What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (65 page)

I got hold of Venables after the second game and told him that this seemed all wrong. Perhaps he could explain to me what all this 'chairman of the football club and 'chairman of the PLC meant.

Once again, he shied off, saying that he didn't understand all this technical stuff and I should discuss it with Eddie, at which point I told him, 'Never mind "all this technical stuff", it's as simple as this, Terry - you're taking me for an idiot. You must think I'm some wally with a load of money who's come in here to rescue the club and let you do as you wish. Well, I'm telling you right now, you've picked the wrong bloke because that ain't gonna happen. And while we're on the subject, as chairman and owner of this football club,
I
will be sitting in the front row and so will my family. On top of that, I'll be asking Peter Barnes to explain to me this seating allocation and who gets what because I want to know why all these hangers-on seem to be walking around as if they own the place.'

For the first time, I realised that Venables had no bottle. He was only in his comfort zone when surrounded by his lieutenants. He said he did
not
take me for a fool and that he hadn't been behind anything that had gone on. He told me that Tony Berry was the one who organised everything, placing the blame with him. I never asked Berry if this was right or not. But I did tell Berry that the game was up. I was a fast learner and while it was a nice try to see if he and Venables could put me in the back room, it had failed. I told him to resign as chairman of the club and simply remain on as a director. I took on the chairmanship of the club in addition to that of the PLC.

The next few months were spent dealing with the bank, as well as various other people who'd come out of the woodwork claiming we owed them money. After a series of meetings with Midland Bank, we had to have a rights issue, which I ended up underwriting. This resulted in me injecting another load of cash into the club, making my total investment PS8m. I would have more shares than Venables, as he had no money to underwrite his portion of the rights issue.

Ashby was Venables' right-hand man, though he never had a formal title or position - he just seemed to be the main mouthpiece. Terry placed all the financial decisions in his hands and I think it fair to say that Ashby was running the place. I had agreed that Venables, as chief executive, would have total responsibility for not only the football side of things but also for all commercial aspects. However, when it came to financing everything, there were no ideas forthcoming at all. Ashby was talking about getting mortgages, which
never materialised, and the sale of Gascoigne, which would have brought in around PS5.5m from Lazio, had stagnated due to his injury. To make matters worse, during his rehabilitation, Gascoigne got involved in some incident that resulted in him damaging his knee again, putting the whole healing process back several weeks.

Even telling you this story in hindsight, I'm still shocked as I recall the unbelievable events that were about to unfold.

Venables explained to me that a very well-connected Italian called Gino Santini was going to broker the deal between Lazio and Tottenham to see whether we could get them to pay us the money even though Gascoigne still hadn't fully recovered. This sounded fine to me and all I kept hearing over the next few weeks was 'Gino this' and 'Gino that'. Gino turned out to be a restaurateur in Kensington who spoke Italian and had helped in Mark Hateley's move to AC Milan - that was his claim to fame.

He was absolutely useless in the negotiation of this matter. I thought it was handled in the most unprofessional manner, with stupid suggestions such as, 'Insurance policies will cover Gascoigne's recovery and provide a warranty to Lazio.' Why would anyone in their right mind pay us PS5.5m when the player was still injured, without any medical evidence that he was fit to play? I told Venables and Ashby that this sounded like a load of nonsense. The bottom line was that Lazio was not going to pay millions of pounds for a player unless he was fit and ready to play. Neither would any insurance company give a guarantee that Gascoigne would fully recover.

Despite this, Ashby convinced Venables that he would find an insurance company who would cover the risk. Ashby came up with a Mickey Mouse insurance policy and ran up a bill with a broker. The offer put forward by the insurance company was so ridiculous in respect to the premium payable (as well as the limited liability of the policy) that it was a total joke - Lazio would just laugh at it. I shut it down before we started running away with extra costs.

In the end, the sensible thing happened. Lazio sent over a medical team to England to examine Gascoigne at the end of his rehabilitation and finally approved him fit to play. At that point they transferred the money.

In the meantime, Gino Santini had slung in a bill for PS200,000 which we paid into a Swiss bank account. It seems Venables and Ashby had entered into an agreement with him that a fee would be payable as soon as the transaction went through. There was nothing much I could do about it other than demand that he send us a proper invoice.

With the further injection of cash from me and the money from the Gascoigne transfer (plus revenues from gate receipts), we were able to get the
Midland Bank overdraft down to manageable proportions and at least I had honoured the promises I'd made to the bank.

In his capacity as chief executive, Venables was totally out of his depth. He knew nothing about merchandising and nothing about the commercial side of business, but he was paranoid about maintaining his status. As he saw it, he'd spent all his life as a player and a manager - this was his big opportunity to become an owner and a boss. The only problem was, he didn't have a clue about things like Stock Exchange requirements, accounting, cash flow or marketing - he left it all to Ashby.

I was getting very concerned. On many occasions, at board meetings, Venables would make some totally stupid comment, but Crystal, who turned out to be a real arse-licker, would insist that Terry was on the right lines. Berry would take a schtum powder and keep quiet. I looked to him and Ashby for some support when I explained the logical and professional way things should be done, but they were all shit-scared of offending Terry. It was very frustrating and an uncomfortable atmosphere was growing.

I started to notice that Venables was very distrustful of me. He was always looking to see if I was lining my own pockets in some way or another. Every time I said something, you could see him weighing up how this might disadvantage him. Venables had employed his daughter to work in the merchandising department, which, I was informed by Colin Sandy, was burning money as if it were going out of fashion. There was no stock control - players and other playing staff members were simply coming in and
taking
stuff. 'That's how it's always been' was the famous expression. I insisted we needed to put in a computer system to create some form of control.

Bearing in mind that I was in the computer business, it made sense for the equipment to be supplied by us at wholesale prices. Venables thought that my company selling the club PS4,000 worth of computers was going to make me a fortune. He wouldn't say it to my face, of course - he got Crystal and Ashby to come up with some cock-and-bull story about a conflict of interests between the public companies. It was totally ridiculous. We needed a computer system and I was in the computer business. Venables was sick in the head with his paranoia about anything to do with money I might get out of the club. He, on the other hand, felt that as joint owner, he was entitled to have as much as he wanted and employ who he wanted. It was a case of dual standards.

He had his nightclub, Scribes West in Kensington, where Tottenham Hotspur bashes were regularly held to celebrate various things. Not that we had much to celebrate, but any excuse: start of season party, FA Cup draw
party, winning a game party, Christmas party, New Year's party, any pitiful excuse. Everyone was invited. The irony was that he made his mates pay for their drinks, but for so-called official Spurs parties, Tottenham Hotspur footed the bill. Spurs was paying a fortune to Venables' Scribes West club.

I was told, 'Oh, this is quite normal - football clubs have to entertain all the time and it's better we do it at Terry's club than hold the event in a hotel.' Yet buying PS4,000 worth of computers from Amstrad (whose turnover was PS350m at the time) was, in Venables' eyes, lining my pocket.

Crystal had employed the services of Brian Fugler, a small and smalltime lawyer I'd known as a youngster in my Stamford Hill days. Every single litigation we were involved in (and there were a lot) was passed to Fugler to deal with. His fees were outrageously high, even higher than Herbert Smith's.

Fugler's brother was employed by Spurs as some kind of design expert to come up with new logos and letter heads and generally restyle the club. Fugler's cousin was Eric Hall, the resident agent at Spurs, who handled the sales of players, negotiated their contracts with the club and then sent in large bills. Eric Hall would spend seven days a week at Scribes West. He was so far up Terry Venables' arse it was untrue. I gave him the nickname Anusol.

I had never in my life experienced two people like Crystal and Hall, who were so besotted by this messiah Venables that they would literally do anything for him to get his attention.

As the months passed, I could see things were not going as well as had been anticipated with this so-called dream team. The way Nick Hewer had spun it to the press was, 'Terry will look after the eleven on the field; Alan will look after the eleven [million] at the bank.'

Certainly, on the pitch, we weren't setting the world alight. Venables had appointed Peter Shreeves as manager of the team and he wasn't doing well at all. On my side, however, after a lot of twists and turns with Midland Bank and the Stock Exchange, we finally got the shares listed back on the stock market again - they had been suspended at the tail end of the Scholar era.

*

The acquisition of Tottenham by myself and Venables took place in June 1991. In February 1992, the first division football clubs (including Tottenham) resigned from the Football League to form the Premier League, which was established in May 1992. The Premier League would have the power to organise its own sponsorship and broadcast agreements.

From this point on, there were regular Premier League chairmen's meetings, which I did not attend, as I was told they were just discussing fixtures
and the rules of the game, and there was nothing financial to bother me with. Venables, as chief executive, would go, along with Crystal, and the club secretary, Peter Barnes, would also attend and sit at the back.

On one particular occasion, they informed me that a very important vote on television rights was going to take place. Up until then, television rights for English top-flight football were split between
Match of the Day
on BBC and ITV, who were paying around PS4m per season to the league for the rights to show a few games live. However, there was a feeling among most of the Premier League that a small nucleus of clubs comprising Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool seemed to attract most of the television coverage. They were closely involved with ITV and wanted to keep the next round of negotiations with them.

Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB was making noises that
they
wanted to bid for the Premier League rights. The whole thing had grown to a crescendo and at this particular Premier League meeting, on Monday 18 May, a decision was going to be made by the chairmen as to which company would win the rights.

Rick Parry, the Premier League's chief executive, quite rightly insisted that a proper tender process should be followed. Broadcasters would have to deliver their best and final bids by a certain time, which I believe was 9 a.m. Sam Chisholm had previously spoken to me about this, to seek my advice on the sum that would be needed to win the bid.

Rick Parry had been tasked with hammering out the deals with the various broadcasters. This was no longer going to be a closed shop or a foregone conclusion. For the first time, ITV looked like they might not win and they'd have to come up with a darn sight more than the peanuts they'd paid in the past. More importantly, the Premier League clubs now wanted to share the prosperity from any TV windfall - many of them bitterly complained that in the past, the only winners seemed to be an elite few.

On the day of the meeting, I turned up at the Royal Lancaster Hotel. As we entered the room where the meeting was to be held, Trevor East, an ITV executive, was handing out pieces of paper to the chairmen. This was a last-minute dirty trick and it broke the rules of the tender.

I, of course, wanted BSkyB to succeed, so I went to the public phone cubicles opposite the meeting room and called Chisholm. Little did I know this call would go down in the annals of football history - some in the media have described it as 'the phone call that irrevocably altered the history of sport and media in Britain'. I told Sam that ITV was trying to pull a fast one at the eleventh hour and he needed to get hold of Parry quickly and find out what was going on. He asked me to call him back after he'd spoken to Parry.

About half an hour later, I got hold of Sam again. He told me that he had put in his strongest bid in compliance with the tender process, but ITV had somehow found out the details of BSkyB's bid and wanted to top it.

I can't recall the exact numbers, but faced with this type of auction (where, for example, PS45m per season was on the table and your opponent could top it and win by offering PS46m), I told Sam, 'There's only one way to clinch the deal - you'll have to blow them out of the water!'