Bend It Like Bullard Read online

  I was there for ages, getting myself into a panic and all that time nobody had any idea where Alan was. Suddenly, at five minutes to six, the big Scotsman rolled in and said to me: ‘Right, take no notice of all these fuckers and just say whatever you want.’

  This was more like it.

  In the blink of an eye, we were sitting in the studio, the big, red ‘ON AIR’ sign had flicked on, I had a huge pair of headphones on my bonce and I didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to do.

  I needn’t have worried though as Alan made it so easy for me as he waltzed through the show. He’s a completely off-the-cuff character in a world which has become too formal, with everyone afraid of making mistakes; he taught me not to be too concerned with stuff like that, which probably explained why I ended up making a complete tit of myself by singing ‘My Way’ on Colin’s show a couple of months later.

  The timing of his programme was much more up my street, given that it started at 10am, when footballers usually arrive at training. I was on a couple of times with him, but there was one show where I was put on the spot and asked to sing live on air to raise £1,000 for charity. Didi Hamann wasn’t available that day so they asked muggins. How could I say no?

  So I belted it out the best I could and got a bit carried away because there was also a camera in there; I smashed Frank Sinatra’s version to pieces and did likewise to the microphone which fell apart in my hands.

  The one thing I tried to avoid at first among all the media work was out-and-out punditry, mainly because I didn’t really get it. After all, how does anyone really know what’s going to happen in a game? They don’t.

  When Wigan were promoted to the Premier League, no pundit, journalist or any other so-called expert believed we had what it took to stay up. I found that quite strange because I was pretty certain that the large majority of them had never seen us play in our promotion season. How could they have possibly known how we would do in the top flight?

  I never spend that much time reading the papers, but the boys always kept me informed and it seemed there was a stone wall of pundits (I made that one up) telling us 2005/06 would be our first and last Premier League season. Last time I checked, Wigan stayed in the Premier League until 2013 so they were wrong about that one for starters.

  Which brings me nicely to my theory about pundits – not to put too fine a point on it, they don’t know fuck-all. That’s right, they have no idea what’s going to happen. No-one knows! All the pundits are guessing, which is why they were all wrong about Wigan. They’re just surmising and doing their job. It seems sensible for them to assume that the promoted clubs would struggle in the Premier League, but football doesn’t really work like that.

  Who had a better chance of staying in the Premier League in 2005/06 – a team that was on the up with a bit of money to spend like Wigan, or a team like Birmingham who hadn’t exactly set the league on fire the previous season? The answer is, of course, Wigan. And Birmingham went down. Isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing?

  I was asked to do a bit of punditry myself after I finished playing.

  ‘So what do you think the score will be?’ they asked me. How the fuck do I know?

  That wasn’t the exact answer I gave but it pretty much summed up what I was thinking.

  The fact is that if anyone was a really good pundit, they’d be a top gambler, earning loads of money, but none of them are because they’re no good at it.

  I was also asked for my expertise at the 2013 FA Cup final between underdogs Wigan and moneybags Man City on the Club Wembley stage, in front of all the corporate punters. I was representing my old club while Danny Mills was doing the same job for Man City, with Jake Humphrey presenting. Naturally, when Jake asked me what I thought of Wigan’s chances, I told him that I thought they were going to win. I just had a feeling for them on the day and there was nothing more to it than that.

  Fuck me. At least one thousand people went absolutely mad, heckling me and telling me that I didn’t know what I was on about, adding that I was a mug for good measure.

  The good thing about that gig was that you get to go back on stage at the end of the match to review the game, and I very much enjoyed my smug told-you-so moment, after watching Wigan dictate the game and outplay City to win the cup. Not one pundit predicted that because, ultimately, none of them had any clue what was going to happen. I just had a hunch Wigan would do it.

  And that’s when I realised that despite all my punditry theories, I was actually pretty good at it and I’ve been lapping up the opportunities ever since. I go with my gut, that’s the only way I’ve ever known. Much like Chris Kamara, the only pundit I’ve always loved.

  The man is a hero because he’s completely spontaneous. You never really know what’s going to happen next when he’s on air. That, and we’ve both got great hair.

  On the media front, things might have got really interesting for me if ITV had followed up their interest in sending me into the jungle for I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! in 2013. About three months before the show was due to begin, my agent called me to see if I fancied it. I thought about it for a while and chatted to some mates, including Razor Ruddock, who’d done it the year before and told me it was tough.

  So I met up with producers and we had a good chat. They asked me what I thought I’d be like in the jungle and how I would survive without food. I told them I’d struggle, but I’d get used to the bugs. They said they’d be in touch if they wanted to take it any further. Sadly, it was a case of Milkybar Kid syndrome all over again, with the producers snubbing me in favour of taking Steve Davis and Rebecca Adlington as their sporting celebs. I’m sure I would’ve done well if they’d picked me as I’d have brought a lot more chaos to the jungle and they didn’t really have anyone winding people up and livening things up in there. But as my mum said after the Milkybar Kid rejection, ‘There’s always next time.’

  Which is exactly what I didn’t hear when I retired from football.

  Like life itself, you only have one chance as a professional footballer and I have no complaints with how my career went. If I was starting out again now, I honestly don’t think I’d be given that chance again as the game has become so much harder to get into. It’s now completely global and clubs have so much money that there’s no need for them to take a chance on a local lad doing well.

  And I did do well, exceeding all expectations, even my own.

  But the funny thing is that in fifteen years of meeting fans in the street, I can count on one hand the number of people who have ever said something along the lines of ‘What a player you were’.

  What every other person says, without fail, are things like: ‘What about you when you were looking at Duncan Ferguson, eh?’; or ‘What about you when you cuddled the ref that time?’; or ‘What about you when you did that interview and you couldn’t stop laughing – what were you laughing at?’; or ‘What about you when you were fooling around with Freddie Ljungberg? You’re nuts, you!’

  It’s always about the stuff that I did around football, rather than the football itself. Those are the things that I’m known for in the game and I think because of all those incidents, people always saw me as much more approachable than the average footballer.

  Some people say the fans identified with me more because of all that stuff, but I’m not sure about that. Does that mean they jumped over a load of people in the penalty area on a Sunday morning?

  I think that people just recognised that I was a bit of a wrong ’un, not quite wired right, however you want to put it.

  I love that and wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Je ne regrette rien.

  Whatever that means.

 

 

 
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