TRASHFUTURE - PREVIEW Britainology 61: the Mad Lads of Football feat. Joey D’Urso

Starting point is 00:00:00 and she said that one day they were leaving and there was this guy with his dad there who was like quite elderly and they'd come to like wait at the player's exit to try and get hold of Paul Gascoigne and get him to sign an autograph and apparently Gaza's coming down he's being like kind of bundled out of the stadium because he's in a hurry and then this guy comes up and he's like my dad is like old like the 80 year old bald man he's like oh he's a big fan of yours he wants an autograph and you can see like Gaza kind of like looks at this man and then looks around all these people who are like hurrying him out of the building and he sort of panics because he sort of doesn't want to just ignore the guy but he knows he doesn't have time to sign an autograph and apparently

Starting point is 00:00:35 just grabbed him and just kissed him on the top of his bullet and then left. That's become a whole thing in the last few weeks with the sort of social media shaming of footballers who are perceived to be ignoring these kids will be like looking for that we have in there like beats headphones on in the zone and we'll just walk straight past them and everyone kind of lost their shit about about this but it was kind of fake news I think there's this little girl who was a mascot for Arsenal and her dad sort of tweeted like oh no all the players like were really nice and had photos and he's like my kid is now incredibly stressed by the fact that 50 million people have said that that you know yeah it's like he just got this huge wind out of nothing and these guys were

Starting point is 00:01:13 obviously like about to play a match over a bit and then afterwards were yeah I think that kind of feeds into something deeper which is the idea that footballers now are really like inaccessible and you know not like us and and rude and earn too much money which is a lot of that is true but I think this is kind of what I love though about British football which is in a way like no matter how no matter how much money they have or no matter how like kind of stratospherically you know wealthy whatever they are there's always an element of just like they that whenever there's a scandal it's always like they were in a premier in and then you're like how are you how are you like a multi-millionaire and you're getting into a fight in the bar of a premier in but it's something

Starting point is 00:01:53 about Britain it drags everyone down to this level or a classic one is like doing balloons you know like nitrous oxide like oh yeah being on the front page of the sun I was thinking about too I mean you're gonna continue with Gaza but I also feel like there's a degree to which I would understand why they would want to be less accessible because it feels like being in the public eye in this country invariably brings along with it really hostile public attention and especially press attention just not not all press but like how the tabloid media operates in this country like stories about footballers behaving badly seem to generate a lot of income for uh for for tabloids and it so it seems like finding a way to yeah put them in the crosshair seems to be just be very

Starting point is 00:02:33 I just perceive this even as someone who hasn't watched the sport yeah I mean the peak of that is like the kind of Germany in 2006 like Barden Barden you know about Barden Barden it's like no it's like this kind of luxury spa town yeah another town but I didn't know what happened like England played in Germany is basically this era of English football where you had loads of mega stars like kind of arguably better than the team that's got to a couple of finals recently you had David Beckham obviously Stephen Gerrard Frank Lampard Paul Skolls Michael Owen Wayne Rooney you know if you're gonna if you're gonna name the true legend sorry John Terry John Terry Rhea Ferdinand like if you were to name the like 20 best players in the world at that point like

Starting point is 00:03:09 seven or eight of them would have been English um but the team never did that well and the kind of it never really gelled as a team and it was viewed as being lots of like kind of flash players who you know um but they played the World Cup in Germany stayed in this kind of luxury spa town and all the wags you know what a wag is right wife and girlfriend yeah okay the way so the the wags were like a pack of these like very glam women who are the the wives and girlfriends who were just like passing out till like five in the morning all the paparazzi were like taking pictures of them like falling out of um while these their husbands or boyfriends were like training for the pinnacle of their lives and it was then the team did really badly and everyone was like oh like it

Starting point is 00:03:46 was the wags fault you know um yeah like the wags is just like such a big cultural thing yeah yeah yeah it definitely feels as though I mean the Rebecca Vardy Colleen Rooney yeah yeah yeah big time yeah seeing like I mean that's kind of the end of the wag era I guess like yeah because with like the decline of power of the tabloid press like in Instagram and stuff there I guess they're things are much more controlled like it did seem though that the degree to which they made hay out of that the case the court case like it was it had an like an outsized amount of attention that it received and that did make me I mean I'd seen headlines here and there and various scandals and things like that I was like oh yeah this this was part and parcel was like their private lives

Starting point is 00:04:27 their partners whatever getting scrutinized or like if they have you know bad night in the pub getting a fight get drunk whatever like it's gonna be headline news and so it felt like someone like uh Paul Gas going like just I mean may have been a bit nuts before but also like that didn't help yeah yeah I mean he was like you can see like as you as you go through sort of Gaza as the thing I mean I think he's doing a little bit better these days but I think there's just a kind of like you see someone who's quite clearly like vulnerable who's ultimately like destroyed by the you know the process that they go through as a famous person but when it comes to by way of wrapping up on Gaza we do we have to talk about the Raoul Mote incident because I think this this was a lot of

Starting point is 00:05:09 people's like at least younger people like this is what they remember about Gaza I think okay so this happened in 2010 I don't remember all the details a bucket of fried chicken yeah fishing rod yeah yeah you remind me yeah so basically in 2010 there's a guy called Raoul Mote who was a nightclub bouncer in Newcastle who Paul Gas going vaguely knew because he was always out at the clubs drinking whatever and he kind of just went nuts I think murdered his girlfriend and shot a policeman but the policeman didn't die but was severely injured he was like on the run for a few days it was sort of manhunt yeah I've heard you guys referenced Raoul Mote before on the show and it's like an instant callback to British people of a certain age and I had no idea what you're

Starting point is 00:05:52 talking about I suppose it's like I can't think of any other like manhunt like as in you know for several days it was like the police looking for this guy who shot someone which probably happens like every week in Texas yeah I remember yeah there were manhunts just like invariably there would be there was a our school got my in when I was in the equivalent of year eight got locked down because someone had walked into a bank in my hometown and murdered two people and then was like there was a local manhunt everything was shut down so like I'm not saying it's like oh it's just old like it's fine like it's fucked up but like yeah I realized that kind of thing doesn't really happen in Britain that often yeah I mean guns as well I mean yeah yeah yeah yeah and so yeah

Starting point is 00:06:27 basically he was on the run for for a few days it ended in this standoff in the woods in a town outside Newcastle and then in the end he shot himself and that was that was the end of it but so I've got I've got two reports here first one from the Guardian which just explains what happened and then I've got one from the Daily Mail which is Gaza in his own words blow by blow what happened that night so the Guardian says gas coin also turned up at the crime scene wearing a dressing gown and carrying a fishing rod and attempted to gain access to moat by claiming to be a good friend of the fugitive I guarantee moatie he won't shoot at me I'm good friends with him he told police but was denied access talking to real radio northwest that day gas

Starting point is 00:07:06 going to explain that he'd gone down with a can of lager some chicken a mobile phone and something to keep warm news of gas coins attempt only reached his agent Kenny shepherd after the event who told press at the time he's doing what I'm sitting having an evening meal in New Yorker I'm speechless this this guy I want to know more about this is a powerful energy like the guy huge phone in New Yorker he's doing fucking what I told him stay in the ass I'm just imagining like yeah uh Paul Paul gas going trying to freelance hostage negotiator that's oh yeah it's a vibe yeah I mean he might have succeeded you know I mean given the the outcome as it ended up was sub ideal so maybe they should have let Gaza have a go but yeah the real meat

Starting point is 00:07:48 of this is um is getting Gaza his own description this is him I think he was doing a uh he did a stage tour in 2015 was like kind of an audience with Gaza he looked real bad I think this was peak like severe alcoholism Gaza he looks a bit better now but he was like kind of like rail thin but he's like you've got to realize I'm half cut anyway I'm sitting in the living room I've got about six lines of cocaine lined up I'm not realizing much but a good line and me and Raul Moe are sort of friends a couple more lines and we're good buddies a few whiskies and other few lines I've had about eight lines and we went to school together he was in Rothbury that's where I used to go fishing so I know the area quite well I'm on my 11th line so if he's in the woods he's

Starting point is 00:08:30 going to be cold I'll get my barber out another line and I have a couple of fishing rods and a chicken he's going to need a drink I've had 14 lines now and he's my brother I've got my fishing rods I've got barber jacket I've got my four cans I've got my chicken my chicken is important because he must be starving Gascoy who took a taxi to the scene added I've got a chicken on my back powder all over my face he says Gaza where are you going I said fishing where do you think he said okay then where I said just drive I'm excited now right we're going fishing oh I've forgotten the tent but never mind we drove past Newcastle airport and everything and see signs for Rothbury and he goes oh fuck me Gaza are you going where I think you're going this copper comes over and he

Starting point is 00:09:10 says where are you going Gaza I said I can help him I've been to therapy sorry he said just go home I was devastated because my chicken was getting cold so anyway I made it back home and fell asleep with a bottle of whiskey this is like bez the footballer basically football version of the guy from the happy monday's like but that's also obviously like indicative of insane problems wow yeah it's a sad thing but also just the idea of like local celeb gaza and the policemen just immediately being like what are you doing guys we've told you about this

TRASHFUTURE - *PREVIEW* Britainology 61: the Mad Lads of Football feat. Joey D’Urso

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TRASHFUTURE - PREVIEW Britainology 61: the Mad Lads of Football feat. Joey D’Urso