there was screaming – thank God. The lads started laughing, nervously. We peered over the edge and saw a ginger head and thrashing arms. He was about 20 miles below us, thrashing about in the waves. Grovesy was panicking, trying to swim towards the rocks. He was chucking all sorts of abuse at us, so nobody tried to help him out, and nobody offered any sympathy as he squelched all the way home.
Grovesy was used to stick. My party piece was to shit in his pillow case just to really wind him up. I used to love seeing the look on his face as he realised I’d left him a little bedtime pressie. When he caught me the first time, squatting above his bed, letting one go, he couldn’t believe his eyes.
‘Merse, what the fuck are you doing?’ he screamed.
I didn’t stop to explain.
When Grovesy left Arsenal for Southampton I was sad to see him go, but when I started sharing a room with midfielder Ray Parlour, I realised I’d found someone who was just as lively. That holiday, George had put us into a room next door to our keeper, David ‘Spunky’ Seaman, who had signed in 1990, and Lee Dixon. We called them the Straight Batters, because they never got involved with the drinking and messing around like some of us did. They were always the first to bed whenever we went out on the town. I was the complete opposite. I rarely slept on club holidays, and I’d always pay the bar staff a fair few quid to leave out a bin of beers and ice for when we got back from the pub. That way we could drink all night.
One morning Dixon and Spunky went off for a walk while Ray and me snored away our hangovers. When I woke up I needed the khazi, so, still half cut, I thought it would be funny to bunk over the adjoining balcony and put a big shit in front of the Straight Batters’ sea view. I didn’t think anything of it until a few hours later when I was sitting by the pool with Ray, soaking up the sun. Suddenly I could hear Spunky going ballistic. His deep, northern voice was booming around the hotel and scaring the seagulls away.
‘Ooh the fook’s done that?!’ he yelled.
Me and Ray were falling about by the pool. Like he needed to ask.
Even though Arsenal didn’t retain the title in 1990, we were a team on the up. Liverpool ran away with it that year and I soon learnt that everyone wanted to beat the champions, which made the games so much harder than before. We got spanked 4–1 by Man U away on the first day of the season. It was a real eye-opening experience. I remember that game well, not just because of the battering we took, but because United’s supposed next chairman, Michael Knighton, came out on to the pitch making a big song and dance, showing off about how he was going to buy the club. He had his United shirt on and he came out doing all these keepy-ups, while we stared at him.
‘Who the fuck is this bloke?’ I thought.
He smashed the ball home and waved to the crowd as he ran off. It turned out that he didn’t have quite the financial backing the fans thought he had.
The United game set the tone for the season, and we lost too many important games during the campaign – Liverpool, Spurs, Southampton, Wimbledon, Sheffield Wednesday, QPR and Chelsea all managed to beat us along the way. It was hardly the form of champions. We ended up in fourth spot, which was disappointing after the year before.
The fact that we weren’t going to win the League that year caused complacency to creep in among some of the lads, and George hated that. On the last day of the season we were due to play Norwich City. Liverpool were streets ahead. We couldn’t qualify for Europe because of the ban on English teams after the Heysel disaster, and we couldn’t go down, so it was a nothing game really.
I was injured, and the day before the match was a scorcher. I got together with Bouldy, Grovesy and Nigel, and after training we strolled down to a nearby tennis club for a pint. We had three beers each and some of the other lads came in at different times and had a beer or two and left, but the bar staff didn’t collect the bottles as we sat there. After an hour the table was swamped with empties. Then George walked in with his coaching staff, jumper draped over his shoulders like Prince Charles on a summer stroll.
The thing with Gorgeous George was that he was proud of his looks and he liked to live in luxury. One time, when we flew economy to Australia for a six-a-side tournament with Man City and Forest, George sat in first class while the great Brian Clough sat in the same seats as the players. The message was clear: George wanted to keep his distance.
Now he eyed the bottles. ‘Having a good time, lads?’ he said, happy as you like. ‘Yeah, cheers, boss,’ we said, thinking we’d got away with it.
As he strolled off, I honestly thought that was the end of the matter. In fact, he didn’t mention it again all weekend. As far as we were concerned it was forgotten. We drew 2–2 with Norwich, and the following day we flew to Singapore for seven days to play Liverpool in an exhibition match before showing up in a few friendlies with local sides. It was all Mickey Mouse stuff, really. The plan was to stay there for a week because the club were treating the players to another seven days in Bali for a holiday and we were flying out of Singapore.
I couldn’t wait, I was like a kid on Christmas Eve. The morning of our Bali flight, I sat in the hotel foyer at 10 in the morning with my bags packed. Bouldy, Grovesy and Nigel were also with me when George walked up. In those days, the clubs held on to the player’s passports, probably to stop us from doing a runner to Juventus or Lazio for bigger money, but George had ours in his hands.
‘Right, lads,’ he said, handing them out one by one. ‘Your flight home to London leaves in three hours. I’ll see you when we get back from our holiday.’
There was a stunned silence as George turned his back on us to take the rest of the lads to Bali for a jolly. We were later told it was because we’d been caught drinking before the Norwich game. Our summer hols had been cancelled, but I don’t think my case had been helped when I was caught throwing an ashtray at a punter in a Singapore nightclub a few nights earlier. We were later fined two-weeks’ wages. On the way home nobody spoke, we didn’t even drink on the plane. I only used to have a beer when I knew I wasn’t supposed to have one. That day it hardly seemed worth it.
I should have guessed that George would let loose on the Singapore trip, because in between the beers at Norwich and our early flight home, Tone had been done for drink-driving. As a defender, he was top, top drawer and would run through a brick wall for Arsenal. The problem was, he’d driven through one as well, pissed out of his face the night before we were due to fly east. The police turned up and gave him the breathalyser test, and Tone was nicked. He was the Arsenal captain and well over the limit. Someone was always going to cop it from the gaffer after that.
The funny thing was, when Tone turned up late at the airport looking like he’d been dragged through a hedge, nobody said anything at first. We’d been waiting for him at the airport for so long that it looked like he wasn’t going to show. We were just relieved to be getting on the plane. It was only when he got into his seat and said, ‘Bloody hell, I’ve been done for drink-driving,’ that we got an idea of what had happened, but even then nobody batted an eyelid because we all knew he was a Billy Bullshitter.
Tone was forever making stuff up, and he’d built up quite a reputation around the club. I could be sitting there at the training ground, reading the Sun, and just as I was turning over to Page 3 for an eyeful, he’d lean across.
‘I’ve fucked her,’ he’d say, pointing to the girl in the picture.
‘Piss off, Tone,’ I used to say. ‘You look like Jimmy Nail.’
Then he ended up going out with Caprice for a while. She was a model, and a right fit one at that, so maybe he was getting lucky with Britain’s favourite lovelies after all. That day, though, no one was having it. Even as he was brushing glass from his hair on the plane, the lads thought he was pulling a fast one.
When we got to Singapore we knew it wasn’t a wind-up because it was all over the news. By the time the English papers had turned up, the whole club knew about it. Everyone at home was making out he was a disgrace to football, and the fans were worried that he might buckle under the pressure, but Tone had a seriously strong character. If anyone was going