YouSaid · the spoken record

Tony Adams

lines on the record: 48
first: 2010-06-27
most recent: 2010-06-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Football What did you expect? Hours and hours. Back to that girl when I was keeping it on my head and trying to do hundreds. Maybe I have time to do a thousand. Who knows”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the book of Alcoholics Anonymous, the big blue book would be the one. Thank you very much. Enough to keep me occupied.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wow, exactly, and I'm sure maybe this has been done before, but Monty Parthen always look on the bright side of life. There is a story behind this, and my great very proper now, the chairman, Mr Noel Quinn, sorry of Sunderland's chairman, so I have to be very respectful here. But we were great buddies, and I think we had more than one or two beers up and down the Oliway Road. He's a really cool guy, but after the one that we lost in 1988, the League Cup, I went back to and I stayed in his flat in Enfield and he introduced me to the film life of Brian. And we must have watched it about 300 times that evening. And it just makes me smile.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is that quite different? I'm very comfortable with who I am today. And, you know, that's a massive shift. So I've said a lot about alcoholics anonymous today, but just talking about humility is difficult. I make a very humble talking about it. But I try to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God. You know, that's what I live by. So it's in a nutshell, really, I shouldn't say anything else, but that's what I try and do today.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, fantastic. Pubby ones. She thinks it's my dream. You know, this is where no people it's perfect, absolutely perfect. I'm in heaven.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I like to think that I'm not motivated by fear today But fear is still with me. All these feelings don't go away because I just don't suppress them anymore. They're still with me. And fear is a big one”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No I don't see it that way I think it would have been lovely and My father and mother were Tony Adams fans. So anything I did was good enough for them. They knew me better than anybody. I got loads of time with them. I had four years sober with my mother, six years with my father. I made a lot of amends. I bought a place in the south of France and I did it with my dad. We built it. the closest that I've ever got to my father, you know, on his deathbed I shook his hand. He looked listen, you're going to make me go again, but we love to each other, you know, we just loved each other. Please move on. I will. I want to ask.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What exactly that avenges the right word it's the right time my son's just doing his A levels the eighteen year old and he's going to go travelling 15 year olds at boarding school she's going to come out for holidays and she's fine the three youngest are that they're young and the schooling is going to be absolutely fine tutor and I think they're going to do a couple of terms back in the UK for me it's a no-brainer there's a group of guys that need to be coached need to be led”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a different main, probably a very different upbringings. I remember first Christmas I ever read went round there and just spending the afternoon just crying in bed thinking God they're so lovely this family they're so like they talk to each other. I'm just so amazing. I want to be part of this family. It's lovely.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that's a good thing. It's a good one. A good way. It's just so, but I got very, very lucky. Very lucky indeed. Like I say, she is a rare person that is very emotionally intelligent and from talking to an emotional cripple here and very balanced and I strive for balance today and she's just so together I think.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, at the start, I wrote the book addicted, which I'm also very proud of. They give me a quarter of a million for that, which I gave to the charity. So at the start, I funded it. Now I must say, I think it's six years, the PFA have been old. They fully support us now, 100%, financially as well. And we wouldn't be here without the PFA's help. They are magnificent for professionals. If you've played football at any level, even if you played for Huddersfield in Div 2, for six months, they will stick you through the sporting chance.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm very proud of it. I'm really proud of it. It's 10 years old this year. I had 25 years football with Arsenal and then this came about. I got sober in 96. And by the time I'd been a couple of years sober, people were starting to say, well, how are you doing it? How are you doing it? What's happening? People were asking me. So I thought, well, how do I do it? What do I do? And the clinic.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But you know, she cleaned up before me. I was still drinking. And she said, I don't want to be with you anymore. And at the time it was devastating. It was actually the best thing she could have ever done for me. But at the time, really painful. So this record, nice, happy tune. But it's great. It's a great song to be honest with you irrespective of what it was going on in my head.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You've chosen the squeeze. Oh, well, you're right. Well, you're very good at your job. I did my best. You've led me very well. Yeah, it's in particular record. When I was at the end of my drinking, I couldn't get this record out of my head. I was so paranoid. There was things come out of the cupboard, to be honest with you. What do you mean, hallucinations? Yeah, hallucination. I was pretty screwed up. On one occasion, I didn't wake up. I think I used to come to in those days. And I went downstairs and I went to take this record off. I thought it was playing and it wasn't playing. It was just going around in my head and over and over again. And my first wife at that stage had just left me and I actually drove drunk down to a treatment centre. I'm not particularly proud of this stuff. It's just where I was in my stage in my life. I threw her into the treatment centre. She was a crack addict at that stage. And I said, get in her treatment centre and sort yourself out.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What happened? I can't remember a lot of blackouts in there. I can't remember most of it. A lot of time wet in the bed and yeah, the pig style which was home, passing out, getting up and going a drink again”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I knew that if I'd gone with them, I would Then there was no way I was going to play the tournament 'Cause I had been gone again”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I won't drink it during the tournament. No. Personally, inside I was kind of, I was scared. We went to Hong Kong. I prepared myself physically. The lads all went to the famous dentist jail. I stayed trapped in my hotel room.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I drunk I jumped for the next six odd weeks ended up on the sixteenth of August was my last drink. There was a big significant change for me in the January of that year ninety six. It was the first time in my life that I didn't want to drink and I was finding myself drunk. That was the big shift for me. In the January, my wife was in treatment, my mother-in-law had come round and took the kids off of me. My park bench was my sofa. It was a mess. I couldn't blame anybody. I couldn't blame the wife, my family, the this or the football, the fame, or whatever. I couldn't blame anything else. I stayed sober through the Euro 96, just focusing on football. That was my only thing. I thought, right, that's it. I just, what we call in the term white knuckling it. Yeah, that's what I weren't drinking.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I got more pressure when I wasn't captain, I wasn't Captain Turin ninety eight. Listen, I did my best, and I acted like I was captain anyway, but I just felt that I could give more. I said I'd always been captain, I had always been the leader, as it were, so I struggle, I struggle when I'm not, I think, such is my character.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh well, I've been shipped around for... Football songs Arsenal were part of my life from seventy nine to two thousand two and that's probably the longest relationship I've had with anything or anybody so it's the Arsenal's 1971 squad and good old Arsenal outbe gunners”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I kind of knew, I didn't say a word, but I didn't stop drinking, I didn't know how to stay stopped. Yeah, I didn't know at that period of my life. Wanamasa when I did so Brahmin I took my mother and father out to make amends and to say sorry that it was funny because my father turned round and he went I won't have it I won't have it I said what are you talking about dad he said you know they said you had a problem with Booge you were fine I don't know what they're talking about so I couldn't do anything in their eyes I don't think”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gary Lewin Fitness Coach I can't remember them I'm sure they did I know there was a tearful thing at the courtroom and met my mum and dad before I got taken away to the prison. And that was That was tough, and I think I tried to say sorry. I remember my father came round my kitchen one day I remember and he sat in my kitchen and said they're calling you a drunk. You know, you're a drunk boy.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I loved it You're getting to know me, but people that do know me know that I'm quite insular and quite aloner and prison was I got a little bit of sport, a little bit of exercise three times a day. I dropped about seven, eight pound, muscles coming out of here, eating well, sleeping well, reading a couple of books of an evening, bit of mind, and on my own loved it when that door shut. It was heaven I know you're shaking your head, but for some people the outside world was scary in there I was happy because my world don't forget outside was hell”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I was going to Singapore on tour with the Arsenal team, but I was in Rayleigh in Essex. And it was the last game of the season on the Saturday the day before. Obviously, when football's finished during those days, I got drunk. And then obviously not left myself enough time to get to the airport. Got in the car, went straight over an A road, and I kind of remember looking back going Jesus Christ, I've just crossed an A road there, and completely lost control, and it was over in seconds. He went bash bash bash and ended up over this brick wall and the rest is history.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Central line and walking into sunshine, but I joined Arsenal as a professional in 83. The black guys at the club, Michael Thomas and Dave Rochast have got me into a new underground kind of movement that was really cool and different and no one back at school kind of knew. I kind of thought I was a bit cool and a bit different but probably won't.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly that, from the seven when I used it really suppressed the feelings. Really, I think that period I didn't know about girls. I've got to say this my first ever girl experience. I was fifteen, fourteen, and I'm keeping the ball up on my head. And I'm like one, two, three. And I wanted to do hundreds on my head. But anyway, this girl's come past my house with our mate, two girls. And the other girl said she wants to go out with you. So I put my ball down and I put it on the drive. We walked round the block, kissed And then she turned around and went, I don't want to go with you anymore But then it sums me up completely. I got the ball and I put it back on my head and I did a hundred and I ran girls in that period. It was just so cripplingly painful. I just didn't know how to deal with life outside of football, so I drunk.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, nothing really. The first time I ever boozed is I broke my foot when I was seven menotars and go around the corner in Park Street. He put me in plaster and for six weeks I, in that period, done a lot of alcoholic drinking. About eleven o'clock every day because I couldn't go out and play football and that was the drug that I loved. It was my life. It fulfilled me. But I couldn't get that, and I had the plaster on and the crutches, and it got to about eleven and this is 11 in the morning. That 11 in the morning and I'd feel him really insecure and scared and frightened.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They stepped back and let the coaches do their stuff, and because it became a profession, as soon as I left school as quickly as I could, he went, well, this is a job now, this is grown up. Occasionally he would whisper something in my ear, and I always listened. I might not showed it, but... I always listened”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obviously, you had to go three on that side, three on that side, touch his head three times, squint. So what are you doing? I was nervous. What did I have? Did your neck go? Did you hear that? That was”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which compared with Gazzle on the plane in 1998 before the World Cup was comparing how many I've got. But I was with a Coe Chris.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I got it. Yeah. Well, I like the smart Aspect of the mod kind of hush puppet, I've got a pair on today. Hush puppies and I had a boating jacket and the state press. I fell into that category.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm a massive poor weller fan, apart from him supporting Chelsea. I got my sand effect album signed for my fortieth birthday. Thanks, Paul. There was a big mod revival in 78 when I was at school, when I was that little boy lost, making up stories. I thought I was the boy about town, and this is the boy about Tanboy Jam.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and did the best that they could. So, you know, when I went to prison, for instance, as well, they were the ones I felt really sorry for. I was stuck in a prison and I was out of the way, but they had to deal with the, you know, the shame and the disgrace I brought upon their family.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm sure they did. I'm sure they've got massive resentments towards me, massive resentments. But, you know, it was maybe a family joke. I couldn't do nothing wrong. And going forward into my drinking day, I said, I keep bringing it up. But it was part of my life. You know, when I used to weed a bed and things like this, drinking too much alcohol, she used to enable me, you know, she used to put the mattress out the window to dry it. Her son couldn't do nothing wrong. Instead of saying, Tony, you've got a real problem is I would do it with my children today, you see. You know, they didn't know no better, so I'm not having a co-home. They love me.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With me dad, I've got he went and got his quoting qualification. If he was going to teach me, he wanted to teach me properly. He said addicted I was to the game.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Antonio go back to education. I didn't want to be at school during my schooling days. You came at the wrong time for me. I wanted to be a footballer.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I certainly didn't feel it. They did, I think, from the outside. But in one area, the football arena I feel comfortable with. But you put me in a classroom, I'm lost, you know, and I used to have panic attacks when they used it in reading lessons, and the book would go round and think I was terrified. I was having a complete breakdown. Panic in my heart was thumping. Oh no, I've got to read, I've got to read. So I lived in a little bit of a fantasy world. I was a big liar. You know, I kind of made up stories. I had no lifetoes and I wasn't educated or learning in that area.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“plays a big part of my life but fear insecure I didn't like the way I looked I didn't like the way I felt it very insecure boy very sensitive”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, not really. I had the worst attendance at my school. I used to make out every Monday morning that I was a little bit unwell, and by the time it was eleven o'clock I was up over the park and kicking the ball against the brick wall. So my education definitely suffered. My teachers used to say actually Tony Adams at school, he must be games lesson.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh wow, this is for me mother, like I say they completely give up their lives, really, and they loved every minute of my career, absolutely loved every minute of it, and they gave so much support really did, so much support, and my mother passed away with bone cancer in 2000, which was extremely, extremely painful.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You treated I was sport rotten. I was completely sport rotten. The Golden Child and as best as I could keep the ball up many, many times. When was that discovered durability with the ball? Well, I started at six and my father was still playing. My father was You always thought he was better than me. Could ed the ball better than me. I'll be fair to him. One of my first memories standing over Hackney Marshes, watching my dad play Central Defender, centre back, editing it, kicking it, raining so hard, and I was so cold and so frozen, but I wasn't moving. And the whole team picked me up at the end of the game and put me in the shower was to thaw me out. So I got my sister to take me to Romford Jr.'s, and that was my first club. I was quite a physically a tall boy, even at that age at six, so I could play for the under nines. Who?”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Three two older sisters, two older sisters. So my dad worked morning and night, he's on the lorries. We didn't see a lot of him. My mother was the rock. She always tells the story. She said, I stayed with me, Dad, and married him because one he didn't knock her about And he worked hard and brought home and gave him the money. So, you know, she said, I was on to a winner here, you know, and they stayed together for all their life. And so”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. He would do things like the Sunday dinner, for instance, fueled by alcohol, I think, a lot of it. But five brothers and a sister my dad had, and they'd sit around the dining room table on a Sunday lunch, and if anyone moved he had a bunch of keys sitting on the side of the table. If anyone spoke or done anything at a turn and the bunch of keys would come hurtling towards your face, and he came at my father with a knife. So my dad got out of there pretty rapid. He met my mother over Victoria Park, showing off when they were about 15. And that was it, moved in with my mother's family.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A working class the extent he was evacuated during the war up to the northeast and after the war had finished come back to the east end with a northern accent and his family disowned him because of it and threw him out the house. And my grandfather was a very cruel man. Yeah, that seems a particular man.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've got Earth Wind and Five and Let's Groove. It's the first record ever bought. You should save up your pocket money. I got 50p in those days and I got steak and kidney pine chips and £10 bus fare home. So I didn't get the bus home for a few weeks and I saved up and I walked down Oxo Lane in Daghnam. There's a new record shop that just opened and I bought it. It's kind of funky tomb, man.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Horrific, absolutely horrific. I got a lot of criticism in eighty eight and I remember coming back into Luton Airport and being chased by a load of, there were three coaches parked of England supporters, and they chased me and I legged it and I won fear, Uno young player of the year in those days had a little fear Uno and I legged it to the car and sped away but it was horrific enough that the public was all on my case. But the type of character that I am, we won the league the next year. You know, I focused in on that and said, right, okay, I'm going to prove to all you guys actually I'm a good player. And I said that to Beck's actually after 98 after he got sent off and I said to Bex when he was in tears in the changing rooms, I said, go, all you can do now, it's gone, it's finished. You know, we're out. This is my last opportunity and you blew it for me. Thanks, Dave. But now what you can do is go back to your club and win the league for Man United and do your best.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I look at it again differently. Right. More and often than not, the sands off anyway. You've got to form your own opinion. I've shut off to the commentators a long time ago and even the punditries. Tournaments are very difficult. When you're trying to win the prize, I think the statistics are that the winners have only won five of the seven games. So you're allowed to have a few games where you don't particularly do well, but you have to have the mentality to progress. There was moments of last World Cups where we've snapped into gear, you know. Any moment you can snap into gear.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's good to be here, and thank you for that. That was lovely. Yet I'm catching bits and pieces. It's fun. I sit there and watch it with the kids, and it's very entertaining.”
2010-06-27 · Desert Island Discs · Tony Adams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source