Smash hit

His ex-wife Sheryl took him back and many of my early interviews took place at her lovely house in Hertfordshire, complete with swimming pool, tennis courts, big gardens. Gazza's friends and relations muttered all the time about Shel, that she wasn't right for him, but I rather defended her. Gazza had beaten her up. She'd had a lot to suffer. She must love him, or be genuinely trying to help him recover.

It didn't last long, living with Shel, and so he was on his own again. For the previous five years, he had not owned a place of his own, living in hotels or rented flats. He likes hotels, just as, in a weird way, he likes hospitals. They seem to comfort him, protect him from real life and responsibility.

While in Arizona, I had asked him to do me some notes, or tape-record answers to some questions. On his return, he pulled out a massive sheet of brown paper, the sort you use for wrapping up parcels. I wondered what might be inside. The brown paper itself was what he had brought me. On it he had done an enormous chart of his life marked PATH TO RECOVERY on which he had marked all the major events, from his birth in 1967 up to the age of thirty-six. In different colours and symbols it showed things like deaths and his twenty-seven different operations.

It's been said he suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder, but this isn't true. He could not have filled in that enormous chart without being able to concentrate. As a player, he had been first in and last out at training. For the book, he was able to sit and pay attention for three hours at a time.

He did of course mess me around now and again. I'd arrive at his hotel room first thing in the morning and after ten minutes he'd often say, 'You're doing ma' fuckin' heed in.' I would then walk round the hotel grounds, have a swim, come back later in the day. It wasn't because he couldn't be bothered. It was genuinely a case of his head not being right. He would stay in his room, playing chess with himself on his mobile phone till he felt more able to face the world, or at least face me. I can be pretty exhausting at times.

When it was all finished, he did read the whole manuscript, sitting solidly for six hours, pencil in hand, making comments, correcting my spelling. Which was useful.

© Hunter Davies 2007 Extracted from The Beatles, Football and Me, A Memoir, by Hunter Davies, published by Headline at £7.99. It is available for £7.59 including postage from The Times BooksFirst on 0870 165 8585 or buy the book here. Being Gazza: My Journey to Hell and Back is also available from The Times BooksFirst at the reduced price of £6.64. Buy the book here.

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