How NOT to be a Football Millionaire - Keith Gillespie My Autobiography (15 page)

We waited for news. In the afternoon, they called us in to meet with Ana again. The minute I saw her, I had a bad feeling. Her expression had changed, and it looked as though she was about to cry as she delivered a fresh update.

The novice judge had stepped aside, and a more senior figure was coming in. That would take time, but some of the charges had either been dropped by the investigators, or not deemed serious enough to keep some people in the country. She cut to the chase. They had identified their main suspects for the most serious offences.

“Everyone is free to go except Paul, Frank, and Keith.”

It felt like blood was being drained from my body.

My legs went, and Matty grabbed hold of me as I collapsed into tears. Paul and Frank broke down too. She said they would be transferring us to a prison.

There was no noise apart from the sound of gentle sobbing. Scowy piped up. “Are we free to go now then?” Matty flipped at him for being so insensitive. But the lads did have to go. We promised to see them soon.

After that, everything seemed to happen in fast-forward. Micky appeared, and asked if there was anything we wanted before they took us away. We all smoked so he sorted us out with a few. He then handed over his mobile and said we could each make a quick call.

I rang Kelly. She wasn’t angry. The club had been in touch to assure her it was a stitch-up and she had spoken to Mum as well. We talked for less than a minute, but it was a reassuring chat. Paul and Frank took their turns as the driver of the prison van revved up his engine. Apparently, the police were doing us a favour by allowing this communication with the outside world.

When the last call ended, we climbed aboard and left through an underground exit to escape the media.

Next stop, Sangonera Prison.

21

Banged Up

‘NORTHERN Ireland star Keith Gillespie was last night on suicide watch with two other team-mates in a grim Spanish jail. Paul Dickov, Frank Sinclair and Gillespie are also under threat of attack from fellow lags. They were yesterday moved on to the sex offenders wing at the tough Sangonera Prison for their own safety.’

– The People,
March 7, 2004

I expected prison to be hell. Wrong. While people at home were fed a load of bull, the three Premier League jailbirds found Sangonera to be strangely welcoming.

I’m not saying we were happy; we were worried and frustrated. But those feelings were caused by the circumstances that brought us there, and not by the people around us. The other inmates actually gave us strength. Prison guards didn’t have to move us to a sex offenders wing. In fact, I’m not even sure there was one.

I never once felt suicidal and the suggestion really annoys me because it implies guilt, like we had something to run away from. Our situation was the opposite. We lived for the truth. Believing it would come out kept us going.

So, I felt safe in Sangonera. Prison didn’t live up to the hype, and I was pretty damn happy about that.

All the worst case scenarios ran through my head on the way there, and I’m guessing it was the same for Paul and Frank on the silent journey through the night.

We reached the entrance and went through the checking-in process. Then, we were weighed, photographed and handed a bag of essentials. I stared at the contents. Toilet roll? Obviously. Toothpaste? Makes sense. Condoms? Not good. We agreed there would be no solo trips to the showers. Thankfully, after three days in the same clothes, they took us for a long overdue wash when we arrived.

It was after midnight when the guards led us to our cell. We nervously followed them up a flight of stairs onto the first floor, which had cells on four sides, all looking down on a courtyard below. Our cell was small, with a triple bunk bed.

I called the top one straight away. It was dark and quiet although we heard some whispers from Spanish voices. We didn’t say much and instead tried to sleep but we were fighting a losing battle.

Morning introduced us to our neighbours, and also gave us a better picture of the living quarters. Turned out the cell was luxury compared to the stale, dank police cells where we’d spent the previous couple of nights. Cleaner than we envisaged. We looked nervously at the other prisoners, noticing that when the guards turned their back, they passed handwritten messages from one cell to another using a piece of string. But the vibe wasn’t threatening. Most of the other inmates had TV in their rooms and had obviously been watching the news because they knew who we were. And they seemed to be supportive as well. I’ll never forget one guy across the way waving to get my attention. He didn’t have any English, but I understood his message. ‘Lay-chester, Lay-chester, Manana, Manana’, he shouted, while acting out the charade of handcuffs being taken off. Tomorrow, tomorrow, we would be free.

If only it was that simple. We didn’t know how long it would take, and fell into a routine that didn’t change from day to day. Breakfast at 8am. Then, the computer room, for long games of Pacman. Lunch was followed by siesta time, but we played cards instead with a pack that one of the other prisoners gave to us. Dinner was at 5pm and then it was courtyard time for three hours. There was a gym, but we were in no mood for exercise. The club had put money in an account for us, so Frank would go off and fetch us a cup of tea and some smokes before we went back to the cells at 8pm. The lights went out at 11. That was the worst part.

The days were easy. We mixed with the locals, in spite of the language barrier. The long termers all had various jobs to do in the prison. One of the inmates ran the kitchen, and he looked out for us straight away, giving us a nod so we got in before the rush at mealtime. He was a big friendly guy in his 40s who used to be a bullfighter and had enough English to start a discussion and entertain us with stories about his old life. After a few days, we felt comfortable enough to ask what crime he had committed, a curiosity we shared about everyone in there. He said he was in for fraud but didn’t really elaborate and we weren’t going to push him on it either. Maybe they kept the murderers somewhere else.

There was only one flash of trouble, a young fella who took a dislike to us and spat through a window while we chatted with some of the others. Instead of reacting, we just ignored it. One of the senior prisoners mentioned it to the warden and we didn’t see the culprit again.

I think the Spanish authorities were under orders to protect us after Leicester called the Foreign Office in. They didn’t want a diplomatic incident.

I was the upbeat one of our group. We all helped each other at various times, but Paul and Frank would lie in their bunks in the early hours talking about all the things that could go wrong. “What if they don’t believe us? What if we have to stay here?” I kept telling them to trust in the system. The more I thought about how ridiculous the girls’ story was, the more I believed our innocence would be proven.

My visitors added to the confidence. Kelly had flown over and was allowed to visit once, where she reminded me that the people who were important knew the truth. I found out that Mum and my sister, Angela, were in the country as well, along with Phil and Kelly’s sister, Nicola.

Beyond the obvious, there was little to say. We talked about her flight over, silly things like that, it didn’t seem like the time for a heavy chat. I was back in the cell when the warden dropped in a letter that Mum had written to me.

‘I want you to know that I am thinking of you and love you and am looking forward to seeing you. I am glad to know that you got the top bunk. Lots of people back home have texted me and phoned Ivor at home to say they are praying for you. Keep your chin up. We know you are innocent. Ivor, Heather, Davy, and your dad send their love. Love and prayers. Mum xxxooo.’

Angela sent in a short note, too.

‘Keith. We are all with you. We love you and we know you will be out soon. Can’t wait to see you. Everybody back home is on your side and thinking of you. Love you, Angela, xxxx.’

Sleep came a little easier that night. I knew my family would believe in me, but it was nice to read those words, even if it made me a little teary. This was tough for them too. I had to put this right.

Ana, as our legal rep, was the other person permitted in to see us and, as the week developed, her news on the ongoing investigation improved. The women had waived their identity to sell the story to the News of the World, so other papers had started to dig into their background. The info was already out there about their attempts to check back into the hotel, and their high spirits in the taxi. Also, the Swedish guests in the room next to where we were supposed to have attacked them came out to say they heard nothing but laughter and shouting.

But more stuff came out when their names were revealed. Their solicitor was claiming they were all happily married. Other tourists said they were escort girls who had propositioned them, and there was evidence they had all previously been involved in the sex trade. They wouldn’t reveal who had paid for their £300 a night room in the hotel. All they said was that ‘wealthy golfing friends’ were putting them up. But there was no trace of those people. The story was full of holes.

There were two obstacles to our release. Bail had been set, a sum of almost £200,000 between the three of us. Leicester were refusing to pay it. They were getting hammered at home because they had a reputation as a family club and, while Tim was doing brilliant work on our behalf, the board thought we had enough money.

Phil sorted my share without any hesitation, and nearly ended up paying Paul’s as well because his agent was reluctant to put up the cash and was making excuses. That dragged on until Steve Howey wired through the money from England. Paul’s wife, Jan, had come in for his prison visit, and was really upset with the delay. I was glad to have Phil in my corner.

The other issue was getting Steffen over. He was the key to the case. The girl hadn’t mentioned having sex with Steffen in her statement. She’d described him as a gentleman who sat and talked with her and nothing else. Steffen was afraid he would get arrested if he came over and told the truth, and knew his wife would probably chuck him out. But the club persuaded him to do the right thing. When the bail was paid, and Steffen was booked on a flight, a private hearing was arranged for the Thursday. We said goodbye to Sangonera after a six-night stay, not knowing if we would return.

It was strange when we arrived back at the court house. There was a lot going on, and not all of it made sense. They called me in for a police line-up. I glanced up and down the line and saw that the other blokes were different shapes and sizes and didn’t look remotely similar. My face had been plastered over the newspapers and TV for the last week. Obviously, I was going to be picked out.

Paul and Frank didn’t have to go through that process, but it confirmed that the girls were in the same building. One must have been behind a screen looking at the line-up. Knowing they were nearby wound me up. A guard was leading me down the corridor for a toilet break when I glanced through a small window into a diagonal room and saw them sitting there. Before I could react, he hurried me along. But the fuse was lit. “Those bastards are down there,” I told the boys. I was angry now, and stood at the door with my eye pressed against the tiny peephole, knowing they would have to pass by at some point. When they did, around half an hour later, a week’s worth of frustration came out. I pounded on the door calling them lying bastards and whatever else sprung to mind. The other boys found it funny. What had happened to the chilled out guy? We’d reversed roles.

Down the corridor, the hearing was going in our favour. Paul had already stated it was impossible that his DNA could be found on underwear the girls had handed in as part of the investigation, while Frank admitted to the blowjob but stressed it was all that happened. We were all happy to be tested to confirm the truth. Then, we heard that Steffen had been brought in to face the girls. He pointed out the one he’d shagged. Our solicitor told us that she tried to make a big scene, shouting “Why do you lie, Steffen? Why do you lie?” Apparently it wasn’t a very convincing performance.

Bail was approved, and the only hold-up was the paperwork. In the early hours of the morning, they gave the green light for us to go. There was a car waiting outside, parked a bloody long walk from the door, with an army of reporters and cameras blocking the route. We pushed through and sped away to a villa that Tim had arranged, which had clean sheets, fresh food, and no bloody bunk beds.

The club had booked us on an easyJet flight home the following morning. We faced another media scrum at the airport, mostly from English voices. Spanish minds were elsewhere as, the previous morning, 191 people had died in a sickening terrorist attack in Madrid. Al-Qaeda were suspected of carrying out the bombings so, naturally, airport security was strict. Our presence was causing a distraction so they skipped us up the queue and made sure we boarded the plane as quickly as possible.

We flew to Luton, and left through a private entrance when we landed. Kelly, who was home already, drove back to Leicester. Almost the perfect getaway until we reached our cul-de-sac in Queniborough. We passed a motorbike with a TV logo on its side. He was just leaving the estate when he obviously spotted my face and tried a rapid U-turn but he couldn’t manage it and toppled over.

Before he could recover, Kelly accelerated into the driveway. We bolted the door behind us, closed the blinds, and pulled the curtains. Shutting myself away from the world was the only option.

I had moved from one prison to another.

22

Innocent

‘KEITH GILLESPIE yesterday accepted substantial undisclosed libel damages for a newspaper claim that he took part in a sexual assault. Mr Gillespie brought high court proceedings after an article in the News of the World detailed claims by three women against him and two other Leicester City players.

‘The women accused the three men of rape and attempted rape, and alleged that one of them had threatened violent recriminations if any of them spoke out. The advocate David Price... said the claims reported in the newspaper were “entirely untrue”, and that Mr Gillespie did not sexually or physically assault, let alone rape, any of the three women, nor did he try to do so. In March 2004, Mr Gillespie was released on bail and the criminal proceedings against him were dropped in May. The women’s appeal was dismissed in December. Benjamin Beabey, for the newspaper, offered News of the World’s sincere apologies for the publication of the false and defamatory allegations.’

– Press Association,
July 7, 2005

£115,000. That was the compensation for being portrayed as a rapist in mass circulation newspapers. £60,000 from the News of the World, who paid the women for their story, and allowed them to describe me as an animal that was capable of a violent sexual attack. £40,000 from the Mirror, which suggested I held one of the women down while Paul Dickov had his way with her. And £15,000 from the Daily Star, who made up a phonecall from myself to Kelly where I admitted to having consensual sex with the women.

David Price Solicitors did Trojan work on my behalf. They offered to work on a no-win, no-fee basis and when the DNA test results came through two months after we got home, the newspapers were in trouble. Traces of semen were found in the underwear alright, but they didn’t belong to myself, Paul or Frank. All charges were dropped. The girls’ appeal was just taking the piss.

Still, I often wonder if £115,000 was enough. La Manga sold newspapers. The scandal was front page news for over a week, and the papers who paid damages still profited from the story.

Phil had information which added another dimension to the case, arising from a call he’d received from a trusted contact in The Sun. He believed that the News of the World had planted the girls in the hotel to land the story, a theory that was ripe in football circles. Dave Bassett had also heard it on the grapevine. Crucially, Phil’s source also warned us to be careful about what we said on our mobiles after we got back from La Manga. Seven years later, when the News International phone hacking revelations emerged, leading to the Leveson Inquiry that Garry Flitcroft wound up involved in, we truly realised the seriousness of that advice. It showed how low some elements of the media were willing to go in search of a story. When our libel settlements were reached, in the summer of 2005, they were relegated to the side columns. And so was I. For the first time in my career, I didn’t have a club when pre-season kicked off. Phil tried to be sensitive and only revealed the full truth later down the line. Nobody wanted me. I was tainted by a crime I didn’t commit.

The 2003/04 season was over for me post-La Manga. Micky wasn’t playing me before, so he certainly wasn’t going to involve me after. I followed Leicester’s first game after the scandal through the updates on Soccer Saturday. Against all the odds, they went to Birmingham and won. I punched the air when the full-time whistle went, but wanted to punch the television that night when Ron Atkinson came on ITV and said the club should have sacked the three players who had been released from Sangonera Prison just 24 hours earlier. I didn’t have much to smile about in the couple of months that followed La Manga, but when Big Ron lost his job after making racist comments about Marcel Desailly, I raised a glass.

The club was under pressure to show us the door, though. When the story broke, fans had turned up at the ground to burn shirts and hand back season tickets, and the board was shitting themselves that big sponsors like Alliance & Leicester and Walkers would pull out. But they stayed loyal, and common sense prevailed. Paul, a key player, was brought straight back into the side. They couldn’t afford to continue without him.

In the immediate aftermath there was a well publicised internal investigation. We were all called before Tim Davies to explain what happened. But it smacked of an exercise to show they were taking a stand. The reality was that nobody had broken any rules. Micky had allowed us to have a drink. In the end, a few token fines were handed out to satisfy a few board members who knew fuck all about what happened on trips away.

The boys in the dressing room did what footballers do best, and slaughtered us. Until the case was struck off, the ‘La Manga Eight’ had to board a train to London on the last Thursday of the month, walk two minutes to sign a form to prove we were still in the country, and then go back to the station and make the return journey. We were the butt of a fair few jokes. It was a serious subject and that shouldn’t happen but that’s what dressing rooms can be like. The birds’ German connections gave them an easy angle. A text went around about the eight of us being in the room asking the girls if we could shag them. They say “Nein”, so we reply, “Oh, so we go and get one more?”

All you could do was laugh. Privately, most of the boys were supportive. Paul lived nearby and we had socialised together before all the drama, so we looked out for each other in the fall-out. Frank was based in London, and looked out for himself. Phil advised me to play the PR game to speed up the process of clearing our names, and the ideal chance arose when the producers of Tonight with Trevor McDonald approached with a request to make a special programme about the case. Sir Trevor, the famous ITV news anchor, separately visited Paul and I for a lengthy sit-down. Then, we learned that Frank had gone on a solo run and poured his heart out to the BBC. The makers of the programme had lost the exclusive element, so the planned hour-long show was reduced to a tiny segment.

I left a number of messages on Frank’s phone asking him why the fuck he was making himself look good while leaving myself and Paul out to dry, but he didn’t respond. Maybe he felt under pressure to do something special because his missus only found out about his blowjob when it came out in the hearing, but I can’t see how that could have caused him too many problems. Frank was always able to spin stories and usually seemed to get away with it. I’ve talked to Frank since, but the way in which he handled that has stuck with me. The profile of the ITV show would really have helped our cause. With that opportunity wasted, all we could do was wait for the formal exoneration.

Micky was never the same after Spain. All the attention around it wore him down. Wrongly, he seemed to feel responsible for what happened. It was made out that the drinking on the trip had undermined his authority when the reality was that he had sold it to us as a bonding exercise. Perhaps the club were telling him that shouldn’t have been the case, but the theory that he’d lost control of the dressing room was miles off the mark. That said, he didn’t win himself any friends in the post-mortem. In crisis mode, his temper was shorter than usual. One day, during the internal investigation, the club wanted to interview everyone and Peter Shirtliff, the reserves boss, spoke up and asked if the lads who were playing for him that night could go in first. The gaffer turned around in front of the group and screamed, “I don’t give a fuck about the reserves.” Shirty said nothing, but he was seething. Micky didn’t seem to realise he was treating a popular member of staff with so little respect.

He blamed the fall-out from Spain for our inevitable relegation, which was a load of crap. The real reason was that we weren’t very good. Silly mistakes throughout the season were our downfall. A team that leads Wolves 3-0 at half-time and loses 4-3 deserves what it gets and, for us, that was the drop. Micky stayed on and tried to build a promotion-winning squad, but I think he was still hurting from the season before and quit after two months back in the Championship.

It was already obvious we wouldn’t be going back up. As ever, the ‘big boys’ that had just dropped a level were the scalp that everyone wanted. And it was in the smaller grounds that I learned that some fans would never allow me to forget the recent past. Millwall stands out. I remember collecting the ball to take a throw, and taking a few steps back, while the crowd just hissed the same word over and over again in unison. “Rapist, rapist, rapist.” There’s nothing you can do in that situation. If you react to a thug shouting abuse in your ear from two yards away, then you’re the bad guy.

The funny thing is, I quite enjoyed that season.

Micky was replaced by Craig Levein, a Scot who I found to be a fair guy. He brought in stuff like Prozone analysis, which could drag on at times, but I actually found it to be quite beneficial in terms of understanding the game. My performances improved and while we finished well down the table, the fans, who had previously booed me off the pitch, voted me as their Player of the Year. It was a goodbye present. My contract was up, and financial problems at the club meant that a slashing of the budget was necessary. Phil thought they wanted rid of me anyway because of my association with the Spain episode. Relegation had already cut my wage in half to £7,000 a week, and Craig made it clear that a new deal wouldn’t even be close to that.

“I wouldn’t want to embarrass you with the offer they have made,” he said. We parted amicably.

It was a time of change. There was plenty of coming and going in my personal life as well. Kelly was a huge source of support during the La Manga fallout, but the spark that brought us together had disappeared. She was putting pressure on me to speed up the divorce with Frances, but there was no sense that we were growing any closer to a real commitment.

The longer we lived together, the clearer it became that we didn’t have very much in common. Old habits died hard, and I was always looking for something else, or someone else. On a trip to London, I met her. I’d gone out for a drink with Phil and bumped into some lads he knew in the pub. Phil went off to a game at Stamford Bridge, and I stayed with my new friends. They took me along to a boxing match and, afterwards, a club, where I got talking to a small, beautiful blonde girl named Vikki Morley. She was a real southern girl, different to my previous conquests. We hit it off, swapped numbers, and kept in regular touch. Texting mostly, or a phone call when the opportunity allowed.

I always thought I was a good liar, that I could cover my tracks fairly well. But Kelly sensed a change. She went out to meet a friend one evening, and I took the chance to sit in the bedroom and call Vikki. Kelly must have expected me to do that because she’d hidden a dictaphone in the room and recorded the whole thing. She confronted me with the truth, and that was the end of the relationship. There was no point in trying to save it. Our moment had passed and, given her fondness for the limelight, it didn’t surprise me that Kelly ended up going to the papers about it.

It didn’t speed things up with Vikki, however. We lived a fair distance apart, and there’s only so much texting and talking you can do without seeing each other face to face. I thought nothing was going to happen, so I knocked it on the head. Besides, there was another face on the scene. My wife. After putting it off for ages, I’d finally decided to make some progress on the divorce with Frances. We started to speak again and, surprisingly, the tone was quiet pleasant. The premise of our discussions was the logistics of the split, but it developed from that to personal chat, to familiar talk. She came down to Leicester to see me, lying to ourselves that it was to go through the formalities when there was clearly another motive. Discussion flowed, one thing led to another, and suddenly the plans to divorce were shelved. Six years after St Lucia, we were giving it another go.

I moved into the apartment in Wilton that I’d bought her as part of our separation and, for a month, it was great. I was comfortable in the area; my lifelong mate Jim and other pals lived nearby. ‘Maybe this is fate,’ I thought. But the old saying is true. You should never go back; to a football club or a woman. The tensions that led to the initial parting never disappear. They just lie under the surface, waiting to rear their head.

Eventually, history began to repeat itself. The rows, the shouting matches. We called it quits again, and this time it was for good.

My football life was as uncertain as the love life. I assumed there would be clubs lining up after the way in which I’d finished the season with Leicester. Wrong.

The only real offer came from Leeds, who invited me down for a trial where their manager, Kevin Blackwell, treated me like a twat. He claimed he wanted two players for every position and the only other right winger, Steve Stone, injured his Achilles just after I arrived. Blackwell didn’t say a word to me after our first meeting, but he had plenty to say to everyone else. His personality grated. The end of my week approached and, on the Saturday, we played a practice match. All the other boys were asking if I was coming away with them on the Monday for a pre-season trip to Norway. I didn’t have a clue so I went to knock on the manager’s door to find out where I stood. “Look,” he said, “I’ve had a word with the chairman and we don’t have any money available to offer you anything.”

I wondered when he was planning to tell me that my week had been a total waste of time. This was taking the piss. I wanted to tell him what a prick he was, but I kept my mouth shut, shied away from the confrontation, and walked back into unemployment, consoling myself by concluding that I wouldn’t have fancied dealing with a guy like Blackwell every day anyway.

As the days and weeks passed, and a new season dawned, the positives were harder to find. Phil kept my spirits up. Only later did he admit how worried he was. Every avenue he tried led to a mention of La Manga. I’d coped with the stigma of the gambling and the punch-up headlines; this was far worse and piled on top of the old rap sheet. It cemented a perception – Keith Gillespie means trouble. From the first time I’d kicked a ball, I was always in demand. Now, I was desperate for anyone to ring, so I’d have news when Mum or Dad called to ask about my next move.