What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (69 page)

He immediately said, 'Sure, yeah, that's what I thought you'd say, but I was just checking it out with you, just letting you know. I mean, Teddy's a great player, but that's how it is - Cloughie wants a bung.'

I repeated, 'Just try to pursue getting the player in the conventional manner.' And, as far as I was concerned, the matter was closed.

This was around September 1992. Over the next couple of weeks, there was constant discussion about the acquisition of Teddy Sheringham and how the transfer was being delayed. Tony Berry asked me whether I knew about the situation and Brian Clough's demands for a bribe. I asked how
he
knew about this and it transpired that Venables had told him over lunch at Langan's Brasserie.

I'm not sure whether Berry was sounding me out to see whether I would change my attitude, but I certainly reinforced that I would never be involved in anything corrupt. I told him it was a criminal offence and that we were a public company - we must
never
be associated with it.

Berry agreed. 'Of course, Alan, of course. No, I'm just mentioning it, you know, just mentioning it.'

The next thing I heard on the Sheringham transfer was that an agent, ex-player Frank McLintock, had handled the deal, which Ashby claimed was now done. Venables had agreed to pay McLintock a PS50,000 fee for arranging the transfer of the player to us. With the transaction about to take place, I received a phone call from Colin Sandy who told me that he'd been instructed by Ashby to go down to the bank and withdraw PS50,000 in cash to pay McLintock.

I told him this was absolutely ridiculous. If McLintock was an agent, he should simply send his bill to us and we'd pay it in the normal way, by cheque. Colin said he'd already explained this to Ashby, but that Venables had
insisted
he went down to the bank now to get the money. I told Colin he was absolutely
not
allowed to do it and that he should go back and tell Ashby to tell Venables that if we had to pay McLintock a fee, we wanted an invoice showing VAT.

A few hours later, Colin called to say that McLintock had agreed to issue an invoice to the club for his services for the transfer of Sheringham, but was paid in cash.

From a technical point of view, Colin had done everything he possibly could. I found out afterwards that Ashby had instructed one of the club's accountants to go down to the bank and withdraw PS58,750 in cash and the money was given to McLintock to settle his bill.

When I asked Venables what was going on, he stuck his head in the sand as usual, saying that Eddie knew all about it and I should discuss it with him. Venables was clueless when it came to finances and left everything in the hands of Eddie Ashby. I questioned Ashby about the cash, but he just waffled. This was a very strange situation, though Colin had quite rightly ensured the transaction had been done correctly.

Peter Shreeves had been the manager in the first season after we had acquired the club, but he hadn't done a good job and was asked to leave. Venables took over the managerial position, jointly appointing Doug Livermore and Ray Clemence to assist him. In the 1992-3 season, one could see Venables was actually getting a little more involved on match days, going down to the pitch when things weren't going well.

One match day, Venables came to me saying he'd just had a great shock. He'd been told by Ashby that he was a bankrupt and Venables just wanted to let me know. I was a bit surprised at this sudden declaration of Ashby's personal status, but things started to make sense as I recalled numerous occasions when Berry had suggested that Ashby should be one of the directors, since he seemed to be operating in a chief executive position. The reason Ashby didn't put himself forward to be a director now became clear - bankrupts may not become directors of public companies.

My reaction was to say to Venables that he must have known about this way back at the acquisition stage or he would have suggested Ashby as a director. Venables denied any prior knowledge and said he'd only learned about it that day.

The truth behind this revelation was that one of the national newspapers
had got hold of this information and had called Venables for his comments. It was inevitable that the story of Tottenham's virtual chief executive being a bankrupt would soon be splashed across the papers and this was the reason Venables was telling me now.

In fact, Ashby seemed a reasonably intelligent and fair-enough fellow. Nothing he had said or done so far seemed illegal or unprofessional. I said to Venables, 'I don't need to know the reasons for Eddie's bankruptcy. On the face of it, he seems a reasonable chap and there's no reason why he shouldn't remain employed as your assistant.'

Ashby came to see me shortly afterwards and told me that the reason for his bankruptcy was that he was swindled out of a lot of money by some dodgy partners he'd been involved with. I didn't pay too much attention to this and told him I wasn't really interested in the details - all I was concerned with was that the football club and the PLC were run correctly.

The person who actually gave me the most grief was Jonathan Crystal. As I previously mentioned, Venables had this mental block whereby anything I said or did was in order to line my own pocket or disadvantage him in one way or another. Crystal would, out of blind devotion to Terry, raise these issues at board meetings, acting as Venables' mouthpiece, aggravating situations, deliberately winding me up and engaging me in arguments. Crystal was so far up Terry's arse it was sickening to see. In fact, on one of the occasions I met Terry's wife, Toots, she made me laugh by telling Ann and me how Crystal would appear everywhere and drive her nuts sucking up to Terry. She said she had nightmares that Crystal would appear at the end of their bed.

It was clear, from some of the discussions we'd had, that Crystal didn't know much about public company life from a corporate law stance, yet he would always say, 'I'm a lawyer, I know these things.' Actually, he knew sweet FA and I wouldn't have used him to get me off a parking fine. Some of his tactics and ideas were outrageous.

On one occasion, Venables had agreed to enter Spurs into a tournament with a few foreign clubs, to be played at White Hart Lane. We would receive a fee for taking part in the tournament on one condition: the tournament had to be televised. Crystal told me the deal had been struck, but the problem he faced was finding a broadcaster. The opponents we were going to be playing weren't top-notch teams such as Real Madrid or Barcelona, so there wasn't much interest from ITV or the BBC. Crystal asked me to enquire whether Sky would like to transmit this tournament. I called the director of sport at Sky, but once he heard who the opponents were, he politely turned it down.

Crystal reiterated that unless we got this tournament broadcast by
somebody,
the whole deal would be off. He pointed out that it didn't actually say in the contract that there had to be a
fee
from the broadcaster, merely that it had to be broadcast.

On that basis, we agreed that I would go back to Sky and ask them to do me a favour and broadcast the event for no fee. Even
that
turned out to be a difficult job. Sky explained that the amount of viewers they'd get wouldn't warrant the cost of sending out cameras and crew and putting the event on the air. I pleaded with the director of sport and told him he'd be doing me a great favour if he did it for me, as a friend of the company, and finally they agreed.

The tournament went ahead and Sky broadcast the games, but then a week or so later, Venables called me up, shouting and screaming down the phone. 'Why is it that Sky got the deal and didn't pay a penny for it? Why are you helping out your friends?'

I was dumbfounded. 'What are you talking about, Terry? Talk to Crystal - he'll tell you everything that happened. No one wanted to take the bloody tournament and because of Crystal's genius in drafting the contract, we were lumbered with having to get it shown on TV. The only people prepared to do it were Sky and at one point they were actually asking
us
for payment for sending out the camera crew.' Venables was so thick, he couldn't grasp what was going on. He had it in his head that, some way or another, me arranging this deal with Sky was lining my own pocket.

I was really frustrated and angry. I got hold of Crystal and asked him, 'What the hell is going on? How dare Venables call me up and make such accusations?' I reminded Crystal that he was completely responsible for this mess and told him to go and sort it out immediately.

A couple of days later, I got the pair of them in a room to have this out. To my utter amazement, Crystal said he'd never discussed broadcasting for no fee with me. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It showed me what an absolute liar and cheat Crystal was and how he'd say anything to remain in Venables' good books.

From that moment on, I decided this arrangement with Venables was not going to work. It seemed the man loved to have an enemy. In the past, Venables had constantly harped on to me about how bad Irving Scholar was, how he'd messed up this and ruined that. It seemed that Venables was not happy unless he had a fight of some kind on his hands - a 'them and us' situation. His allies were people like Crystal, Hall and Brian Fugler, all boosting his ego, and it seemed, now that Scholar had gone, that
I
was the enemy he had to fend off.

To be fair to Ashby, he was always silent when these altercations were playing out. In hindsight, I believe that his silence was because he could see I was right, but as Venables' right-hand man, he obviously found it embarrassing to contradict him. From time to time, Ashby would tell me, 'Just ignore Crystal - he's an idiot.'

I wasn't prepared to take any more of this nonsense. I'd previously spoken to Margaret Mountford at Herbert Smith about the goings-on at the club and the things I wasn't happy with and now I decided to call her and ask her to explain exactly what the legal position was if I wanted to dismiss Venables as chief executive.

At the time, I held 44 per cent of the shares in the club while Venables held about 27 per cent. The rest were held by people like Berry (who had about 8 per cent) and the fan base. There were hardly any institutional investors, as they had no interest whatsoever in football clubs at the time.

I explained to Margaret that I wanted to try to be fair and give Venables a clean way out of the situation - I'd offer to give him his PS3m back and pay off the remainder of his outstanding contract. Together, we drafted a letter to Venables spelling out my reasons for asking him to resign and outlining my offer to pay him back all his money. There was a board meeting coming up in a few days and I was planning to give it to Venables after the meeting. But during the meeting, Crystal started to wind me up over some issue where, once again, he didn't know what he was talking about. I ended up losing my temper with Crystal, almost to the stage of actually getting up and whacking him! He was such an annoying fart. Venables was smirking at my ranting and, I guess, was quite enjoying seeing Crystal wind me up. I was so fired up, I knew I had to get out, otherwise I would have definitely hit Crystal and maybe put him in hospital. So I stood up, opened my briefcase, drew out the letter and threw it at Venables, telling him he'd better read it and call me back later that day.

The letter obviously came as a shock to everybody. I'd been told by Margaret that technically the board of directors was capable of firing Venables and that if certain members of the board voted for it, it would be a straightforward transaction. During the course of the next week, many phone calls were made to try to resolve the situation. Venables knew I was serious, but arrogantly believed he would be able to outride this challenge of mine. I'd hoped it might dawn on him that his previous contemptuous treatment of me was wrong, but he had a power complex.

Sometimes I used Venables' office at the club to discuss commercial or legal matters with visitors. On more than one occasion, he asked his secretary
what I was doing in his office. He would then hide behind her as she popped in to say that Terry needed his office back for some important matters he had to deal with and would I please relocate my meeting somewhere else. There
was
nowhere else at the time - there weren't any other offices, as everything was open plan. I recall once having to stand in the hospitality room with a senior barrister to finish a meeting. This was Terry's pathetic attempt to exert his seniority.

I was told by Herbert Smith to call a board meeting where the item on the agenda would be the removal of Terry Venables as chief executive of the company. The date was set for Friday 14 May 1993. On the evening before, an event was taking place at one of the big hotels in London - the annual Football Writers' Dinner. Venables and his associates leaked his imminent dismissal at the dinner and the next day the newspapers were full of'Venables about to be sacked' stories.

As we arrived for the board meeting, the forecourt of the club was packed with press, cameramen and fans, all screaming for my head. I was forewarned about this by Peter Barnes, the club secretary, who told me to get my driver to drop me at the back entrance of the stadium in the East Stand rather than attempt to come in by the main entrance.

In the week leading up to the meeting, Berry had made it plain to me that his vote would be in my favour. With Colin Sandy and Berry voting with me (and Venables having to abstain), I believed the result would be a formality. To my surprise, Berry turned up at the meeting with Peter Leaver, a senior barrister, one-time club director and mad Tottenham fan. Berry told me Leaver was there as his legal adviser.