so I knew they were going to get that clause activated I'd already rejected Everton, Westam all the chores of other teams you know in the two or three years before that and I just thought you know now I'm not going to stay on and you know at that point John Wardley was calling me asking me to stay on I just felt needed to get away from Liverpool and North West just felt it was the time for the change of seniority and obviously Freddie Shepherd and Newcastle United you know as well as Everton, Westam we were taking over I think by the Icelandic banks at the time were all in the market for me and I thought you know Newcastle at the time were Michael Owen you know trying to get in the Champions League you know some big names and you know I just thought I'm going to say something different and end up starting for Newcastle four years up there yeah done four years at Newcastle where were you in the jail at Newcastle yeah at Newcastle yeah at first year up there I got injured and then the Christmas I'd gone out just weren't going wet like weren't going as planned like you know injury first time in my career I'd had an injury which was caused by experts you know Sam Allardyce's experts who'd changed me over photographs in my boot when I'd played for 24 years virtually unscathed before that first pre-season game you know this old photo definitely contributed to me snapping and then I'd not been injured I'm living away from home not got you know me I'm living in a flat in the city centre of Newcastle rather than you know your family security network around you you know at that point my nan had come to my house and cleaned my house and she'd make me tea and make sure you know it was like a show house my house I didn't have any kids or anything at the time you know me dinners for me and made sure I ate healthy because I was a professional athlete that was you know I had to live like a fucking Spartan to play against your Patrick Vieiras and Roy Keans and Stevie Gerrard and Scolzers with the ability I had you know I couldn't be eating shit food and not training properly and again the great time and I have coming into football you know you live through this foreign invasion where they bring some incredible habits you know the way we should eat the way we should train the way we should prepare for professional football and they were you know fantastic influencers on me as a young player and as I say for me to go to Newcastle then and you know it was a first time I'd knew I'd never had to work ever again in my life I just knew I'd signed a five year deal I knew the numbers involved and I'm like that hunger you know I had holes in me trainees as a kid you know being rough and ready and that hunger for the first time it was like just that the injury and then the ability just to take a breath and go I fucking like this is done do you mean like I don't have to ever work again like it's a fucking mad feeling especially for a kid off a council estate and then you're like okay right let's let's set some new goals what are the new goals right I want to do this and I want to do that but playing in the Premier League playing for England and becoming a multi multi like I always remember being a knight in village as a 16 year old when you're 17 year old 18 year old and they had to run to the Lloyds bank to get me wages out the bank before me overdraft kicked in and he taxed me you know they used to tax you like 60 quid and that was like whether I had a decent week or not and I'd have to sprint to the bank and then I always remember thinking one day I'd fucking love to come to this fucking cash machine and bang it in and I got a million pound in me accounts so I kept the bank account knight in village until I got a million pound in the bank accounts printed the finger your statement off and I was like right that's me out of this bank but like that was like a 24-20 but you know what I mean that was like you know little goals to yourself to go wouldn't it be fucking great knight in village is you know a lot of great memories you know ducking and diving as a kid and wait like you're still all in you know just 12 and 13 dreaming about being something and then you know not having any money in the bank when you face drain the wage and then learning how hard it is to just survive and then you know having those goals to just go wouldn't it be fucking great to be a one-day duty or hard work and your sacrifice and be able to see that number because that number for me wasn't for me it represented I could buy my nan a house I could make sure me I fell in and my mar and all my brothers and everyone was safe because I grew up where I'd seen you know heroin grab people and drugs grab people and crime grab people and as I say you know you know new castle for me was a chance as well because don't forget the back end of city coincides with my brother being involved in a in a murder in Liverpool and getting 17 years jail at 17 it was me obviously my cousin who'd killed him and and when I started about my belief that brilliance is in everybody the lad who killed Anthony Walker Paul Taylor is probably the best finisher of a football I've ever seen in all my time on the planet like the most talented finisher better than Fowler like I always say to Fowler about it same level was at Liverpool 11 12 13 14 but just couldn't stay out of the club was just just too far gone and then when you learn about what happened this environment you kind of go did he have a chance do you know me he had talent and how many of them kids are out there in all these major cities mate and as I say if we can talk yourself different ends of the spectrum and that helps some kid who's out there now who's maybe second guessing himself you know you can be whatever you want to be in this world no one can stop you you can stop yourself same way if you want to drink and drug you can do it you can stop no one can diagnose you and if you want to be a winner and you want to achieve in life you can do that even you say how many people just say go back to school like 50 and go right you know I'm gonna get a degree in them blackie always taught me Steve always taught me always be a student always be laying and never fucking think you know everything or everything about everybody and it's your job to find out about people find out what they're good at sit and talk to people people don't talk to each other anymore yeah but that's why we're lost there's no communication so a kid then from ever unreleased man city debut England you become a millionaire you've been through all this shit you're into papers you're known as a hot head the bad boy brother and cousin done for murder you go to Newcastle get injured you're a millionaire life's going sweet you've kind of overcome all the obstacles but then bang you end up in prison but you still got those those fears you know all I mean securities are still there did you have that what was your triggers what was your triggers to be so fiery what was it where does that stem from do you think now that you're older and understand life a bit more I've got a huge trigger for injustice so when I see an injustice so like somebody using an advantage to put somebody else down I've always struggled with that even in school I didn't like to see I didn't like to see people picking on people I didn't mind a fair fight if someone's had a fair fight or a disagreement no problem I have no problem with people resorting to violence as a means of solving conflict sometimes it is the only way to get out in a fucking car park you know I think if Tony Bell you's doing I think a good thing in the pool now this knives down gloves up thing Tony's not legend show great fella you know you know if people went out and had straightness now listen it's not great James but this knife crime that we've got running around where we are at this moment London you know getting a fat lip or a cut nose you can come back from that you can you know a couple of weeks you're scabs ill and you're laying your life lessons you know as I said my brother lost 17 years of his life from 17 because his mate who's his cousin at the time thought it'd be a fantastic idea when they were having a fucking scrap to pull that ice axe out and swing it into somebody and it's stuck in his head and he ruined not only his life but lots of people's lives off the back of that fucking stupid decision you know they were charged with racially aggravated you know and again I think if the lad wasn't black it may not have happened hadn't he walked and he was a fantastic kid I always remember seeing him on our estate because there wasn't many black people about where we lived and to see the way his family and his mum and all had have conducted themselves in the aftermath of it you know I struggle to do that you know I'd want an I for an I if someone killed my son I'd want to see them um um I'd always say yeah but you say that but again his family's family if an I for an I the whole world goes blind but again if it's if it's your kid like I say I've had women on this show who've their sons have been abused they've got blades went around and killed the cunts you know what I mean so it doesn't matter who you are you can be the softest most gentle person in the world everybody's got that trigger when it comes to their kids and this is an environment where with listening picking up knives and guns it's not you you've been blessed and hard work to then make a life for yourself other people's I played with a kid Alan Monaghan unbelievable one of the best player I've ever played for self I played for hibs and we were friends back in the day unbelievable we end up we end up drunk one night and he kicked a bit of glass through a fucking door and then cut these achilles and it ruined his career and he's kind of went the other way in life I've not heard from him years but unbelievable but you never know what's planned out for you and when you're going down that path and revenge listen it's easier to try if I give up we can go through all the artifacty shit but it's difficult but when you're seeing people die and let friends enter the drinks the uncle's been robbers it becomes normalised but then when you're going through that great football player hot head people use all that against you as if it's all your problem well the feisty cuffs for me is that's not big news where I'm from it's kind of that's just the weekend life yeah that's just people resolving conflict on our estate was the feisty cuffs I'm back at it now and I think about it's having children for me you travel through this world on your own journey and then you have kids and you realise how unimportant you actually are up until that point you think you're the fucking beat his knees of course you're self-centred you have these things that come out and you just love them unconditionally and it just froze your world and your whole belief system formulated before that completely to the wind and then you piece it back together because you know you want to give them as great of an opportunity as you can now that's not giving them everything because I don't think that necessarily helps you become the best version of yourself but that's trying to help them not make the mistakes you've had like my kids now have been to jail and they don't know my brothers who's now out has been to jail and me too again another story he's out on a night out and there's a fight and fella falls down and's dead and he's an off duty police officer like just mad stuff that happens like you're saying you're made there puts his foot through a plain glass window and that's the end of his photo career what people forget is your one stupid decision especially now in the modern world from irreconcilable damage to your life because it's all recorded you know you want mad tweets away from you lose your head you say something mad online and all of a sudden you cancelled that the world so we're going to end up with this world of perfect people which we all know to be bollocks nobody's perfect everybody's got something that they're not great at that they could do better at we try and create these perfect people but surely now I mean I'm only 41 and the amount of people we've built up in this country or in the British Isles to knock down the stuff that's going on now in the Middle East I've lived through the IRA being a terrorist organisation never bombed Liverpool but bombed the Arndale and obviously Warrington Tim Parry to Sinn Fein being the government in Ireland you're seeing what's happening now in the Middle East strange old time to be alive and again have we not laying that killing each other is just not the answer if it's not Catholics and Protestants it's Muslims and Jews it's Ukrainians and Russians and we're getting into the realms of 1994, George Orwell there's just always a war would we not be better than building missiles and aircraft carriers and fighter jets ammunition and guns and tanks in spending that money on the schools for the kids that are going to live on this world that we're going to leave very shortly you know what if I do great you know Bobby Charlton's gone a couple of days ago you get three or four days newspaper coverage you know they speak favourably of you you'll get a minute of applause and then in a week's time and he's one of the European Cup Ballon d'Or people go through the world to sign a please all these people make all these people like them and that's just for me I learnt and it may be being a bit of a pariah maybe having all those things happen to me where people think I'm a Neanderthal and they've got a certain perception of me and I kind of developed my personality then there's a little bit of a black sheep away from the kind of normal conventional person in the spotlight I remember first going and doing articles and when I'd walk around like an art gallery and I first started using Twitter I was just different and just a ferrari course and you know then for me I just enjoyed poking the box and then I realised I was like this is dead easy to manipulate this algorithm it's really easy to manipulate certainly for someone like me who's not afraid to be outspoken and then I just thought this is just for me for me I get a lot more out of helping people and until I had kids I never ever realised that I was very selfish, very low in empathy before I had children and it just fundamentally changed the way you see the world just completely changed because I think of everyone now going even like people have hit who have sparked in the past who have gone they fucking deserved it I go that could be my lad or my daughter on the end of that or now you're sure as you get a bit older and you look back over the stuff you've done and at the time you felt it was the right way to solve that problem with the power of hindsight you wish you'd have done it completely differently and as I say I go back over my career and I think I had a great career I over achieved from 13-14 you know those totally weren't good enough to play for England even if it was for a small period I over achieved and for me now on my second dream I always wanted to be a footballer but never managed to do that and the next thing for me was I always knew I'd be even better as a coach working in a team and I'm now on that next journey you know what I mean I've got a lovely wife lovely family got some great mates around me you've been my mates since the John's who are unafraid to tell me when I'm acting like a prick which is what we all need and you know life's getting easier it's not easy because you've got thousands of simulations you know I always think the secret of life is rented and you have to pay that rent on it all the time in the minute you think you've got it it usually has a way of kicking your square in the bollocks and putting you down a few pegs so as long as you stay humble as long as you stay honest you don't have to always agree with everybody as long as you're a person who people can trust I think you'll do alright in life what was it like being in the gym I don't mean this to sound blasé obviously you're shit because you're like I'm playing in the Premier League and now next minute I mean all the lads bear in mind I know because I've been on remand and they got out and I'm on bail conditions I'm playing now in the Prem come back and I'm playing sound because I'm alright when I can play through chaos I have this way of operating through chaos there was part of me that I think induced chaos when I was younger because I actually did well in that space so me and Peter K used to talk a lot about whether I actually had the self saboteur inside that actually purposefully you know there'd be 18 nice things said about me and had focus on the one that said I couldn't do it so I created this me against the world mindset and I felt really comfortable delivering you know performance in that space and then you know when he passed away I realized he'd been telling me for years you don't need that energy like life's even easier when you don't need that chaos you can do even more good when you haven't got that chaos in your life and you know as I say it was only a couple of years after he passed that some of his teachings when you're sitting reflect as you do with great people who are in your life who pass away you would and think about them more when they've gone you know they have more profound the words and the conversations have a more profound impact on you long after they've passed on into the next life and you know some of the stuff he taught you know things he said rang true and you just decide look there's a different way of doing this and as I say I think he used to always say to me through your vulnerability you become closer to people so when everyone thinks they've got the answers to everything and the fucking know-alls no one wants to listen to them but when you say hey listen I'm massively flawed I haven't got a fucking clue what I'm doing I do not know can you help me all of a sudden people want to help you and I think if you're in a in a set of circumstances where you can encourage that out of everybody and make everybody feel valued life's great you're a billionaire if your missus loves you and your kids love you and you've got four or five mates that have been on your journey for over ten years and someone in your life who you know will fucking turn around tell you you're acting like a gobshite you're a billionaire there's people with loads of money and tokens and coins in the bank who fucking don't know whether the wife loves them because they love them or because they've got a mega yacht you know look at Jeff Bezos like oh is that bad with him because he's on the growth hormone or because he's the richest man in the world or because he's fucking shined his head extra shiny today if you're Jeff Bezos there you've got 78 houses you're thinking what the fuck do you have a security guard having a fucking drug orgy in my fucking villa in Hawaii with more money, you know, BIG more money, more problems there's a simplistic way of really enjoying life and I think that's attainable in this world, we're living in this social media this materialistic world where you've got to have all the mod cons and the iPhone 14's not good enough you need the iPhone 15 if you haven't you're fucking weird iPhone's later to the 16 you're just in the race to the bottom for me, you have to find real value in life and I find that interacting with other people trying to help other people in the midst of that they help me but Peter used to always say to me you'll realise when you're in a roll of service because I used to always say to him what the fuck in hell do you get out to teach you me and help me and he'd go you'll realise one day don't make loads of money and he'd say listen you remind me of me when I was younger and now in the job I do and the people I interact with I see that everyday and blackies stuff I spoke to you about earlier watch the world reflect back on you next time you're out walking look for the eye contact, next time you're out jogging say good morning, smile at people if fucking takes them aback you can see them like what's going on here and they smile back at you if you smile say good morning to somebody or smile back at you don't smile back at you they don't even want you and they do it and you think you know what for whatever reason even if it's only for 4 seconds you've just elevated because as soon as you smile serotonin, dopamine, chemicals are released in your brain people have got to help people more like where we live in now the government ain't helping you social services are being pulled away they're going to take the NHS away from you shortly they're going to force vaccinations on you they're going to have long term complications with an experimental technology I'm not anti-vax, I've had flu I'm off the Johns I used to drink out of puddles when I was about 6 because I wouldn't run home to get a drink it'd be raining and I'd go fuck I'll have a drink out of puddle because you wanted to carry on your game of 40 so I'm not against putting stuff in my body I've been to Glastonbury I'm no saint for me there wasn't enough information on it at all vaccinations usually follow a real clinical period of testing and seeing what the consequences are usually over a clinical setting and over about a 12 year and when they started offering your burger and chips for the vaccine and when they started saying you couldn't go on holiday and when they started I thought oh fuck this what the fuck are these up to, yeah and the Republic of Liverpool the rebellious don't trust authority it's certainly not a Tory government question everything, mindset anti-establishment, maybe black sheep mindset kicks in and that's probably one of the single greatest decisions I've ever made in my life because my Mrs was pregnant at the time and we just looked at the information we were like what are we going to do here because public noise was noise and for whatever reason it wasn't for us because we caught COVID quite early and I can't imagine if she'd have wanted to be vaccinated and there'd have been consequences with my youngest Etienne what that would have done to the family unit do you know what I mean this is what they've done to people they've fucked these lives up with it what happened when you got out the jail so when I went into jail I've been in mind I went for six days because I got nicked on New Year's Day or Boxing Day or something so they put me in for six days in Walton when I went into Walton I had I think I had four or five cousins in there like five or six lads are new from our state six or seven lads are new from other parts of Liverpool so you know you don't want to be in jail and you don't want to remand wing but you know it didn't it isn't prison breaking people getting bummed and all that fucking nonsense that people think it is if you've been in jail and if you're from a rough and ready part of the world and you've got your way to buy it you'll be all right there'll be a few bits to try it on because it's a higher arhals environment where people are petrified and when people are scared they've thrown that up with aggression don't they so I'm in there and you know I'm a Premier League footballer I fucking sign in every day of the week I'm running massive distances over the weekend I hadn't lost a face to cuffs in the area I'm from or I'm not the hardest fella in the world I'm not fucking Conor McGregor but I'd always been able to look after my own space even if that was strategic knowing what fighter could win and what fighter couldn't win so when I get in there it's like being the first day of a teenier school isn't it when they're trying to work out who's the cock of the school and you've got to have your fucking wits about it and I get in there and know a few people so that settles you down and then obviously people talk to you and you come up and you realise when he's all right and I was fine and then I'm out of there after six days and then play the Premier League here and all the lads are going where are you going on all day in the summer and I do buy in Seychelles and Marbella and fucking I'm like I think I'm getting fucking six months jail you know I'm like I'm fucking told like I'm fucking getting a bit of birthday because it's a bad affair to skirmish a vat and I think they've just had the fucking enough of me and they're going to teach me a lesson and I don't bang to rights from 14 punches here even if the first two or three were justified I'm way outside the the threshold of self-defence so preparing all that season playing Grave 40 you know the end of the season comes and they give me six months so I'm into Walton then and again you know I knew a few lads from when I was there on the remand so I was silent no problem and then because I'm notorious prisoner, they don't want anything to happen to me so I get put on the drug free wing which I think was fucking J-Wing or something like that at Walton and then you meet a few characters in there and sound, you got your gym, you knew the gym all the K and E good mates of mine now sound so I'd get gym every day, kept out the way Walton was quite easy in terms of you were left alone, it was not easy because you're fucking banged up and you're having to go and work in a wood it's like going back to woodwork in school and when you could be playing 40 and you'd have the life I had it was a kick in the bollocks but I'd fucked up and there was a price to pay and that's what the court and the law of the land had decided and I had to fucking pay me price for being a dickhead so I'm in there and getting on with it and then in the midst of that because Dabo got in the papers there's another court case coming for the Dabo one which I was fighting, I was like no no that was self defence, you came at me, pulled your hand back and slapped me and just because my two put you away that's your fault, I was defending myself so I was admin and I was fighting that so that's going to court in Manchester as I'm in jail for six months in Liverpool so I now get moved from Walton and they take me to strange ways because the court appearance is in Manchester and I'm under that jurisdiction so it's like pachal yagia and I've got a cushion life's good, a couple of me have a mate in there do you want a phone, I'm like no no my dad said if you get a fucking give you a phone you can exit 30 days so I was like nothing and obviously people think jail's this sanitised place it's fucking it's just like being on the council of states within reason and the characters you meet in there some of the smartest people you've ever met some people who've just got incredibly unlucky life stories but you're expected to go in and meet the dregs of society and they are in there and you see them but then you see people in for like white collar crime and frauds and lawyers and you know mad stuff that was in Walton which was Cappy then I get chipped for this court case in Manchester so now I'm in strange ways, I'm not going back to Walton which is double cat eye so you're carrying you know I think Kenny know you know all that proper life was in there like I'm like what's going on here you know prison's a scary place but Cappy's a double cat eye you know you're going from a yard where there's nothing on the top to like cage where you're like what's that there for they're like so no helicopters come down to like help people who are doing life tariffs or have scum people walking around in mulled two-tone boiler suits you're like what are they doing they're like they're the lifers they have to be visible so a huge culture shock and then when I go in I didn't get I got looked after in Walton really in terms of they just made sure I was alright you know didn't give me any mad pick but made sure I didn't go on B-Wing which is like the Council of State Wing with all the bag heads are, they put me on J-Wing I think which is like a drug free wing so it was kind of you know because they didn't want anything to happen to me either otherwise they'd be in the shite you know if I get in a fight or someone slashes me or something mad you know that they're being chaos for them probably so I'm probably a governor's fucking nightmare they don't want me in there but obviously you know the law of the land and again I'm on the cap put me on the rough and ready wing so this is a I'm moaning to try and get back to Walton I'm saying send me back to Walton I'm like you're not going back to Walton so I'm not going to see the governor so I knew the only way you can see the governor is say I want to go on protection wing I still had to say if you ever want to speak to the governor just say you want to go on protection because if you want to go on protection the governor has to come down speak to you and you have to sign yourself on protection so I'm like kicking off get me jail changed and they're just fucking buzzing off me like who's this tit so I end up saying listen the governor comes down do you want to go on protection I'm like no no I don't but like put me on the drug free wing I don't need to be going in with the bag heads here what happens if I fucking are getting a scrap with one of them so he's like no no if you go on protection wing that's it and once you sign on the protection wing that's you for life in it you can't come off them so if you ever go back into jail you're always with the nuns and you go on the nuns wing that's it so I'm like I don't really I'm not doing this so I've gone now so that he's fucking send me then back onto this rough and ready wing the landing wing so I've had like a few like I'm now I'm now worried because like I'm now like I don't I don't know whether the way they've been with me I'm like I they're gonna fucking stitch me up here by putting me in it you know my partner is kicking in that they're gonna fucking put me in a pad with someone and this is going off and it's all it's part of their plan to you know to keep me in here forever Charlie Bronson I'm going he's gonna fucking Bronson he's gonna fucking bang Rob and he hasn't got out like the paranoia kicks in so we'll walk into this cell it's strange ways and there's a lad lying on the bottom bunk and notoriously you don't want to be on the top bunk do you because you get kicked out of the top bunk so the bottom bunk is the higher archal position and he's about a 6 foot 2 black lad I'm like fucking hell it's going like just like what the fuck's going on so I've gone alright mate it's about 8 o'clock at night by the time you've been processed come out the court and he's just watching the telly he just blanked me doesn't say anything so I'm like bear in mind my brother and cousin have been involved in this racially aggravated murder so I'm like this is fucking going off here like and I thought I'm gonna get fucking bummed here or whatever you know what I mean it's just thinking the worst but I thought fucker I'll just have to go down fighting so I've gone try to talk to him again again he's fucked me off so I've just got me I haven't even got changed I've just I didn't go under the fucking I've just lied on the top and you've got your bag of belongings which had a couple of tins of beans or whatever and I've just gripped two tins of beans and I just thought this cunt kicks me out the bed here or fucking kicks off I'm just gonna have to fight for my life and if I get fucking bummed then at least I've gone down fighting I can say I went down fighting he was a big cunt my ass was a bit so you know what I mean you can't just so like that's what's going through your head so I'm lying on this bunk tins the telly off then he does about ten o'clock at whatever it's and then I'm just lying there and every time he moved in the bed I'm ready for action like I'm ready to go just sitting with these two tins of beans and I always remember a strange ways which he didn't have it well and with dogs barking because they have the guard dogs so as that's going like the dog start barking I haven't slept a wink at the first night so cell door opens at whatever seven o'clock half seven and this lad gets up and fucks off out because he's got a job he's already on the thing so I'm in there now and second day on the wing fella comes along and he's like a bolt on the accent so he turns out he's a bolt wonderers fan me uncle Tony Kelly play for bolt and Kevin Owens I made the man play for bolt so I'm fucking riding to him then straight away going listen mate I need to get out of this pad here this is going to kick off this fella comes back in it's nearly gone off last night he comes back this afternoon it's kicking off and he's like he's got a bad energy so he's like I'm like you need to sort this out so anyway he goes I'll see what I can do I go bolt on fan I'll fucking sort you some tits and I'll get make sure so the drops the envelope I've just lit you know that's the you got to game the system you got to use every fucking two in your toolbox so I can see you as receptive to it so fourth yard I've got one here and all the screws are fucking bent as you know yeah the one was one on your podcast so shit I meant it's a bad ball he's tired him he's got that interaction with me he's a fucking lying cunt big dope big dope big dope yeah honestly big ball bag he said I was like trying to throw me now there's some for some influence didn't he remember that I didn't even mess him I don't think and I think he mentioned something to do with me brother so anyway worked out the screw pretty quickly that afternoon I'm back in the thingy oh and the lad comes back from from work so I'm like fucking hell this is this is on this so he gets back as I'm like all right lad so I've gone just juggling out from the night before so I've gone yeah you're right said starting to him now turns out he's from Chapel Town in Leeds where a mate of mine Michael Richards is from who played at City with us so he goes oh lad my head was kettle last night when you've come in I'd fucking been arguing with my bed on the phone and the the the phone has gone down as it does in jail and I couldn't carry on and I just fucking was going to kill some of my heads gone and then you've got a new Padmates and I'm thinking I'm getting some bag head and you've turned in and you're trying to be all chatty and I've just for fuck and he was sound I went fucking hell mate I told him I said didn't I kick last night I had two tins of beans there I just stole your fringing if you kick me out that bunk so we were laughing about it so we're sound then two days after that this screw takes debate on the bolt and tickets and I've said listen you need to get me I found out there was a lad from by ours long viewer was in got caught with a boot of AK-47s running a load of guns for the Lithuania crew and was was looking at like a 12 year stretch so I've ended up getting this and there was a lad whose mates was in our road and his kid was mates with me as a kid this fella and I think he stabbed the copper in the eye so he said they're doing it every time and everybody was petrified of them in strange ways so I get weird then he's trying to get in contact with me he's a boss fella won't name me but he's fucking crap out you know what I mean but he's a great fella out of gold he terrorized everybody when he was out so I can't imagine what he's doing you know obviously locked up in anyway everybody in strange ways is fucking wary of him so the last place I want to be is anywhere where there's a tin the box like that because I'm thinking I've got six month jail here with good behaviour I'll be out of this in a couple of months just keep me fucking nut down and keep myself to myself and obviously everyone's wanting to make contact with you and go I know you're out of here and I'm just going fucking there's a phone and I'm like I'm sad and anyway, Mike gives me a shout and I go over he's on this decent wing and he says listen I've got the laundry in that area he still hasn't been sentenced and he says yeah get padded in get padded up with me it's sound here so the screw ends up boxing it and anyway I was fine then after that so we had the gym on our wing there and I became the gym orderly got looked after a little bit by a few of the fucking rough and ready fellas and I was sad I was away then I done I think 74 days done a month in well in about 40 days in strange ways and then I was out the off and made me tag a little bit before that but I didn't want to take it because I didn't want to sit with the tag on and as it was you know going out and as I say James I met some boss people out and I say boss this is a chaos word for like brilliant people like proper proper people who just fucked up and I met a lad who's a great lad man you're a nice fan and when he got the jail you know he's been up to no good and when he got the jail he's bedded off to Morocco with his fucking kids and set up with the new fella and he could get no visits and there's me thinking I'm at ground zero I've reached rock bottom because I can't play football to be honest with you and it gave me a huge eye opener of I felt dead sorry for myself and I got the jail I thought and then I realised this is your own fucking fault you did and your life's still fantastic you've still got a boss life if you get your finger out when you get out be feeling sorry for yourself there is people in here who've got a fucking shit at the end of the stick and life could get a lot worse if you don't fucking get your act together so you know jail work for me I had something on the outside to work towards but did it make you appreciate life more absolutely yeah absolutely well you know you think people in jail you look down your nose at them and the people who've ended up going on the aisle one night and took a load of Charlie and got in a car and crashed into somebody and they're doing nine years jail on a fucking mad weekend where they've had made it with the bed and gone on a bender you know the knockery of criminals yet they are in there and there is you know some scrouts in there there is some dregs in there but there's some fucking solid people who've just you know had life come at them a little bit too quick for what they were able to deal with at the time and then the problem for it is you know your car insurance all the stuff that's tariffed on to you after you leave jail doesn't give you the chance to turn your life in the direction you want it to it actually is inclined to force you back into the system how did the media treat you when you get out of prison probably just used to it yeah they followed me around and all taking pictures of me doing community service and it just you know the cunts are the let's be honest you know I fortunate enough or unfortunate enough to have a couple hundred grand off two of the major publications one of them for hacking my phone you know it's hacking your voicemails and you know you've seen what they were doing you know I think it was the Millie Dowler case that highlighted a lot of the business practices for our media in the country and you know I wasn't even that famous you know so I can't imagine what you know the big itters were getting put through but you know for me you know it is what it is isn't it you know what I mean it never really affected me I never really you know when you grow up reading headlines in newspapers about football fans you know two people from our road they had the Hillsborough and they said you know fellow football fans who I knew it Liverpool and Everton fans you know Liverpool fans the item park always had a famous flag at every European cup type Liverpool you know an item flag they travelled everywhere to watch Liverpool loads of them lads were at Hillsborough and to reading the papers there they were on their own people and they'd stolen out the pockets of them and you know everyone in Liverpool in our area at the time knew that was absolutely lies but the rest of the country didn't so you grow up with better mind that's happened to me at 789 when I can really remember you grow up thinking there's a load of nonsense in the world you know you question everything you know if you read what you're reading about people that you know and you know that to be false and I think you know from our city you know if you grew up in the area that I grew up you couldn't not be affected by what the media in this country certainly you know a certain a certain media which was you know obviously made or you know stayed controlled at the time you know the narrative that was set there you know that the families are still searching and you know as I say once you experienced that at a young age the illusion of Narnia is shattered How hard was it to get back into the first team after prison? Dead easy slotted straight back in I think How many weeks to take? I managed to get me jail at the end of the season done the two months or missed pre-season but obviously you can only do so much inside and you know the body weight stuff and the exercises to keep myself ticking over inside I ended up coming back out so I just missed the off season and you know missed two months 74 days so missed pre-season usually six or eight weeks sometimes nine weeks if it's a bit long so I came in and I missed basically all the pre-season and the off season so it took me a little bit to get up to speed I think I came back on as a sub in the end minutes about six weeks after I got out to jail and I never looked back from there I've got a peculiar personality like I don't dwell in the past can't change it I'm very future-oriented So new castle prison you ended up going to QPR you got promoted to QPR what was the decision to go to Marseille? Well again you know we had to send an off tonight the Aguero one it was quite low profile there only happened to be the most iconic Premier League finishing goal since Sky's inception I think with the Aguero That was madness but we had that elbow that can't I can't but you think I lost shit there didn't you like that's the common conception what happened then so QPR last game of the season you used to play in Man City you get sent off I think was that just before halftime? No after we were in the second half somewhere like that yeah in the second half so obviously it was that new castle had a great spell at new castle and Mike Ashley was doing some mad stuff so you know there was a few of us who stood up to him I think I was the lead instigator in that you know there's a few strong personalities but they didn't want to get as militant as what they did and that come from a Labour city where I'm from Highton and St. Ellen's and all that they're all like mining communities so you're not miners per se but one of my best mates growing up Matthew Machalini his dad was a miner who was giving his obviously redundancy money so you grow up in that era of Liverpool was impoverished with the austerity that was put on the city by that kind of Thatcher kind of Tory government so opportunities and the developments of the city like the city was fucking rough and ready you know it's changed a hell of a lot now with you know some of the grants and the money that's been spent on it for the better but at the time it was rough and ready and you just kind of grow up with that abrasiveness don't you it's kind of anti as I say anti-establishment and from our perspective the opportunities for me I was like I'm gonna have to go in the military here I'm gonna have to be really good at sport and if I'm not then obviously there are other things there you know your crime or music or stuff that people get into but for me it wasn't a whole host of stuff that I was really interested in I was really interested in football and if it got an injury or a setback I think the military might have been something for me because I was kind of yearning discipline you know a new and needed strong structure, strong discipline I always benefited from having a strong coach or a strong hand alongside me you know all the good managers that got the most out of me had that kind of firmness so when I'm at Newcastle I stand up to Ashley because I didn't think what he was doing was right and obviously he then broke that power structure that opposed them up in general leaving to Liverpool, Kevin Nolan, Steve Harper, myself, Alan Smith etc so then it was the first time we thought about having a family, Georgia was pregnant with our first child Newcastle was trying to renegotiate the contract with me I was 28, 29 I think and I was negotiating with Derek Lambias who was a casino owner or manager who was putting chief exec role and he was a bit difficult to negotiate with so we got to a bit of a Mexican standoff and some home truths were spoken about the fact that I didn't think he had any credibility to make some of the judgements he was making negotiations broke off at that point and it coincided with Georgia having a miscarriage our first child she had a miscarriage so she was up the wall thinking am I ever going to be able to have babies she was all over the place I was having a difficult negotiation with the club and I've ended up putting a line through it and said look I'll speak to you in the summer when I didn't say this is going on in my private life because it's not for them but I needed not to just have this business negotiation in the midst of trying to look after my wife in terms of she's all over the gaff here and as I say it was a first child so she's like through it a bit so at the end of that season Derek Lambias had said to me you know if we finish top 10 it's a two year deal if we finish outside the top 10 it's only a one year deal I was like we're about to start a family here me and Georgia are thinking about having another goer having a kid again and a one year deal at 29 is no good to me because once you turn north at 30 as a footballer life changes you know up until in your 20s they can't give you enough they want extra years on your contract the boot sponsors everyone's giving you everything at 1030 it's a very age sport it's almost like your best years are behind you and you only want to do one year deals and the boot endorsements are now for the younger kids it flips over it must be like being an actress in Hollywood all of a sudden you're getting all the lead roles and then all of a sudden you're 1045 and you haven't got the pachiness of youth and you get shipped for the new model coming through so at the end of that season we were playing against West Brom at halftime and we'd have finished the first season back in the Premier League and we ended up drawing 3-3, Solomon Choy scored a hat-trick for West Brom second half and we finished 11th and Jose Enrique left back and Jonas Gutierrez the Argentinian left midfielder had been fucking about in the second half because we were 3-0 up and they were taking the pace and we ended up hanging on for a free-free draw so they had been going into that dressing room after punching the pair of their heads in because them fucking about in the second half would have been I got a 3-0 deal or a 1-0 deal as it was the contact got chill so I was like what a fucking idiot he could have caused the scenario at the club that he didn't need to cause by trying to be a casino manager thinking rules of the casino were in Premier League 40 so at the end of that season I kind of thinking this is not going to plan Mike Soul Kevin Nolan to West Ham who was another agitated we were the first team in Premier League not to sign a bonus sheet because he was trying to ram it down and we were sports direct and we didn't have it well I took a bridge to it and I knew that everyone had to sign the form so loads of lads were going well we get paid our wages what the fuck do we need the bonus for just tell them to stick the bonus up his ass because it was just another way of Mike get bullying and controlling people for money like bigger itters in the dressing room like the bigger influencers and then it got to the point where the manager was trying to get us to sign it and the lads I think wanted the union a few wanted the fold but couldn't say they wanted the fold so I was saying lads look use do what you want and not fucking sign it and I knew I was smart enough to know that they needed every signature one signature on it left off it was not enough for them to get it through so I was going look if you need the money and you need to sign the bonus sheets because Mike fucking wanted you to you sign it but I'm not so in the midst of that five or six lads who were proud lads who maybe wavering decided not to sign it so we go into the first league game bit of man we've won the championship at Old Trafford for Newcastle United without signing a bonus sheet which no team had ever done to that point so it got out and it was news that there was a rebellion on so Mike's to do away with all the leaders of the rebellion and he ended up sucking Chris Newton off the back of it and then broke up the kind of power that got us it turned the club around that power structure the lads in the dressing room and he broke it up because he wanted control so Pardew comes in and I've still got a year left and end up having a little bit of a ding dong with Pardew and he shits himself and he said look you can go so I end up signing a four year deal for QPR first decision I think I've ever made based purely on finances and the most most I've ever been paid most unhappy I've ever been it just wasn't a good environment like it's a great club QPR some good people they're not having a tough time at the minute but they just put loads of money into it and there was no team football is a team it's a culture it's a working class sport where everybody has to chip in together yeah it's a meritocracy so the best will get paid more than the worst but there's a sense of belonging for everybody the superstar in the team can't be a cunt to the fucking to the lad who maybe does one of the more menial tasks in the team like that just won't wash in our game maybe that washes in the tennis world or the golf world or you know in them worlds you can treat the people below you like a piece of shit but in a working class sport like football you can't and how you treat everybody for me is important whether you're the cock of the fucking school or whether you know you know wonder how you behave at all junctions is very important so if you're the manager or you're in a position of influence I think it's very as a socialist working class lad if for me it's very important and you know it's said to you all my family have worked kind of working class jobs you know my name was waiting on so if I see someone treating someone like a piece of shit I'm not saying please thank you or then that really fucking triggers me. What was it like getting promoted from you that was the only season you were there one year was it not? Where? QPR? No no no so I leave Newcastle at 28 29 I think and I sign a four year deal at QPR and they just been promoted from the championship near Warnock and I knew straight away with the way that the deal was conducted I was you know it was me and the agents who was representing me at the time. So they went straight away. I thought you joined them championship then when I went in they'd won the championship with the Delta Raptor and all that and a good mate of mine his dad played together Bradley or he was in the team so you know I knew I had to leave Newcastle because of the phone out with Ashley and he wanted rid of us all I had a year left on my deal there and I got offered a three year deal on slightly more money at QPR and I thought you know what I was getting into stuff you know art and culture so if it naturally fit that London I was like this is going to be great and you know I got into kind of social media and Twitter at the back end of Newcastle to manage me access strategy out of there and it worked fucking fantastically well because my house decided to create this media war with me in the local papers but obviously this new technology was there Twitter where I could just say I'm navigate the fact that he prints an article in the Chronicle and then they had to wait 24 hours to respond you know I could just take it out every time he prints an article I just tweet this a load of shit and it was using this new technology quite radically to benefit you as a footballer so West Ham I think had bid for me when the first Rumblings of the summer were on and I think they were trying to phase me out and they offered three million quid for me West Ham and I didn't want to go I can't remember who was the manager at the time but I didn't want to go so I've dug in and then it got progressively worse after the last pre-season friendly against Leeds I kind of know me times and I had a bit of a ding-dong and a bit of Twitter going on and Mike actually just turned around and said to the agents he can fucking leave I don't even want any money for him so then straight away the businessman and me he's like okay sound I end up signing James QPR to go down to meet them and I always remember Neil Warner and Phil Beat and the agents I was at sorts of the deal I was sitting there and just watching negotiation go down and it was a financially fantastic deal but the way it was conducted I remember being like really uneasy with it and I was like shut the fuck up like you're gonna die in a bath for any odd million here do you know what I mean just keep your fucking nut down you're getting pushed out of Newcastle they don't want you, it actually doesn't want you so you've got to go somewhere and there's about 22 million quid on the table here forget fucking do you like people Warner so my gut was just wasn't sitting like me anywhere signed and it never sat well with me after that I shouldn't have gone that intuition I had, that gut instinct I had was correct and as it unfolded after that I regretted it and that's not to say QPR wasn't a great club but it was just the characters I got involved in and I regretted it but it wasn't going to plan so first year we ended up the manager who signed me, Neil Warner got sacked in the January Mark Hughes took over we ended up staying up by the skin of our teeth with that famous Aguero game I ended up copying the 12 game ban out the back of that and I come back that pre-season and Mark Hughes wants me gone and then I get a phone call saying Olympic Mars say you want to take me so we end up going out there for the year had a phenomenal year there, loved it and in the midst of that QPR got relegated so I had finished second in France while I was away QPR had fucked me off you know from my bad behaviour or whatever which is, you know and I said to them at the time look you make this bed I've still got three years left like you know What happened to the final game of the season when you've cracked Tevez you've cracked Aguero So if you remember in the game if you had VAR now I don't think I'd have been sent off because I blocked Tevez from throwing on the sideline and he punched me across the face and I didn't punch because as I cut him off he's now behind me and frustrated because they had the title on the table we'd equalised in the game if you remember they were 1-0 up Zabaleta missed it across it went over Paddy Kenney and we'd equalised G.B.C said equalised early in the second half and their assholes had gone they'd fell apart and now as a player you can just sense it sometimes so they had a great man city we've got a win to stay up and we were 1-0 down and they thought they had the title it's party mode and they had all the bunting so that was like a red rag to me and we'd scored early in the second half and about four of their senior players assholes had dropped out you've seen them go the colour of boiled shite and you can just smell it sometimes as a competitor that oh these are done these are toasted so they've gone and we're in the ascendancy and you can feel the nervousness in the stadium and I checked Tevez off a off a throw, read him, get in front of him because he's not thinking clearly and he fucking punches me twice once in the back of the head and once around the side of the head so I've carried on moving when I say you know he's jumped on me back and coughing me twice so we've kept moving I've kind of looked around, Lionel hasn't seen it Ref hasn't seen it and I've gone, I'm fuming I thought you cheeky cunts he's now walking back towards me so I've just looked around like that and no one has seen me and I've just gone fuck off and elbowed him you've given me a couple and I've hit him and he's just gone down the fucker the foreigners are, they're well smarter than us so as soon as I've coughed for him I should have gone down I've gone up and decided to be British and match on and level it up and as soon as I've hit him, he's bit the dust and he's screaming and next minute Aguero's running over and he hasn't seen anything so now everyone's piling around Mike Deans, the ref stopped the game Mike hasn't seen it so there's no VIR or anything there no one's seen it so then he goes over to the linesman the linesman says he's seen it and I always thought to this day the linesman had seen it but now I know the linesman's a liar because some people had sent me about six months ago a couple of stills from the game they've been watching the game back and when the still happens and I touch Tevez the six people in between the linesman just showed me the wide lens the six people in between the linesman there's no way he could have physically seen what happened unless he can see through bodies so he's just taking the puns at me and he was fucking right to be fair because he's gone and he's definitely done it so Mike Deans comes over and there's like a bit he's talking to the linesman and now all the players are on each other and Bobby Zamora runs over to me fucking cracks a bob runs over to me and he goes Joe Joe Joe fucking take one of theirs with you so I thought that's a fucking good idea that because I've made a cut to it without a 10 if I get one of theirs to go it's 10-10 so I fucked up but I've kind of leveled the playing field here so I just remember thinking at the time bear in mind we're in the heat of battle it's 55 minutes in the game fucking adrenaline flowing there's loads at stake us to stay up them to win the league there's a ding dong I've had me call I felt I think I'm getting sent off here and at that time Bobby's were really profound you know now I realize it was a fucking mad call for him so I thought yeah he's right there so next minute a guero's grassing again to the ref so I've walked over to the ref a guero's should be a wreck kicking so I just thought fuck off you so I've need him, thought I'd give him a dead leg because he's grassing so he bites the dust someone else runs in and I think like Les Scott or something and I'm like fuck off you you fucking shit he said it's hard to dead bottom or whatever but once once I've need a guero I'm just trying to get any one of theirs to throw punch it me or get involved because I know I'm already on my way off I've had it been sent off or I'm on the way off so if any of theirs throw a dig at me it's 10 men each it might even be 10-9 to us so the best thing I could do in that moment is get one of their players to take the bait as it was none of them really did and I end up with the fucking 12 game suspension I think I'm fading the old time list in between Cantonao's got number one for the Kung Fukech and then somebody else on the drugs ban I think I'm third, like they done me for free red cards isn't that Tevez was the red card the first one then the Neon of Guero and then they decided to but Les Scott and the thing that annoyed me about it all was players being players they won the league and the famous Guero moments and the rest is history but Les Scott was the only one who when they had to go in front of the FA he was the only player who turned up to give evidence against me in front of the FA to say no no Joey tried to redbut me and I'm fucking getting it I'm getting a ban I've been sent off you've won the league why are you turning up to give evidence against me and as small as the world is when I'm at Glasgow Rangers who turns up to try and say I have a Glasgow Rangers with the capping hand fucking Les Scott so I said I'm not playing in the same team as that grass and cunt fucking grass can't share the trenches with him and again you know for me if that hadn't happened I wouldn't have gone to Marseille James so Marseille was a phenomenal experience yeah they loved you so you've got 12 game ban you went to Marseille so we've done a season of QPR QPR stayed up stayed up 12 game ban Marseille you done then have you got a touch on that have you because when you started speaking French I'm not gonna lie I thought I could start understanding French at that time I thought I must have took over and in the fucking classroom we all lay in that don't we when we're speaking to waiters and that when you're not already do you know what I mean so we'll go out there and obviously I've got a 12 game ban to tindergate so but the fans took to me straight away yeah why do they love you so much just because I was a rebel I think they just see me as a rebel and I remember the first game I turned up in and one of the the Enns had a massive like mural of welcomes sweet and tender hooligan because they knew I was going to the smiths and they'd gone and we and I just thought these are fucking cracks these like I haven't played the game I'm getting sent out of QPR who fucking persona non-gratid in the UK with this 12 game ban like I'm Hannibal Lechte and these are just after me and I haven't even kicked the ball like and these I've had a European Cupwin and Jean Pierre Papa and Canton Ar and Chrissy Waddle and Abidie Pelé and Deijan Stuikiewicz and like like just sorry Dragon Stuikiewicz like just incredible players Basil Boliak and he remember them being my lanter in the European Cup and I remember watching it on ITV because Rangers were decent at the time so I remember Leeds V Rangers on ITV and Champions when it was only like champions who played in it not now where if you finish so and I remember how good Rangers were and now don't forget after Heisel we didn't have European football in England you know all the top players had to go to foreign countries to Spain, Italy, Germany and obviously Scotland to play in the European Cup or the Cup Winners Cup or the UEFA Cup at the time and you know the English game really suffered as a result of that and you know for me then the Premier League getting it together was great because that coincided with Italian 90 which led to the Italian Serie A league was massive and got Gazetta James Richardson goals on Sunday in the Italian game so you know you grow up with this unadulterated love of football like I'm a football historian like I love the game and then I'm fortunate enough to be good at it and then after my boot I'm fortunate enough to be able to fucking coach and help people if I fill their potential in it so you know you look through your life and you think I'm a right jammie bastard do you know what I mean I've been born in but you've worked hard as well mate I wouldn't say jammie are lucky that you've ended man through all the shit the pain the torment all the fucking hate from the media and you've still kept doing so seeing you saying for Marseille the fans are fucking loving you what happened with the interview how did that happen? So I turned up there and as I say I'm banned for the first 12 league games so I could play in the Europa League but I couldn't play in the domestic league the ban was only for domestic football or something so I could chip away at these games but I'm playing in the Europa League games and they kept me out the spotlight for a little bit and then I'm doing my French lessons and all that I had an American lawyer who worked for the club who used to give me a lesson so I'm doing my French lessons and that and you just sound like a fucking idiot don't you whenever you're speaking in a foreign language initially you just sound like a space cadet to yourself it's like when you first hear your voice you don't sound like you sound to yourself when you hear your voice record or you see an interview on the telly you're like what the fuck am I talking you used to have the phone voice didn't you they'd be screaming and shouting at you the phone go hello how are you and you'd be like you don't speak like that during the week so you'd have your press interviews and as I say I'm learning like I've got the basic understanding of French but you know I can ask for something in the shop where I can't have a conversation so we're playing I think Fenebaccio where you're in Europa League and I get put up for the press so it's a European game so you get a massive club like it's the biggest club in France it's like manualised in France so Liverpool it's that big the European games because it's the Turkish champions of whatever it is Fenebaccio all these foreign journalists the interpreter says to me before going he goes can you do me a favour like with your strong regional dialect can you speak a bit slower because I've got a translate from Scouse to English and then from English to French and then back the other way when we're doing it so I'm like yeah there ain't no problem so I'm in this press conference and it was like about five five rows of about five people it's almost like a little mini cinema room and in the back of it was my brother Andrew my splashy and tiger who were over staying with me at the time so I'm doing this presser and I'm getting asked questions and I'm answering and speaking slow and before I'd gone out there I'd seen Steve McClaren's interview and I'd laugh my head off, laugh my bollocks off going what about that silly cunt fucking Steve and all that you know the so I was fully aware of like how much of an idiot you could look if you're spoken in these broken silence so I was like laughing going fuck it as if I'd do that like I'm fucking way too switched on for that like buzzing off people six weeks later there I am fucking bollocks chops thinking I've crafted in this conference chatting away giving it all of them and all that thinking I'm keep looking at this um and he's going to me just keeps doing this keeps going so I'm thinking I am fucking nailing this yeah first presser and every time I turn to this cunt he's going as if to say you're on the money day no one's batting an eyelid and then after about 15-20 minutes like a fucking bad thing like knocking all these questions out the park here throwing a bit of French in there you know the odd word now as if to show I'm trying to learn the language and then I just fucking look like that and I can just see our kids our kids got fucking big mad fucking here as he's like me hero here you can make rowbar of our so just see this fucking head going like this in the back so I'm like the fucking hell are these up to so you know you try and answer the questions in your main professional but like how the corner you're at you can now these are serial message James like they're always fucking about the you know there could be anything that they find funny they're never serious so I'm like this anyway after about keep cracking like that and there's fucking tears coming out their eyes so I'm like looking at them and they keep looking at me but they can't look at me they keep looking away and they're laughing the cocks off and I've just had the realization of oh fuck I'm doing a fucking Steve McClarnia so I've realized and I've thought I've just got to go with this like I might as well I've made the contents of it so Matt you know for me you gotta laugh at yourself if you make a bollocks of it so I then start like tapping a bit on as I say these are just keep going in the background going in the background but the funniest thing about it was there's only the four of us in the room we were on it, there's no English journalists in there and nobody's aware of it so when I come out of there they're going fucking hell what was you up to they sound like fucking a loa loa so they give me the I'm getting it tight but I'm thinking that's contained to the room I'm never ever thinking that's going anywhere so I'm thinking that's going to be Marseille TV and then fucking Moroccan TV or Algeria whatever and that'll be the end of that you know so come out the room and I'm laughing and they're going they're saying we're going to get on to your press officer to try and get the video because they want to show all my mates go listen what this silly cunt's done and they're dead and I'm going to the press officer do not fucking give them that type so I think it's contained in that room so anyway playing the game fucking get out about two days later my fucking phone just starts going off to you I'm like it's obviously it's Sky Sports News in England and then the next day it's fucking history lad and then you just got a laugh haven't you and you're just like fucking I'll make the ball up to that point I genuinely thought I could understand friends honestly that's class so Marseille you ended up what was it running with Ibrahimovic so that was in the game obviously PSG and again because you were doing big fucking roles and so Zlatan's about six or four and he's a big uni and he's Andy with it I think he says he's karate expert he wouldn't want to dust up with him like he's a big uni and I've only seen about four centre forwards in my lifetime who actually target the centre half usually in my world the centre half tries to bully the centre forward and kick him out the game but every now and again you get like a Louis Suarez or an Alan Shearer or a Duncan Ferguson who actually goes at the start of the game looking for the centre half to bully him we're playing we're second in France and the Qatar money's just coming to PSG the year I turn up so you've got Tiago Silvers, Zlatan Motta, you know all of the big itters and all the big itters are coming and it's us and them but like they've got this incredible spend in the last you know 12 months and Marseille the historical club who's time to keep pace with them and Leon there was three of us, Sayinetti and Leon were going on it but we were close to them so I was banned for the first Derby at the Velodrome and Zlatan scored two fucking crackers and we drew 2-2 but I was in the stadium and I couldn't play I was playing in the Europa League but I was banned for the game and then as the season went they were about four or five points ahead of us but we had to play them in the cup quarterfinal and in the league in the same week so we're playing them in the cup on the Wednesday and the league on the Sunday and the cup on the Wednesday but that was the if they won they were going I think eight or nine points clear of us with seven games to go and if the beaters in the cup obviously we were out of the cup so our season pretty much came down to that week so we played them on the Sunday at their place and played fucking great and they ended up scoring a spawning goal and I think the beaters had a 2-0 or 2-1 but we were right in the game good account of ourselves but the beaters and that was the league pretty much we were then focusing on finishing second rather than winning the title it was like a six-pointer but then we had to play them on the Wednesday in the cup but we had to play the same start at eleven virtually and they made about eight changes you know what I mean nine changes and Bechem was one of them who come in so in the first game in the league Zlatan had gone and targeted Nicolaus and Kulu who was a great centre half Cameroonian boy but he just there was Sully Diawarre and then Kulu and Sully was a bit of a warrior and Nico was the ball player and Zlatan just pulled right on to him and just gone fucking he's getting it and just started roughing him up so from every goal kick then I didn't get pulled down because he's dustin and Kulu so I come the front screen and so I'm like listen I fucking front screen him and stop him bullying that centre half so I'm now front screening him and I'm just standing on his toes pinching him and he's massive compared to me and every time he put his hands on me I was diving on the floor and going and the ref kept giving a free kick and it was fucking doing his head in so in the end he's lost his shit with me because I've won about four free kicks off him now and he's turned to me and gone you're fucking fanny you're fucking pussy so he's so I'm like so I know I've got him so I'm laughing at him going fuck off you fucking dickhead so he's gone I thought you were meant to be a fucking English tough guy you were saying you're a fucking pussy you were saying to me right so I've gone shut up you're fucking big nose cunt so I've just gone fuck off big nose so we're just ding donging like this right but it's like laughing but no one's ever called him a big nose cunt clearly because he was shocked that anyone had the audacity to say it to him because he was the king at the time he was the king I was like fuck off you're fucking big nose cunt I was going you might be boss or footy but your fucking nose is massive and for a big ego maniac like that his teammate started laughing at him you know like a few and his head went so you can see his argument now completely unbeknownst to me they ended up beating us in the game at the end of the game the game had been on French like BBC or ITV and they'd zoomed in in the midst of the game stopping they'd zoomed in and captured that like I didn't know that had happened so when I come off we'd lost the game but my status within the Marseille fanbase and with the football fanbase in France they just loved me because they didn't like Slatan and they just seen someone taking them on who was smaller than them and it just endeared me to them you know what I mean I didn't even know it was happening I was just like fuck you I've never taken a backwood step from anyone never mind you you're fucking big nose Swedish cunt so I ain't gonna start now and as I say it just grew this arms and legs to the point where I go back to Marseille now I was there two weeks ago to see some pals and people in the street walk past kids and go big nose like it's just nuts they don't even remember a fucking game of play for them do you remember I saw him on and it's sad really because I'm you know you want to be remembered for your foresee and your playing but also it you know to be remembered that people fucking remember you know so if you're Marseille then the fans love you you're doing well there what was the decision to leave well I was gonna so at the time of four year deal in the first year we stayed up second year I get loaned out to Marseille because I fell out with the manager and the 12 games and he wants me out the club in the midst of that he gets sacked because they don't win a game and then they get relegated so what he read that takes over in the January QPR got relegated in that season so I'm like fuck you because you wanted me out and look what you've won I've just finished second in France fans love me living in the south of France it's like I'm 30 degrees every day you know I'm treated like I'm God here they want me here you know not done anything great football wise but they just love me I can't do any wrong fuck if I'm going back to fuck in England fuck that I've got two years left on this QPR contract but they've just been relegated there's no way they want me back because I've been from bombs at them from France going I told you you should be shit told you shouldn't have got rid of me news was shit news had all the maggots in your dressing room vocally on Twitter which was probably a mistake in that but it's the impetuance of youth so I'm thinking there's no way I'm going back to QPR firstly the salary I'm on there's no way they can afford that in the championship the bridge is bent the fans don't want me back the manager in the champions league here but Marseille could only pay half of my salary the next year so I still had two years to go on my QPR deal and I thought there'd be a natural negotiation to meet in the middle somewhere and there wasn't and then Tony Fernandez is going this story's written for your job you can come back and save the club from the ashes this is a redemption story and I'm like Tony look fuck off you fucking sidewip mark using him to me out the club you fucking made your bed I'm playing in the champions league here va va voom the French love me you just can stick QPR right up your ringpiece I'm away and he just won't budge so he's going well if you want to leave you have to cancel your contract I let you go but you have to cancel your contract so I'm the math on it for me to listen to the champions league music and playing the champions league for Marseille financially for the money that was at stake it wasn't worth it wasn't my future decisions that you're making for your kids and their kids I thought well it's not worth it Marseille really wanted me then they were going and then in the interim in between that gap Marseille went inside a load of players and I didn't become the priority that I was at the start of the summer and when I arrived rednap it kind of convinced me and Tony Fernandez that getting QPR back to the Premier League would be a fairytale you know a story and Marseille kind of younger more saleable assets and I think the appetite to do the deal had waned on their side so financially they were never going to be at the level I needed them to be and then QPR dug the feet in they were going and speaking to Ari and said look at this Marseille one's dead he's signing his midfielder now I'm not going if you're square with me I fell out with the old manager if you're square with me I'll be square with you I'll do everything I can if you bring me back into the first team so he brought me back in and the rest is history that season finishes with us winning the playoff final Bobby Zamora at Wembley and I like to think that if I wasn't there there's no way that would have happened in a toxic position and myself and Phil Beard had pushed really hard to get Harry to add Steve Blach to the off the field team and without Steve Blach that wasn't possible that team was not getting promoted that year Blachy came in and worked as genius and showed everybody what is capable if you've got a strong mindset and a desire to be better than what you was the day before and he showed in football in terms of miracle to turn that group round and we get promoted at the end of the season Blachy was without that 10 men in the final Gary O'Neill sent off it half an hour ago and going on by a Fred Bobby scores to go all last kick of the game and end the conversation and we were getting battered with 11 men never mind when we had 10 men but it was Blachy's mantra and where he'd done with the group without a shadow of a doubt to set the small details in us getting a job done that summer we go away and come back and I'm thinking ok we can get cracking here back in the prem it's the last year of my deal at QPR but we've got a chance to build on what Blachy's given us a good foundation and Harry had gone away in the summer watched the World Cup where Van Arl had played in Brazil 2014 16 was it when was the Brazil World Cup 14 Van Arl had played a five and got Holland to semi-final final Nigel Deongel on so tackle was the final and Chilly under I think it was at might have been Bielsa or the guy who came after might have been Sampoli had played 343 so Harry had been away in the summer and come back and we'd been a 4-2-3-1 solid defence that we just about got up by the skin of our teeth and Harry's coming back and we've signed Real third and we're playing this back three and we've got Chilly and Wingers and we're going into the prem which is not a fucking league we're going to be playing this open expansive three at the back and stop listening to Blachy she kind of thought he'd got us promoted Harry, it was him almost whitewashed Blachy out of history of the club and then the club just got back into a shitty spot Harry resigned the day after the deadline had closed in the January or February, February the first so left us up shit creek without a paddle because he didn't get the plays he wanted and we got relegated, slow paying for death and then that was tough to take because I kept my standard sky, I was playing some good footy in a really bad team, in a really bad environment and I thought the phone had ringed at the end of the season and it didn't, West Ham phoned and thought that was done and they had backed out at the last minute and then a sign for Burnley just lighting the window and then had a fantastic year there, won the league won the team of the year, had a great year there and then came up to your neck at the wood slab came across Adrian's wall into the the Barbarian Heartland that is Glasgow and Scottish football Yeah, what was the decision? Join Rangers? Well, I'd spoken to Dachy at the end of the season and at that point I'd had lots of seasons where I'd been in the Premier League and it was just about staying in the league and finishing 16 for winning 10 games and throwing and I just thought I've got a little bit of a taste at Newcastle, at Marseille and QPR and now Burnley of winning and getting promoted and Rangers made this massive play at me first year back in Scottish Prem you know the fella who'd signed me and Burnley Frank McPartland had left halfway through the season to go and work with Mark Wobban at Rangers and I just felt thought do you know what, I had Celtic kids as a kid but I'd love to play for Real Madrid or Barcelona I'd love to play for Dortmund or Bayern Munich, I'd love to play for Porto, Benficio or Sport and Lisbon so for me to play for Rangers or Celtic has an anorak of football even though as a kid and my Roman Catholic, Joseph Anthony you know went to St Agnes School in St Thomas of Berge I got was a Celtic kid I always got Celtic's third kid like Easter, I always ended up with a Celtic kid they were always decent kids people's Ford some of my mates ended up on Rangers kids but we were always Celtic kids so then I'd always thought I wouldn't mind having a Scottish footy playing for the Rangers or Celtic but I always thought I'd play for Celtic and then as life comes at win the league at Burnley thinking I'm going to sign a new deal and then I love Daishi and I think I can speak about this now but it's like it's Daishi's money that he spends that's a good thing for a manager but I knew what it cost to replace me I'd done the math on it at that point I'm 31, I've just come off probably the most consistent season we've won the league I think it was a productive environment we had a good working relationship with the manager it was just what I needed I was settled, I was living back in the north west kids, family's great and I spoke to him and he said at the end of the season we'd had a pint together and a curry and he said listen I started talking money and I don't like to talk money I just said look just just when you speak to me agent you just sort it out I don't really want to get involved you pay me what you think is fair and I'll sign for it so I go away thinking that's going to get done and in the middle of the next two weeks there's again another Mexican standoff to disagreeing on figures and then cleverly franking ranges the little wedge in there and go come up and look at this so I go up to Glasgow it's June they fucking take me to Loch Lomond Andy Black takes me to Loch Lomond they fuck show me the Soviet room they take me to the training ground I'm going what a fucking club this is now Bayley was a good club at the time but it was in Glasgow Rangers the impressive institution of football that is Celtic as well I know your league is different to ours but still incredible respect from the football fraternity and then I just thought you know what I fucking really fancied this and they were saying it's like this every day I don't know so the weather forecast there wasn't a cloud in the sky it's like this every day you know what this is a chance, it's history for Rangers it's the first season back after the problems they had even if you're shooting Scotland and your Rangers you're second or third so you're going to be competing for trophies chance of playing European football which it was going to be difficult for me to do in England with Bayley who were newly promoted back to the league and Bayley had in the negotiation really shown me as much love as I thought it was going to be shown so there was a crack and Rangers stepped in it and then I decided that that was my challenge I weighed it up and everyone was going you fucking mad giving up the Prem to go here and I thought you know what this is a ballsy challenge like to overthrow Celtic and be the first Rangers side back in the top flight and winning a title moment and I thought it would be great to be a part of like it's a real underdog story so I've decided I'm going to do that in the midst of that Daishi gets winning it and because he's slightly different motivation to me he's a little bit more more reorientated he's then come over the top of it with a big an offer from Bayley thinking that's the end of the Rangers one and he expected that to be a torpedo into the Rangers transfer and I'm like no no I've decided to go to Bayley to go to Rangers he's like what do you mean I'm offering you more money I'm like I don't do this for money I made one decision for money to go from Newcastle to QPR and a swore for the rest of me existence that would be the last time I was ever ever compromised by financial compensation and he couldn't believe it but mine and his relationship got stronger since because he presumed like everybody normal people are that if someone offers you 10 grand a week more or 8 grand a week more you're fucking in the Premier League you're going to stay there but I was like no no I would have stayed for that offer at the first go but now you've only offered that because big clubs come and my eyelids have been tamed and I really fancy this project and you know it was a big moment for me because my little boy Cassius he's 11 now but he was starting school so it was his first school so he in Bears Den in Scotland they had like a little bit of a Glaswegian accent going on so it's not just me you can pick up the languages really it's in the genetics so see when you say obviously you cause fucking everywhere you go you always cause headlines but you went or farmers league scott brown shit you can't lace my boots what was that then getting into the park head game so I never actually said that when I went up there obviously Rangers had been demoted to the bottom rung of professional was it did he go to the third division so I remember I leave my coast and all that with there and they were really down in the doldrums and as I say I grew up watching more Celtic than Rangers I was if Celtic played Rangers I wanted the Celtic to win you know I didn't really invest in it because I'm an Evertonian but I would always you know out of the two AC Milan played into Milan I always liked into Milan Real Madrid Barcelona I always liked Barcelona so I get a chance to go up there obviously Rangers' first season back in the top flight and they'd lost in the Scottish Cup Final to Hibs but beating Celtic in the semi-finals if you remember so Ronnie Dahlia was the manager of Celtic and obviously Celtic were winning the league in the trophies but they were winning the great Cycle so when I go to Rangers first year back for Rangers in the top flight and coincided with Brendan Rodgers taking the job so in the midst of doing the press I've just won the league in England in the championship I've had consistent season I've had in terms of behaviour and process I've had Blackie in my life now and she was a good influence and a good group in the dressing room team of the year and I'm going up to Scotland I'm like I'm gonna fucking show these mainly I'm gonna build Rangers you know I'm gonna and at the time you can't go into Rangers who were first year in the thing you always the mark he's signing and go and Celtic greats in Scotland Rangers are doing well and Celtic or Celtic are doing well in Rangers the two can't co-obituate and both can't be doing well at the same time it's just the country's just not geared on that one's great and one's shite and vice versa in England there's about nine teams that shared amongst but in Scotland the real focus is on the old fame you know Hibs Hart Aberdeen etc but Celtic and Rangers cut most of it so if I turn up and I'm saying I'm just here to you know I just go under the radar and that's not me as a personality and I'm also like you know with the greatest respect to Scotland I've managed against them you know he took the job fleet with that I've been there and you know in terms of if you're an elite level player in Scotland you have to come south improve your boss Barry Ferguson you know Graeme Sunes I can keep going back no matter what it's the same way the Welsh they can't stay and play in the Welsh Premier League you can't the Irish can't stay and play and you've got to come here the same way in the 80s our players had to go to Italy or to Spain or to Germany because they weren't seen as the the hardest challenge you know if you want to be a tough fighter now you've got to go to UFC Bellator cage warriors one championship etc but you want to be the fucking top man and remember forever the UFC is where you need to be at and for me the Premier League in my era football is where you need to be at so if you're anyone who's fucking anyone and you think you can mix it with the big boys and you see Patrick Vieira and Roy Keane and Paul Scholes and Machlele and Lampard Gerard and all these that's just a name but a few and you sit and look in the window at that knowing you could be in that room then for me you're a shape bag like you're a shape bag now Barry Ferguson to be fair to him was the King of Scotland Barry was the King of Scotland King of Rangers that's his club captain and to be fair to him he had the bollocks to come down he didn't move to Man United or Liverpool or one of those clubs that maybe his ability was to be fitting off he had to go and sign for Blackburn Rovers then he went to Birmingham City and I think he won a League Cup and I think he went back north of the border maybe not being as good as what he thought he was going to be down here kind of graham soon as category but I think he certainly went back up there and thought you know what I've had the fucking right go captain Rangers have won everything I could win and I don't know I just look at them lads like at Scott I've had a pint with Scott as I say you know we've laughed about what went on in Scotland and he's a good fella he's not a bad fella great saving for Celtic Football Club and I said to him like I just I had no respect for you I think you're a fanny why not come up on UFC that's fair enough so that was my mind and then when I turn up there I'm like I'm not coming here to take part I'm coming here to win the title he smashed it to be fair I think Brendan's a chameleon so Brendan is brilliant but there's a sell-by date on him he says he's going to be here for another three years but if he gets on off the fucking Saudi Arabia he'd be off in a heartbeat but again you know they went up there and Celtic and to be fair to them brownie and I think they had some good lads there and young Calum McGregor who thinks a good player the boy who went to Arsenal, Taney Rod Duke they had a good little and Brendan going in I think because of what had happened with Ronnie Dahlia I think Brendan going in had got Celtic standards raised massively so we were going in Rangers with a championship in Scotland team that thought it was better because he'd beaten Celtic in the semi-final but it was probably a bad version of Celtic under Ronnie Dahlia Brendan had come in and standards had gone north and to be fair to him did he win treble treble or something he absolutely smashed the dead end and I think the likes of Scott and all that maybe their career and time at Celtic was not as professional as what it could have been under Ronnie Dahlia and I think me signing for Rangers and coinciding with Brendan coming in I think he put a few of them lads on notice and to be fair to Celtic they got some good players in there and made the players they already had better and you know Brendan's coaching quality they never fucking looked back did they had the old fun game like for you the atmosphere it was a strange one in terms of I'd been moaning at stuff in-house because standards were just poor I went up and I was a little bit behind in terms of my own fitness so you're a bit frustrated with yourself when you're looking for your own fitness and because I'd had such a good season by the end everyone listened to me if I said it was something they'd go fucker at least moaning but he's usually right because he had the ability in the dressing room and just because I'd not done anything at Rangers and I'd just start fucking moaning at them you know when you've got your tavern years and Lee Wallace lads who've been there settled for a bit and I'm just turning up going don't do that shit, don't do that, that's not going to work but I'm saying that because that's not going to work in the Premier League that doesn't mean to say it won't work against fucking Dundee or Dundee United it probably does and if you're Rangers you get away with bad habits until you face Celtic or until you face a decent side in European competition but when I get up there I'm criticising everything straight away out the gate going that's not good enough this is not good enough but you don't get people's you don't get people's support because you're just criticising everything whether it's just or not you're just seen as a fucking moaning cunt so I actually got off on the wrong fuck because I was moaning at people and I made a huge mistake there valuable life lesson we then get into the nitty gritty of it and all the stuff that I was moaning about not being at the correct intensity the way we defended our plays the way we trained etc didn't really rear their head because you're beating Dundee and you're drawing with some you're not getting beat but the 7th or 8th game we were playing Celtic at Celtic Park so I've been moaning and moaning and moaning in the background anyway we get to Celtic Park and I've been there kind of two months now two and a bit months and I just was like what the fuck have I done signing here these are fucking miles away like just miles away and I can't change them all and I'm moaning and getting more and more frustrated which is making me even more of a moaning cunt and it's alienating me further and further from the lads who I need to affect so we're playing the old fair and we done the team shape on Friday I think it's a Sunday 12.30 kickoff so the Friday we do the team shape and me and Andy Aladay are playing centre mid and I think Nicole Crankyar is in the 10 and it's 4-5-1 and you know it's a little bit more of a defensive structure and we've got our plan and that's the manager's then we get to the hotel I think we're staying in Mar Hall on the satay for the game and I always remember this James because I was sitting with Lee Wallace, Kenny Miller and Andy Aladay we were all like mad rangers boss lads good lads love football so I used to just take it when I was saying to you about the air and makeup I find it funny just to wind people up just say mad things and then not say anything so they don't actually know what so I'd say like just to noise the lads up just for the conversation at the table I'd say who do you think the best player in the world is? and they'd go, you know, Ronaldo or Messi and they'd all give the names and in the end they'd go who do you think it is? and I'd go Thomas Muller I'd go, fucking Thomas Muller most goals are a world cup and I'd just just to piss and they'd all be arguing well you thought I'd go, well better than Messi and I didn't believe it I just fucking noised them up just so they're all taking the bait on it so I always remember being in the hotel and I always remember whining Kenny Miller up that night about saying Thomas Muller's the best player in the world he scored the most goals at the world cup was me logic he's got the, you know, he's more than the other argument was making was Marislav closest better than like somebody else because he scored more world cup goals anyway the Scottish lads in there, Kenny Miller and that they're absolutely losing the shit and then from nowhere Andy Aladay's been part of it so we're all sitting at the table, he just goes quiet and then gets off then he comes back and you can see he's fucking like upset and he's a proper stone kid and he's a good kid so like, fucking you thinking someone in the family or you know, he's had some bad news so he's like, then it gets out there the manager's changed the team but he's text Andy to tell him he's not in the team for the whole thing, sat him on a Sunday morning so he's never done this so I'm like wow, what the fuck's this? we're playing the biggest game of the season he's done the team wear and he's fucking shit himself and changed the team sat the night and he hasn't had the bollocks to pull the kid one-on-one he's text him and he's gone and he's a mad rangers fan mad rangers family but that's upset, the other lads who were quite close to him so I'm like, fucking hell, anyway sleep it off get up the next day Warburton's like the leader and he's not the leader like I'm like, he's just, his ass has gone so I think he's a jag anyway based on his training sessions and what's been done but I've had to sit on it because I'm thinking I just keep moaning at everything everyone thinks I'm a cunt like it, I'm just literally moaning at everything so I'm like Victor Meldrew and I'm thinking like but I'm thinking a few things need to go wrong here before they finally go listen, you were right there, can you fix it and they're gone, yeah, happily it's like watching your kids fuck stuff up before you fix it, you almost have to allow it to unfold and in football terms I'm watching this unfold and I'm going this is just like I've did not learn the lessons from the Scottish Cup final, I'd identified by the games I'd watched that they had a weakness for conceding goals from set plays they conceded two in the Scottish Cup final against Hibbs lost the game on it and he had I think 14 or 16 instances in the games that I'd watched where set plays were a huge problem, so I'm getting in thinking my first post goal, set plays are dead easy it's a set piece, you just get organised from the start don't, we don't do that here I'm like, what do you mean? yeah, we don't do set plays here we don't practice set plays and I'm like well you fucking shit at them, you lost the Scottish Cup final on them, why? yeah, we don't do that here that's not what we do so that's not a good enough answer for me because I'm going, we'll have work for in the Premier League for the last fucking 12 years I've been on the countenance and this must be this mad football club where you're the only football club that doesn't have to fucking practice set plays and low and behold, you're absolutely useless at defending them can you not understand the correlation like sometimes in football you forget it's a repetition sport if you keep repeating your action with personal practice you're improved and get better at it from a team perspective, the more you drill stuff the better you get at it but Mark Warburton who is Rangers manager at the time, managed Brentford but whilst I was playing in the Premier League and becoming a footballer and experiencing the arena and the challenge of that he was working as a banker in the city so you know, I give everyone the respect and the due but for me I live a life of meritocracy if you act like a cunt, I treat you bespokely towards that now if you act really competently and you show your worth on a daily basis then I treat you exactly life isn't, you just treat everyone great that's not possible you treat people how they treat you or how they interact with the world and if I see someone grafting and putting the work in I go above and beyond to help them if I see someone slacking or fucking not doing the work that's the nature so Rangers then, you've ended up leaving then, what happened to the gambling was that Rangers won it? it's an interesting one this and I don't think I've said this publicly so the Rangers one for me was I've been saying stuff that was going to go wrong team changers, I'm in the dressing room at Selter Park and you know your water going out of the stadium like first of all for him and it's hostile at this time there was still I think we had 1,500, 2,000 fans in it now, they've closed it 100, yeah no fans now, yeah at this point there was still a bit of a crowd so we're at Selter Park and I remember doing the warm up and I said to you I knew I was ready I just got back to my debut and I told you the teams I turned to Fowler, is that my name? I go out for the warm up my ass has gone, the hero in the cow I'm shitting myself, do the warm up I'm all over the gaff in the warm up your touch is not quite right what you're doing, you're getting away with it but you know you're just not in sync this is the Reebok for my debut I go up the tunnel and my ass is still going, I have butterflies and that can I swim here this is the fucking, this is sync or swim this is matching the day tonight this is goals on Sunday in the morning this is all the papers, this isn't like the reserves I hide, this is the fucking real deal here, this is everything you've worked for you're only going to get the one chance me half of the ring around me head and I remember going up the tunnel after the warm up nervous and I remember sitting in the dressing room and I just remember thinking you've worked your cock off to be here everyone who's sacrificed for you to be here you've done the training, you're having cut the corner you're having fucking laged it you're having been in the nightclubs if you're ever ever going to be prepared for this, you're prepared so just fucking trust yourself when you get out there just descended on me in the tunnel, this is 5 to 10 to 3 I just remember looking around and going fucking, there's Robbie Father who grew up watching this I just remember this calmness and I remember going out in the tunnel and just being cold, like cold clinical and I speak to people about it and I'm like that's the moment you know whether you're fucking built for the fucking proper stuff or not, like when you know when the chaos is there and you're going cooler, calmer, more calculated people usually speed up in that or, and I just remember that the feeling no one could ever pay me for, like I'm a 20 year old boy who doesn't know what's about to come who's worked for this moment and just the calmness of knowing I've done the work I'm as capable of being here as everybody because I've paid me dues I've paid the rent and I can't wait to get out here and perform into the first team there and I never came out I stayed in there till the Celtic Celtic mob grass me up with the betting account, which was Paddy Power in Scotland and then obviously got a one game ban in Scotland 18 month ban in England reduced to nine so all that played out was and I'll come back now dressing rooms, so I'm crystal clear, calm, making my debut in the Premier League at 20 when I'm in the dressing room at Celtic Park for the old fame looking around me thinking standards, you know not where they need to be watch your mark warb and I'm an observer, like I speak a lot but I also watch a lot, I don't miss much I have an illness that I fucking spot everything, do you know what I mean when you see someone acting a cunt in school and before, you know, three weeks later he's someone trying his hand I've seen it three weeks before and I'm like I should have nipped that in the bud there but I have the ability to predict the future because I'm very observant so sitting watching feel frustrated at Rangers but I think I can change it I'd almost left just before the deadline when they said I had to sign Lescot I put my body in front of Lescot for the football club mainly because I knew he wasn't good enough, he'd grasped on me in the F8 thing and I knew a physio who'd had them at West Brom and I spoke to the physio and he said his knees are dust so I laid this up the food chain and I said to Warburton, I'm not sharing the dressing room with him so if you sign him, I'm off Dead Street Forward but let me know because he's a fucking grass and I don't play with grasses and he's a prick so that was it I'd probably get on with him fine now but at that moment in time that's where I was at with Jolian so Warburton goes I'm not having a player dictating to me if I'm signing, I'm not signing I'm not signing, sign him, don't sign him that's up to you but if you sign him I'm out, Dead Street Forward I've been up to Scotland, I'm going to be the best player in Scotland I'm the mark he's signing so this was the 30th or 4th 29th of September the deadline is 31st in the midst of that, Jolian Diceus phoned me and said look, come back to Burnley it's not working, get yourself back down here you're right back in, you shouldn't have gone like our relationships grown stronger for the fact that I walked away and because I walked away I never took the financial his respect for me, I think grew because he's a man of principle he's not fair enough to have that he hasn't signed for the money or been thrown by the money so he's phoned him, he's saying come back he actually said to me, Warburton's not for you he said he's not your type of character you don't, and he was right he was right on that and I thought that was because he selfishly wanted me to stay up there and he'd make his job easier, do you know what I mean and then they get up there and as I say I'm in the dressing room I tell him to park, I've watched loads of things and he's walking around doing a team talk all day and he's in his suit and ranges you travel away in suits, shit and tie and he's shaking like a shit and dog is in, shaking almost like he's got like Parkinson's or a motor neurone's disease or something like, he's fucking shaking and I just remember fucking thinking oh my god it's a battle for you you cunt you're a fucking fanny your ass has gone here you fucking shit yourself on the team you're fucking standard as shit and your ass has gone here and I just remember thinking I'm going to have to go out here and I'm getting my ass handed to me I knew I'd said I'm going to be the best player in Scotland and now I'm getting, I'm just going to get covered in egg and if we get beat here I'm getting it, I'm for being a braggish a bragging English cunt coming off of the boarder saying you're going to be the fucking main man this is, I'm getting me licks here and I'm going to have to take it like a man so I've decided as we're going out I thought it was going to be tough this game but I'm not going to get sent off and win, lose or draw everyone on this pitch is going to know and respect me after the game because all he wanted I think was for me to do something mad and get sent off, that was the narrative so it was like this tin the box, this pile the keg was building between me and brownie, you know the famous thing with the Anne Sheik and that and I'd looked him in the eyes but did waited until we moved past it looked at him, he was going look he hasn't even got the bollocks look him in the eye, look at level with you going to fucking walking and you can ask Scott this self we had a bit of a laugh as I said in the dressing room I think he's had a great career and he was a great player there was no, there was no me and Scott Brown you know Rangers and Celtic football club are bigger than Joey Barton and Scott Brown this was Rangers and Celtic being back on the table north of the border which is for me the Scottish league for the first time because Rangers I don't know what went on but you don't want, if you're Scottish football and you demote Rangers to the fair division you ruin your own product, they ruin the game in Scotland by doing that the football clubs cooked the books, of course they do all our big clubs do here, look at all the now you need incredible lawyers to stop you know some of the big clubs in our country are fine now if you've got the best lawyers then you don't get any problems Rangers at the time was a bit of a mess and it should have been about Rangers and Celtic but they wanted to make it about the protagonists in the middle of that which was me and Scott Brown game gets played we're right in the game, he's got the wrong team selection we're right in the game, we end up losers Phil Sendros, I don't think he should have played Phil, he wasn't fit enough and he dropped Phil, Phil Sendros gets sent off jumps and mistimes, Adam Balls it without the 10 men and they score 3-1 not long afterwards, I end up playing middle centre back with a back 3 with James Taverny at right side centre back and Lee Wallace left side both can't defend for Tophie, both fantastic going forward really good attack on full backs both f**king defensive qualities they severely lack and I'm definitely not a middle centre back against Moussa Dembele so the game ends up finishing and we're right in the game at 2-1 or 3-1 they end up scoring a 4th and 5th quite late but that's our back 3, we're down to 10 and we lose 5-1 and at the end of the game I walk around, I thought you f**king come up giving it the biggin, you have to f**king take your f**king licks as a man f**king clapped all the fans, shook everyone of the Celtic players hands, told them well done looked every single one of them in the face we're f**king well done and I thought right that's ground zero now now the f**king work begins, now the venture to put Rangers back on the top of Scottish footy begins you've had your come up instead so the game finishes, that's Sunday night all my mates are off at the old farm they all want to go out and glass go on the ale I'm like am I going out anyway, I'm showing me face in public, f**king 5-1 f**king not going out, so they're all out and about, I've f**ked them all off Mundi were off so I'm f**king right, need to get in Mundi because the job starts here that's the first game I've lost in Scotland only lost one game in Scotland, that was it all the other games had one or drawn only played seven or eight, that was the eighth game so come in on the Mundi thinking alright enough's gone wrong now now we can get cracking, now we don't do that here, excuses got to wash because we can see the goals and set plays in this game so come in Mundi morning, Mark and Davey just for like, every game you played they'd have an hour and 15 minutes debriefing the game, played f**king cow them beef in the cup or pizza head an hour and 15 minutes, all the good and bad things that you've done, that's their way of coaching so come in on the Mundi morning thinking we're going to get a nitty gritty, first defeat but it's going to be blood guts and f**king all the go but we need it because if we want to overthrow Celtic that's the team you've got to beat and we've just been f**king shellach by them in the first encounter that's the first game after, the semi-final where they beat them, where they thought they had the number again Brendan's in town, not Ronnie Dahlia so we realise at this point f**king hell this is a different entity, this Celtic team is under a different steam come in on the Mundi, no meeting alright, so there's no meeting alright, that's weird, that's the first time that's happened so it's almost like the biggest defeat we've had, they just pretended it hasn't happened, get out to train and the other day he's not happy that he's been left out the team, he came on in the game but he came on like 20 minutes ago or something like that so he's fuming so training on the Mundi morning James at Rangers Football Club was the best training I was ever involved in the morning after that old fame because people were f**king angry proud footballers were really angry about how their football team had performed and the scorn that comes on in that country if you lose an old fame and training was the level I was used to in England because you'd have to train at or above match intensity you can't train below an expected you might get away with that for a f**king 2-3 month period but at the level we play at you've got to be on it all the f**king time so we play that game and getting the trainings right on the edge it's like you've been involved in them sessions where there's a few tackles flying around but it's f**king right on the edge where it's a good hard session both teams are going at it but like if the ship bags in the group are on notice going f**king hell this is one tackle away from a fisty cuffs do you know what I mean it was right on that edge where the best teams had trained the best teams had played and been involved in knew and respected that little space if it bubbles over it a few years after pull that back in and get in the middle of it if it goes under it a few years after moan at each other or f**king kick off to get it back in that zone but it was right in this Mark Warburton f**king academy f**king nonsense stuff that we've been doing and the manager f**king academy nonsense now was hopefully going to be gone with saying it properly and the manager didn't like it and stops the session halfway through because me and Andy are having it and he's on the opposite team and he's pissed off he hasn't been in the team and I'm on the other team and we're going at it and there's a few players on our team who haven't dragged along in it but me and him are really going alpha leather and the managers ask us because he thinks it's going to kick off now me and Andy had a great working relationship I really respect him I think he's a great kid cared a lot about the football club and I spent a bit of time with him away from the football arena because he's into his music and his fashion he's a good lad I've met him a few times in Dubai since we were his messes he's a cracker so we're sad we know it's getting tasty and he just stops the session and goes right lads we're going to do shooting on the edge of the box here so it goes down and I've gone here I'm like what the fuck it's nonsense so now you've got Clint Hill taking a touch on the edge of the box and having a shot someone's fizzing it out to him they're just nonsense and I've just walked in I didn't even I've walked down to the session what he was doing and I just kept walking I just went this is a load of shit this is a waste of my time and just started walking in and if you've been to Tenerground at range so the staff things on the second floor so as I'm walking in Frank McPartland who's behind me is looking out the balcony and I've just gone this manager is a fucking clown and I've just walked in gone into the dressing room started getting changed and I'm about to just go all so I'm getting changed the lads have stayed out doing this shooting session and fucking Davey Ware walks in after about 15 minutes and goes to me manager wants to see you upstairs so I'm like why he's gone he's not happy the way you've spoken and the way you spoke to other players and he wants an apology off you he wants to see you upstairs in his office now so I'm like I'd expect Davey because Davey played forever under Moise so I'd respect that Davey's clear and he's a good fella Davey I went Davey listen I need to go home here that's not good for me to go upstairs because I think I'm gonna fucking say what I feel here and he's gone no no he wants to see me no problem so at this point like I've had enough I'm checking out like I can't play for this company I can't play for this manager he's not for me so go upstairs this is as I say the Monday or the Tuesday after the thing go upstairs and go in he goes so it's me Davey and warbs in the office and he goes yeah sit down so I'm sitting across the table he goes I think you need to apologise to the players so I'm like what for the way you've spoken to people in recent weeks the way you think it's not acceptable I said well look I'm not gonna apologise to the other players well I think you should well Mark I've just told you I'm not gonna do that so are you gonna force me to do it he's gone no I'm going well it's not happening I don't think I should apologise I'm trying to raise standards I want the team to be better I've come here to win leagues I'm the only person here who would think of playing the Premier League today there's no one else in this team there's no one coaching the Prem otherwise you'd be there and the Prem to come and help Rangers get back to the top and all I've seen is and that's it then I've opened up subpar standards and I said to him look Mark with the greatest respect here I've been doing this since I've been consciously away you went off in your teenage years in your senior years your 20s and your 30s to work in the banking industry in London and with the greatest respect here I've probably forgotten more about football than you're ever likely to know like this is my vocation this is what I do professional football so when I'm telling you to do stuff that I know works in the Premier League environment and you're turning around saying to me we don't do that here that doesn't fucking cut with me because I'm out there in the arena like sat Sunday I'm out there getting my ass handed to me in front of 60,000 that's Celtic Park and then getting ridiculed by the old fucking country and the reason that's happening is because you're turning habits and the way you set your teams up ineffective and inefficient so if you don't fucking like that tough shit because the deadlines passed I can't register for another club until the first of January so I'm trapped here do I want to play for you? because I don't think you know what you're doing but I'm here so how do you want this to play out? I've just joined Loch Lomond so if you want you can just fuck me off and I'll just play golf at Loch Lomond every day but I've come here to be a success and we're now incompatible he says a few things back and in his credit Davey were fucking stepped up and tried to save Wolbs Wolbs just put his hands in his head and just stuck his hands on the table because he gave it to him that titan he had nowhere to go and to be fair to Davey and I'll always respect Davey off the back of it Davey said to me what the fuck have you played for? what fucking career have you had? because Wolbs is getting it tight for not having a career now when you come for someone like me you better fucking be Wikipedia because before I attack you'll have an argument I usually download you so I'll have gone online and I've looked on your Mars Facebook accounts I'll have seen all your cousins I'll never go to a fucking brawl unless I've got some solutions so Davey pipes up he says what the fuck have you played for? I said shut the fuck up you you were a centre half I said you didn't even come through the system I said you went out to America and collegiate football and you didn't come get to England until you were 28 I said and then if you remember where you turned up Everton, I'm an Evertonian you just played 5-4-4-1 you never fucking moved off the 18 yard line in fucking four years of Everton so don't talk about playing central midfield central midfielders as you know think we're the best players because we have to have 360 degree view of the football pitch where for me goalkeepers are last picking school changed a bit in the modern era defenders are limited midfielders who actually can't go to play midfielders who aren't good enough to play midfield so you go fucking right back or left back if you're ugly and you read the ball and you don't mind the rough and tumble centre half if you're a ship bag sweeper and you have a big area so go and do your scrapping but centre mids have to do everything forwards then at the flash quick score loads of goals get all the money, get all the beds wingers are not good enough to score goals and players forward and not brave enough to play centre mid and a little bit more skillful than the full backs of football for me it's a dead simple game it's the same as the school playground so me and Davey are having it and as I say we have a bit of a ding dongy kit comes over the top and as I say I've got enormous respect for Davey but at that point what's coming out your mouth and that's your manager and assistant manager I know there's no way I can take back that stuff and what I'm saying is quite personal to and I know I can just feel you know when you see your bridge gives getting bends in front of you so I'm like there's no way I can continue this relationship is now untenable so I leave the training ground that day and I'm thinking alright me and the manager have had a full ding dongy he knows what I'm thinking I fucking give it to him tight by the way they give it to me as well you know we've had a war of words but where I'm from my culture that's a cleaning that's a cleansing that's a we move on now we move past this there's no grudges we've had our words and we move forward and I come out of that and he suspends me alright so he suspends me from the training ground war but for four days while there's a club investigation based on what I've said in this office so Richard Goff and a few senior people in the club John Gregg so I just tell them what I said I've said this is what I've said I just thought this is exactly what I've said so you can see them going fucking hell he's like half not long yeah so I've just owned up to it then I get a phone call on the Friday or Saturday to say and it's war but and phones my agent and says you're not going to believe this in the midst of me suspending them from the club and this going on the Scottish have a have contacted us and we've had our allegations he's got a betting account and they need to investigate it so warbs then in the midst of me being offered the suspension phones me on this so I'm thinking a fucking ranger's thrown me under the bush here under the bus so as it turns out we played Celtic lost 5-1 Celtic if you remember played on the Wednesday or Tuesday night in the Camp Nou against Barcelona and I knew Celtic was shit based on our traction with them even though they beat us the game was quite close they send enough massively changed it and we were massively under prepared and it wasn't much in the game they were better than us know that they were the head of us but there wasn't loads in it there wasn't certainly as much as what people felt then they were playing Barcelona so I've gone to all my mates listen this Celtic team is bang average they're not as good as what they are because once I've had a scrap with you played against you I'm very good at nullifying you the next time now because I go alright that's what he's good at right don't do that quite scheming in that way and play the game and go alright Celtic are the head of us but it's not insurmountable we'll get to them but there's loads of work to be done anyway I realise Monday Tuesday with warbs it's not happening then I get the phone call Friday I think it was that this betting thing unbeknown to me me being me I've told all my mates I've said Celtic is shit they were playing Barcelona I said they'll get pumped so you had the over two and a half over three and a half over four and a half over five and a half goals on the buffet Paddy power markets so I've said lump lump Celtic to get pumped by Barca anyway I think Celtic beat Barca beat them 7-0 or 7-1 in the Camp Nou and obviously I'd had a bet on Barca on all the overgoals and told all my mates to made in mind this was Paddy power who I'd had a working relationship with Paddy power for years where I'd been paid in betting account tokens and to to you know to do stuff for them speaking for them me and Paddy power was the rainbow leases campaign me Stonewall and Paddy power started that and obviously it's been picked up by the Premier League now so I've had these bets on Celtic Paddy power and when I think back to it I tell them a bit of a conspiracy theorist there but before I signed for Rangers or after just after I'd signed for Rangers I played in the BMW at Wentworth PGI and I got sat on the table with David Desmond and J.P. who I think were the major Celtic men and they were feeling me out in terms of you know fused this cocky little cunt so I ended up sitting with them and then I go to Rangers I have this bet and I've had this bet in account for 28 years and there's a whistleblower in Paddy power who's Celtic fan and you know I'm like fucking grass on bastard who doesn't have a 40 coupon it's not like we were fixing games you know we're having a 40 coupon like just seeing the lad dates and Ali like you know I grew up in a betting shop betting on horses and Rangers will be Celtic or manual will be Liverpool or everything you know a coupon for me was what a saddy afternoon's 40 was about getting up your granddad he'd go the you know fly around a betting shop your granddad would come in with the mirror reader and he'd have a couple of betting slips and he'd be writing his horses out and his 40 coupon and you had like your three ways or you know the pools it was and you're checking in on tele-text you know do you ever remember the one you used to have like a stamp and stamp missed the ball what was the fucking spot the ball or something you used to have when they all spot the ball and you peeled it off so I grew up in all of that but as I say you know pitching toss at school I wasn't really into cards I wasn't really a card player never like played cards on the coaches and all that but game of ed tennis for a fiver table tennis for a fiver game of FIFA for a fiver if I play anything with you I have to compete there has to be a bet on it so I play golf for a fiver I play at the same intensity I would in the playoff final I swear like I'm trying to win as much as I would be trying to win a playoff final if I'm playing for a fiver a tenner on a Saturday or Sunday on a golf course because I just love competing and it's not about the money it's more about the challenge of whatever the discipline is you're doing it in when it's snooker, pool, golf, tennis love all sports but specifically football and I've owned and had lots of interest in resources and in the resource world I could bet on my horses to win I couldn't bet on my horses to lose I could also bet on horses that I had information I had in my mates with jockeys or trainers and all but I couldn't back my horse to lose in the race which makes sense so you don't want in football we went from an era where we could bet on everything when I first started when I first opened my bet fair Paddy Power accounts you could bet on anything and then they went right you can't bet on matches in your league now you can't bet on matches if you're in the cup and that's even if you've been knocked out then you can't bet on anything so the regulation was slowly ratcheted up over the course of my career but I just kept going in the background you know I've got a five team accumulator on a satay in France, Italy, Germany what the fuck's that got to do with me I'm playing in England and it had been unchecked and I knew all the lads in the dressing room everyone was at it so and then everyone's getting sponsored by gambling things we're all getting money off gambling they used to come to us everything you'll and say here's a thousand pound betting tokens if you open an account with us or there's five you know so it's like it's all right you frown upon it but they're not really going to banners for having a 40 coupon fucking low and behold you know due to the you know the draconian rule set the fucking you know Tenali's going to miss a year's 40 year for what for having a fucking coupon with the jerk it I got 18 month I got one match in Scotland they banned me the Scottish FA were great and the Scottish FA because I left Rangers after they never ever thought I was going to go back to Ramlin and turn up for the for the investigation and remember you were fucking delighted I turned up mainly because I give them the Q-dots you use of giving me the charge and I'm not going to disrespect you by going fuck Scotland I'm never going back there I turned up and went you know fair cop I've had the betting account they explained it to them and they gave me one match I went to England and you know I'm Jesse James and I in the FA's eyes even though I'm a proud Englishman who wants England to do well you know the FA for whatever reason want me out the game they want me out they'd get rid of me because I say things that they don't necessarily like hearing you know so when they banned me for the gambling I wrote an article with Gopalma and Alice the Campbell and took a bit of advice off a few people who know who were creative and I wrote an article which forced the FA to relinquish as they were banning me for 18 months they had a £12 million a season sponsorship for the England team with lad Brooks so I'm like how can you be so draconian in one hand and yet user in bed with betting companies and you've got all I'm like it makes no sense if gambling's no good for everybody and we're not allowed to bet otherwise your banners for that long will stop everybody stop the kiosk being at a football stadium stop the advertisement but like fair enough I'm taking performance and ants and drugs you know I've failed the nanderlone or an anabolic 08 test I get listen get them out the game he's had having a fucking football coupon you know fucks I like what was it like retiring well I didn't really retire did I so I got banned for that 18 months so in the midst of what was it like in Scotland signed for Burnley went back to Burnley signed with Burnley November December played again for Burnley first game back I scored against Southampton was this after the ban no I didn't get I got banned in Scotland for the game but I don't need lands in Scotland as I'm playing I have to face it in about the and it's getting protected it's dragging on in about the April I've got to go down to the FA I go down do a full day there I think that's my last game the game before as it was the FA have put off the year so I can manage to play on the Sunday against Man United so play against Man United I think we lose 2-1 I should have took Anthony Marshall out broke on the corner and I thought I'll get to him I could have whipped him up and took a yell at card and didn't realise how fast the fucker was he fucking accelerated away so my last memory my last regret is I should have fucking tripped him up he ends up breaking passes to Rooney and Rooney scores we end up losing the game soon and in the midst of that the FA come back I thought I was going to get 6 months 3 months you know I've had a 40 coupon they're like 5s and 10s it's nonsense they knew it weren't match fixing or fucking throwing games they knew it wasn't spot betting or any of that they knew it was a lad who had a 40 coupon me 10,040 bets or whatever were mixed in with 10,010 bets formula 1 because I'm an avid sports fan and I'm a footballer with a disposable income I finish where I have to I'm coming in I love me orchestration I love me tennis I love me golf I love me sport I'm single I'm sitting on the couch and I go I'm going to have a 50 quid on that horse I'll fucking you talk to sir I'm going to have a battle for the rugby league tonight not for any other reason I'm watching sports anyway and I'd rather have a bit of vested interest on it they had all my accounts and I gave them every account they had pros, tallies, pros and cons I think I'd lost about over me 12 year, 14 year cycle or whatever I think I was down 15 grand you know I'd put 400 grand for bet on and I was 15 grand down so I hadn't even like it's just a lad having a punt he will better and they fucking absolutely threw the kitchen sink at me like they gave me an 18 month ban and I'm 33 that was like a death blow for me, they knew what they were doing on appeal it was reduced to nine because no ban they were outside the president since I've been a manager they've tried to get with the Stendhal incident they've helped the police in the investigations which the FA should never be doing they've hacked our computers when we were at Fleetwood decided accusers of being racist on a couple of occasions so there's this thing in the FA that wants me out of the game which is fine and I may well be out of the game what they don't understand is I'm way more dangerous to them out of the game than they are in it in it they can control what I say out of it if I go on to YouTube or in the podcast space better mind I've done the podcast I've done one series eight podcasts and it was number one on iTunes I decided it wasn't for me that because I need to build stuff like I'd love to do what you do I'm Natalie Inquisitive I can sit and talk all day but football is my real passion James do you know what I mean I can do loads of other things but nothing turns me on and gets me out of it than being in the football team what's it like being a manager it's for me if you can't play playing is the best there's nothing better than playing you don't have to look after yourself you're the master of your own destiny in many many regards and you know as a manager you're reliance upon everybody else you've got to get you know it's not about you it doesn't matter how good you are it's what you can get people to do for you you know you've got to inspire or motivate or find the keys to unlock human beings to get them to do the best for themselves get them out their own way lots of the time but again I think my skillset as mad as my life journey has been it's probably prepared me more to excel in this space than it did as a player now it will take me a period of time and I still don't know whether management I sometimes think am I going to be a manager because when I look at a great indicator of future performance for me is always past performance or my avid historian I really enjoy geography and history and certainly history to figure out what's going to happen in the future I think you need to understand what's happened in the past even at school they brought me two favorite topics outside of PE like I was always fascinated with them and then the next one was English language and English literature I always excelled in just Natalie without even revising I had two B's in GCSEs and you know got 10 GCSEs without even fucking thinking really and most of the time after them lessons I was building my world 11 football team or South American 40 team Italian best of series you know that's all we did and drawing 40 kits and planning what kits did we're in whether it was Nike or Adidas would be the sponsor and what stadium we're playing and then going home and playing championship manager and then EA sports bro FIFA out and playing that and then industry playing with your mates and then going to 40 coaching and football football football and then Sky Sports it's the telly and match of the day and all like just football everywhere and then you realise fuck me you can get paid and quit to do this when I started playing I had to play for nothing I remember sitting in a science lesson thinking reading in the paper that someone was getting paid 10 grand a week and going fucking hell how do you even spend that not knowing anything about tax and national insurance cause they were not just like and then thinking with your mates going imagine you're making you get paid 10 grand a week what would you spend yours on and then you'd get the Argos catalogue out and you were going right I'd have that that was the dream you could just open the Argos and just get whatever you wanted if you made it as a player what's your greatest moment as a football player I think playing for England to pull on your national teams jersey and know that for that moment you're in the best 11 in the country even if it's because the lad who was the best is fucking tired now and he's coming off after 70 minutes at that moment you're the best in the country what's your biggest regret biggest regret I don't really have one if I'm honest with you I've moved through life just like I don't really stay too long in achievement or mistake even if you've been excellent here this challenge in front of you the next day the next challenge so that's why when I went into AA and management and I went into the AA meetings your powerless over something was big for me because I was a big megalomaniac in terms of this world rotated around me when I was younger and you're on that hero's journey of being a player and getting off a council state and all the pitfalls of that and you create this me against the world mindset and then you have kids and then you do a bit of psychological work on yourself with sporting chance with Peter Kay and it opens up a different chain of thoughts in your mind and for me you know there's loads of things you regret and I've been going back to being 8 and punching someone in the face on the playground and I think I fucking shouldn't have done that it was a bit quicker to go to guns there or a million different things I can think of kicking someone in a fucking fishing pond with the fishing gear or just being a bully as a kid, a 10 year old and maybe a tackle where losing in the game and I've done a tackle and someone's rolling an ankle or breaking an ankle who's a good lad and you know I've not really meant to do it but there's a million different things I would go back and change but also all of those ups and downs and everything in between make sure you are and I do believe you have to make a number of mistakes some people have to make more mistakes than others before they get the shit together some people don't have to make many mistakes and everyone's different What's your biggest life lesson you've learnt for 40 or years? I think for me James the more you know the more you realise you don't know so the more intelligent you get you get this thing where you think you know everything and then when you truly meet people and you truly let go of that ego you realise you don't know fucking much you're just laying in all the time so for me life fascinates me there's so much I don't know and so much to know and people intrigue me like that's when I was talking to you in the car I'm desperate to talk to you and say what the fuck I had loads of questions for you do you know what I mean I was going to ask you loads of questions but of course so for me other people fascinate me and I think it's because I believe and this is just my life experience as I say the best footballer I ever seen the most talented finisher of a football I have ever saw on this planet that includes Nicholas and Elke, Robbie Fowler, Andy Cole Michael Owen like everyone I've seen up close and personal who I've played with Andre, Pierre, Juniak and Marseille Lorda Creightley was Paul Taylor and Paul Taylor stuck the ice axe in Anthony Walker's head and killed him because at 13, 14 and 15 he got into robbing cars and smoking and taking drugs and being up to no good and he didn't have people around him and that's how Steve Highway was the Liverpool Academy Director and he used to bring this kid in when he was 12, 13 and 14 in the school all of these to be at Liverpool's training ground when the first team were there to keep him out of trouble because he knew he was that talented but he knew he was from a mad family background and he emptied the boot room so when all the first team were out training he went in the boot room after about the fourth day he told his mates off the estate listen there's this lamppost and he went in and he just fucking threw all the boots over the first team players boots over the thing they've come in like where's all the boots gone and he's like I don't know and he's the best thief I've ever seen as well just seen him walk in shops just pick stuff up and walk out like incredible thief have you ever seen a proper proper shoplift like a proper one like it's incredible it's like a ghost so this kid was like that he was big for his age as I say he was two or three years younger than us and used to join in with us and we were at clubs and he was way better than us like he used to join in with us and not miss a beat 12, 13, 14 and then just fucking fell in with the wrong crowd and then started like doing stupid shit to like cool and he was a game cunt like and he could fight like fuck do you know what I mean he's a good size and just that nonsense that Bollocks became cooler than and he didn't have anyone around him just to pull him like I had me nan, my nan just was there to keep me on the straight narrow I felt a little bit more so my nan and you know he'll never get out of jail he's got a 23 breath, 25 breath for killing he's not done any of the stuff you need to get he might never get out, he's ruined other people's lives he could have been the best striker we've ever seen in this cunt he was that good James like you know talent when you see it like he was that good you need it and then I watched like everyone told me Robbie Fahler strikes the best ball everyone's ever seen with the left foot pure as finishing Rob was incredible but he never hit them as clean as this fella he had it on air and I could see whatever he ate he used to just stick in the stanchion remember the old net he used to just stick and he did like exit missiles and the amount of times I've seen him jam it in the stanchion where the balls stuck almost like Beppi Signori, do you remember Giuseppe Signori or like Zola was right footed but he reminded me of Signori like his left foot and usually people with a great left peg they have a shite right peg but the left foot can be like a wand this was beyond that and as I say I look at that and this is why I always believe everyone's capable of brilliance you've got to get us people at a young age sometimes for some people when the darkness descends there's no coming back I think prison and society is littered with that I think lots of people do have the ability to change they had to meet a fucking good mate who stands on them or they meet a wife who takes them or they meet somebody along the journey a boss at work someone a little bit older than them and I think males massively benefit from having a fucking male mentor that they can look up to to go you know what I respect you you're a cool bastard and I fucking listen to you because you've lived a good life I can tell by your your face and your conversation and you can stop me making some of the mistakes you gave me a few shortcuts in life and I've been lucky I met Peter K when I was 23 24 changed my life incredibly incredible man he passed away when I was 28, 29 and six weeks later I met Steve Black and if I'd met Blacky at 19 I think I'd have captained England like I don't think anything would have stopped me because the mindset and the behavioural patterns and the way he was like he just couldn't have helped be an incredible exponent of whatever potential you had he just made you believe you could be the best in the world not just like bullshit not like Nanny Pammy he'd explain it to you and then because he'd give you the in common sense you were like oh actually yeah I actually should be able to do that not like that's not for me and I said to you I'd travel through the world now even when I see homeless people and wrote a column for the big issue etc I always stop and talk to them and buy one off them I'd written for them and watch how's your day been and they might take that money and go and have a fucking tutor whatever but that's not my bag it's not my problem that still doesn't mean I can't have a civil conversation with them, smile up and say how are you and just be civil for 15 seconds it's not hard to do and in the world we live in that's lost because people are more interested in whether you click for a like or where do you go forward for the future do you? I don't know I'm like you I don't really I don't really chart the course I'm just like life's good you've got your head on you you've got good people around you I've got a good family, good friends I'm working in an industry I want to work in it annoys me from time to time because I'm one of the few people who is a master as a craft in terms of time spent and people turn up and tell me how to do my job better I don't turn up to an electrician and say you fucking plug you could have done that better my industry everyone knows a better team selection or a better passer should have played but on the flip side of that we get compensated they're fantastically well financially to do a hobby because that's what football is if you'd have said to me as a kid on the council state in St. John's at 12 listen you're going to be a footballer and you're going to be doing a podcast with James English at 41 and we're going to give you £1000 for those 20 odd years and they're going to sign me up now obviously it's paid me back in a completely different space to that and my true calling I think now is to help people not make the mistakes I've made so that I think we've got you're the same you've got to help put good cunts in the world now if they're your kids that's easy because you love them and they're there and that's your job wouldn't it be great if you could do that for other people as well like Steve Black done for me and Peter Kay done for me and countless others and great youth work as I had in the community centres on St. John's estate Dave Cuddy when I was a kid we'd get all the kids in the minibus and go come on and take us to white man damn canoeing because he knew if we stayed on the estate we'd be fucking robbing cars or getting him mischief and he'd give up his phase D or his Tuesday evenings to take us for the game of table tennis or a game of five aside so a 40 tournament just to keep us out of trouble was he getting any fucking dough for it no but he knew these kids are fucking good kids and if I showed them a different way hopefully a few of them will turn out alright some turned out doing half of that group is killing and murdered or been killed selling drugs and half of that group some of the lads have got out and had to go and if it isn't for these great examples or good examples people think everyone's on a shortcut or that they're mega talented nobody's fucking mega talented everybody's a prime total of the work that they put in on a daily basis you want to be the best stamp collector in the world you fucking can be it's easier now in the modern world to be a world-class person because you got these smartphones you go on YouTube now you got a global audience when I was a kid you only had the morning papers and the local fucking paper that came around there was no fucking social media or YouTube or you want to be the best if I want to get into gardening I'll go through phases where I'm into Ray Mears for like six months and I'll buy fucking old gardening old hunting stuff and being a back gardener I make a fucking fire out of a fucking splint and all that you know what I mean I'm just like dead inquisitive I need to understand stuff catch rabbits in snares I went through a space there's another phase you're going through where I'm thinking about like Peregrine Falklands and getting an Avery in the back garden she's like oh don't stop this is another six month fad or a year fad that you're going through where you get into something you know jiu-jitsu or whatever it is I get into because my mind's very active and I need it to be working all the time otherwise it gets into stuff that is not productive you know I can very easily with my addictive personality get into stuff that's bad for you so I have to constantly focus it on stuff that I know is beneficial for me as a person or people close to me so we get into these little these different spaces where and I got it from George Harrison my granddad's Beatle, favourite Beatle you know everyone's Paul or John my granddad's favourite Beatle was George Harrison and he you know my granddad I was lucky he got me into kind of Bob Dylan he used to have Bob Dylan on Types you know Desire and all the old albums like so you know you forget how influential pop stars and sports people are you know Mama Dali and I said to you before Custom Art like there's such an eclectic version of these influential people all around us and you know my granddad George Harrison and he said people are always telling you not to change and you know the Beatles are arguably going to be the biggest thing that's ever come out of Liverpool ever no matter who comes afterwards no one's going to be the Beatles and George's approach was when people say you're fucking changed that's a badge of honour you should try to change as much as you possibly can to be a completely different version of the person that you was you know add all these different tools to your tool kit if you can speak a foreign language fucking speak it as you've seen with me but you know what I mean like people say don't sign play the piano don't do that don't like they're always telling you as an advisor you're fucking camp I'm like fuck off who are you from working in the fucking council of states for anybody what's your enjoy who's maybe want to be something like footballer, artist, tennis player what advice would you have for them work at it all the time work at it absolutely all the time like make it the pure reason that you exist you know you can't half ass a lead performance if you want to be a footballer because you're going to get a Lamborghini and you're going to get a load of page 3 birds and a load of money stuffed in your pocket you won't get it when the tough moments come and the injuries and the loss of form and the setbacks and the shit nights and you've got to get your ass off the couch or your mates are going out because there's a 17, 18, 19 year old bird babysitting and there's a party and there's a bit of Charlie knocking about and if you don't love the game for the purest reasons that that bad wolf that voice that will be loud enough to capture your attention if you truly want to be something and you set your goal to it for me it's never been simpler to be an elite level performer in the world if you want to be a podcaster you can become the best in the world whether you're from Glasgow or fucking Los Angeles if you want to be a stammer collector collect fucking action figures or Comic Con it's just there for you now, there's no excuse if I want to learn, as I said to you getting into Gardner, I go I need to plant this tree YouTube now within 15 minutes after watching a tutorial or video I can find Monty Don and before you know it, I know how to plant a tree like an expert I couldn't do that when I was a kid I had to go to the library, check in and try that now you've got an encyclopedia, a library at your fingertips don't listen to anyone all these people who tell you what to do and who to be and how to behave fucking who are they you've got to be yourself, you know the difference right and wrong, you know when you've done something that's wrong, you know when you've you've cheated yourself which is the worst thing and if you're prepared to cheat yourself you cheat every other country around you because if you fucking let yourself down I always say, and I remember there's two things that happened to me, James my mindset just flipped over Covid was huge for me in terms of I studied history I always thought, how did the Nazis end up doing what they've done and Covid made me realise very easily just to see how people behaved and what they got up to, I was like fucking hell, I didn't think we could do this but we are crackbots and then as I say, you grow up with the things that happen to you and you end up just being a pariah by behavioural patterns he's a bad guy, he's a bad actor in the showbiz nonsense of football and then what happens is from a distance, Natalie I wanted to fit in, I wanted the people to like me because we all do, I want to be in with the in-crowd but I'm not allowed in so I'm over here you observe them and you think they're fucking nuts, who wants to be well thought of or well liked by these they're all fucking nonsense, pretty much they've all been harry up to no good or something the veil of the nice guy exterior has been lifted and I'm sitting over here just laughing me bollocks off going, fucking hell, who wants any part of that and again all these people are these people who are exonerating that they've never made a mistake and that they're this perfect person and that they're family people and I'm like, my experience of life is everybody's flawed everybody's talented brilliant in the same thing and it's your job not their job to tell you it's your job to find out like a treasure hunt with every person now if that's your mindset think of how many good treasures you're going to find on your journey if your mindset is you're the man and you're better than everyone and everyone's a silly cunt and you're just fucking you're just jockeying to have them off at some point or getting a position of power and be their boss then life's tough, life's really hard and there were two things that happened to me and there's been an episode and I'm getting the fucking down the banks from everybody and they're calling for me to be lynched in the Tower of London because I've told someone to fuck off or give someone a fucking crack or something the hysteria that goes with being a footballer and I was walking my dog through a graveyard so I remember walking through this graveyard and I'm reading the headstones and it was like Brian Smith died aged 62 loving father, loving husband go to the next grave, fucking Rita, fucking Johnson or whatever loving mother, loving left by so after about a 74th grave stone of red I just remember thinking where do all the cunts get buried because everyone in here is fucking sad, loving father, loving husband and the world as I know it there's loads of pricks, most people are fucking pricks they're having that sound so is there a separate graveyard for them where did they get buried, where did they go and then they had the thing of people only remember you're either you want to remember you're either favorably or you know and then within two generations no cunt remembers you, no mother puts fucking flowers on your grave just look at you're on a photograph and you know you as a thing all your medals it's gone, no one gives a fuck, no one cares now if you've done a great job and you've you've done the right thing you'll still be having an impact on them people them children will be getting education or have principles or have behavioral patterns in the life that you instilled through force of nature in your life that your kids wanted to be like you and their kids want to be like them in essence the key you live forever great people live forever, Steve Black will live on forever through me Peter Kay will live on forever through me and I will impart my wisdom on everyone I meet to say these were great men this is what they taught me so in essence by being a good cunt not the billions you live on forever you can probably remember the people who had a huge influence on you as a kid you can't remember what they've said but you can remember how they made you feel that might be someone just having your back a teacher maybe not fucking coming down on you like a ton of bricks that he couldn't make I had Mr Mitchell in a school he just let me off a little bit he understood I was a bit of a toll rag but I had a good heart and he'd give me a bit of a joggy whatever anything that I'd done but I remember thinking he's fucking alright and in his lessons I'd give him way more than I'd give any other teachers because I thought he was alright people can't remember anything other than how you made them feel like I think back now to games I've played in managers, coaches I can't remember them but I can remember certain things that happened and how it made me feel and the reason that is is adrenaline it's something you mind so you can't forget it listen it's an absolute pleasure to have you on it I think that's one of my longest podcasts about fucking four hours would you like to finish up on anything? no mate I've really enjoyed as I say I'd love to sit and ask you a few questions anytime man unbelievable career I say you've been fucking hounded by the press there's always somebody shit you've done but you're still doing it mate you're trying to educate people as well it's a beautiful thing but would you like to finish up on anything? no mate I really appreciate it as I say you've been smashing the ted and I've been watching you grow from a distance honestly I've felt I have known you for a long time and say I'm going go on lad and then I see you guess and go on and again for me I always I'll always listen to a podcast about 20-30 minutes I'll put it on a timer especially when I'm in Bristol and I'm not with my wife I'll bang a podcast on and I'll fall asleep to it I can't even do that as a kid with the tele but I'll do it with a podcast now and honestly the amount of guests you have will go through and I'll go ah the fuck she ended up with fucking this fella David I can't believe she ended up there and then gas her and like keep smashing the ted in lad it's impossible to listen