What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (90 page)

Karren Brady, Birmingham's managing director, spoke to me after the match, saying how disgusted she was at the way the fans were treating me. She went to the trouble of writing an article in the
Sun
the next day, saying how unreasonable the fans were and how they'd forgotten all I'd done for the club. It was nice of her - she was genuinely upset at what she saw and felt very sorry for Ann too - but her words in the
Sun
fell upon deaf ears, as one would expect.

The company Enic, headed by Daniel Levy, had been in touch with me months earlier to ask if I would sell my shareholding in Spurs. I knew Daniel personally - he was the son of some people who lived in Chigwell and we'd seen him and his brothers grow up. Enic was partly owned by him, but the majority owner was billionaire Joe Lewis, who was originally from England but was now stationed in the Bahamas. Enic had acquired a financial interest in several football clubs throughout Europe, including Poland, Greece and the Czech Republic, as well as Glasgow Rangers. They planned to gain shareholdings in a lot of football clubs, to accomplish a kind of universal marketing and merchandising strategy. I'd rejected their approaches in the past, but this outburst at the Birmingham game was the last straw as far I was concerned. Daniel and Ann had been telling me for ages that I was banging my head against a wall trying to do my best for the club, when instead of thanks, all I got was more and more stick. They were right. Perhaps I was stupid to stay as long as I did.

I contacted Daniel Levy and we struck a deal. He had already acquired some shares in Tottenham and didn't want to hold more than 29.9 per cent or he'd be forced to make an offer for the whole club. He bought enough shares from me to take him to just under this figure, paying me PS21.9m and leaving me with a 13 per cent shareholding in Spurs.

There were quite a few twists and turns between the lawyers, the Premier League and the Stock Exchange, but eventually the deal was done. Daniel Levy took over control of the board at Tottenham and I duly resigned. It was kind of a relief to have the whole thing taken off my shoulders, though I was going to continue to be a regular visitor to the Spurs boardroom on match days. I still am.

Coinciding with the sale of Tottenham to Enic in February 2001, the court case against the
Daily Mail
had started. The build-up to the case had
seen a really nasty legal battle, with the
Daily Mail's
lawyers pulling all kinds of stunts and demanding lots of information on me and my companies; really trying to create a lot of trouble. I devoted a great deal of my time assisting Herbert Smith in preparing for this trial - a lot of research needed to be done and we had to be on the ball. Whatever crap they threw at us, we batted back to them immediately. Ultimately, they failed in their efforts to make me back down and call off the trial. It was a horrible period, made worse by the stories running in the tabloids about the upcoming case, but finally we were at court.

On the first day, as my barrister started to read out the accusations made by Jeff Powell against me, a very strange thing happened. I must have been at one of the lowest ebbs in my life - exhausted from fire-fighting the football situation and hyped up from preparing myself for this court case - and I suddenly burst out sobbing! I don't know to this day what came over me. I had
never
cried like that before, not since I was a kid. I imagine I must have looked like I was having a nervous breakdown.

Ann and Nick Hewer, who were in court with me, were stunned. I had to get up and walk out of the courtroom for a few minutes. As the opening of the case continued, inexplicably, I continued to cry at various intervals - I couldn't stop myself. Ann was asking me what was wrong, trying to calm me down and supplying me with tissues out of her handbag.

Eventually, it was time for me to be called to the stand. The
Daily Mail
had employed some smart-arse barrister, whose second-in-command was a female barrister who'd once done some work for me on Venables matters. I pointed out to Alan Watts that this didn't seem right.
We'd
tried to get certain barristers to work for
us
and they'd told us that they were unable to do so because they'd worked for the
Daily Mail.
So how was this woman, who was privy to lots of information about Tottenham and me from the Venables days, allowed to take up the job as number two in this case? In truth, it was something Alan Watts had overlooked. He kind of waffled, saying there wasn't much we could do about it now.

I must have been in the witness box for two days. This barrister threw every bit of rubbish at me he could find but, in between my crying fits, I was giving him back more than he was giving me, in some cases making him look a real fool when he got his facts wrong. Although the back of the courtroom was full of tabloid journalists, not one positive thing I said was reported - the 'facts' in the next day's papers were always manipulated. Only Harry Harris from the
Daily Mirror
gave an accurate account of what was actually said.

There were a couple of highlights, I recall. The barrister questioned me
about the previous season, saying that Tottenham had romanced with relegation and barely scraped through. I pointed out to him that we'd finished fourteenth in the league, which could hardly be described as 'just scraping through. Despite that, he kept repeating, 'You just scraped through.'

In the end, I turned to the judge and said, 'Your Honour, the jury needs to be given a little maths lesson. This gentleman has repeated six times, to the best of my knowledge, that we "just scraped through", so with your permission, may I demonstrate that he is wrong?'

The judge nodded.

I lifted my hand up and, using my little finger as if to recite, 'This little piggy went to market,' I said, 'Do you see this?' waggling my little finger. 'This is twentieth position in the league and you get relegated.' Then using the next finger, 'And this one is nineteenth position in the league and you also get relegated. And this next finger is eighteenth and you still get relegated. Now, above eighteenth is seventeenth and you
don't
get relegated. And above that is sixteenth and you
certainly
don't get relegated, followed by fifteenth where there's
no chance
of being relegated. And finally we get to fourteenth which is
a mile away
from being relegated.' This lightened up the courtroom and the barrister was made to look a double-barrelled schmock.

When you break for lunch while you're still giving evidence, the law states you must not talk to your lawyers, which was rather frustrating. The
Daily Mail's
legal team were carefully monitoring me as I walked out of the courtroom, making sure I didn't talk to Alan Watts or make any eye contact with the jury. I felt they would pull any stroke possible to try to get a mistrial, so we religiously stuck to the rules. I waited for Alan Watts and my barrister to leave the area, then I walked out alone.

Being in the witness box for a whole day, certain things come to mind and you suddenly remember something which might be helpful to the case. I remembered something Powell had once written about me, but had no idea how to get hold of it. It played on my mind. There was no Google around in those days, so at 6 a.m. the next morning, I called Piers Morgan. I considered him an associate now that I was writing for his newspaper and I knew, as editor of a national paper, that he'd be on call 24/7. He answered his mobile immediately. I apologised for waking him up and explained that I was engrossed in this court case and needed his help. Could his people search the
Daily Mirror's
database and find Powell's article for me?

Piers asked, Are you okay, mate?' having heard about my crying fits in court. 'It seems you're having a tough time.'

'Yeah, no problem, just very frustrated. If you can find this stuff, it would be a great help.'

'Okay, leave it with me. I'll call you back.'

About fifteen minutes later, he called me back to say his people had located the article and he would fax it to me. He had done me a great favour, as the article showed something that would make Powell look like he'd not been right in his witness statement.

'Brilliant, Piers. That's a great help. I really appreciate it.' This article would come in handy when my barrister got to cross-examine Powell.

The whole of the
Daily Mail's
case against me was that I didn't spend enough money and was not supportive of the club. To bolster this argument in court that day, the barrister started bringing up matters to do with Blackburn Rovers FC and referred to a glowing chairman's statement which said how wonderful Jack Walker the chairman was, and how he'd supported the club so well financially, how when he took over he managed to put together a team that once won the Premier League. I pointed out that chairmen's statements are designed to give a report to the shareholders. The fact that Mr Walker owned 99 per cent of the shares and therefore owned the football club meant he was talking to himself! The courtroom burst into laughter - even the judge couldn't hold back and I heard him stifle a laugh.

Confident that I was in command of the facts, I began to enjoy myself. I felt the barrister had been poorly prepared by his instructing solicitors. Clearly they had not accounted for my attention to detail.

On another occasion, when cross-examining me, he said, 'Are you aware, Sir Alan, that Mr Powell was once consulted by Margaret Thatcher over the Hillsborough tragedy as part of a team set up following the disaster? Are you also aware that Mr Powell has won numerous awards for writing and is a well-respected journalist?'

I replied, Are you expecting me and the jury to believe that Mr Powell had a one-to-one conversation with Margaret Thatcher over the Hillsborough disaster? Could you clarify to me whether this was a one-to-one thing? Could you consult and take instructions from your client and ask for clarification as to whether he was seconded to 10 Downing Street by Mrs Thatcher to sit across the table from her and discuss the tragedy, or was he just invited to one of those bashes that are held at Downing Street where two hundred people turn up? Can we get clarification on that?'

He was stuck at that question, so I pushed him again. 'Well? Was he one-to-one? Will you please tell the jury if he was consulted one-to-one by Margaret Thatcher - yes or no?'

'Sir Alan,
I'm
the one asking the questions here, not you.'

'Don't try pulling that stunt on me -
"I am the one asking the questions here not you"
- you just told me that Jeff Powell was consulted by Margaret Thatcher over the Hillsborough disaster. I am asking a fair question which I'm sure the jury will be asking too. Was he consulted one-to-one or was he just there as part of some gathering of people from the football industry?'

'I don't have to answer your questions, Sir Alan. We will come back to that point.'

'What you mean by coming back to that point is that
you don't know,
so it should be accepted that actually Jeff Powell was
not
consulted by Margaret Thatcher. In fact, if I were to speak to Lady Thatcher today, she wouldn't know who the bloody hell Jeff Powell is - right or wrong?'

He refused to answer, but I had made my point very strongly. He went on to say, 'However, one cannot deny, Sir Alan, that Mr Powell is a well-respected journalist who has won many awards.'

'Hold on, hold on one minute. Let's clarify these awards for the benefit of the jury. I don't think he's won a Pulitzer Prize, right? No, of course he hasn't won a Pulitzer Prize. The kinds of awards you're talking about are those given to him by his contemporaries - awards like Best Sportswriter of the Year. Let the jury know that Best Sportswriter of the Year is voted for by the sports-writers themselves. Think of it as an association of thieves admiring who pulled off the best bank job that year. It would be the thieves voting for the best thief. You see, the jury needs to understand the criteria upon which people get voted Best Sportswriter of the Year. It's not for their literary genius - it's based on how the writer has managed to screw someone, turn them over or drop them in the mud; it's based on how they managed to stir up trouble at this or that football club.
That's
the criteria on which Best Sportswriter of the Year is awarded. So let's make it perfectly clear: Powell is no literary genius.'

I was really in full flow, maybe overstepping the mark, and the
Daily Mail
side were in total shock and expecting the judge to shut me down. But what I was saying was true and the judge let me ramble on. At least it made me feel better to get this stuff off my chest.

The barrister then asked me to look at one particular document and pointed out some financial fact on expenditure which, on the face of it, made things look quite bad - it made me look as though I hadn't told the truth over some financial issue. On the face of it - looking at the piece of paper he'd shown me - it seemed the numbers he was showing were right and they were different to the amount I had put in my witness statement. I couldn't
understand it. This development resulted in headlines in the next morning's
Daily Mail
saying that Sugar had lied on expenditure. It made me look pretty bad, certainly from a public point of view.

However, Adam Tudor, the assistant lawyer helping Alan Watts, spotted that the document in question was originally
two
pages long - the barrister had shown the court just one page. The other page of the document completely exonerated me from the allegations, showing more expenditure and a total which then agreed with the figure in my witness statement.