We were called ‘animals’ — we didn’t care and just carried on

A boozy Ayia Napa holiday with Rio and Frank amid sordid sex claims...

My mum threw the newspaper at me and said: ‘You’re an embarrassment’

AYIA NAPA in the summer of 2000 was football’s height of excess. It was a holiday where all sense of restraint was absent. It felt like every Premier League player who hadn’t made the Euros was in Ayia Napa that summer.

Aside from me and Rio Ferdinand, there was Michael Duberry, Jody Morris, Frank Lampard, Robbie Keane, Jonathan Woodgate, Andy Myers, Paolo Vernazza, Ashley Cole and Titus Bramble — and that was just the group I hung around with.

There were so many of us that one afternoon we decided to have an 11-a-side on the beach. It was like a Premier League game and the whole beach stopped to watch.

Footballers were still coming to terms with the fact that their wealth set them apart. Before, footballers didn’t have that level of celebrity or disposable income. .

The first two years I had been to Ayia Napa, I was an Ipswich player and no one really recognised me. When I went with Rio, it was different. Suddenly, I was a Premier League and England player and everyone wanted a piece of me. I loved it. We were young boys with no ties and I loved the idea that everybody was craving my company.

I didn’t think about the reasons why they wanted to have a drink with me or come back to my room.

I was a kid. I was having a good time. It was a time of excess and I didn’t know how to deal with it. It didn’t occur to me that I was being irresponsible or ruining things for others. I think there was a general feeling that we could do anything we wanted. We didn’t have to play by the rules that society abided by and so we cut loose.

It was a dangerous feeling. You behaved badly and nobody told you not to. Everybody wanted us in their bar or club and so we were indulged whatever we did, however we dressed, however we behaved. When you’re a young footballer no one ever seems to say ‘no’. We’d roll into a nightclub straight off the beach, sweaty and sandy, in a vest and shorts, and they’d let us straight in.

Jonathan Woodgate and I would be throwing pints of beer at each other in a packed bar in our beach gear, while other people would be trying to have a drink in their smart clothes, getting drenched by our booze. The amount we drank, it was absolute carnage.

I was a young, single man and I had girls throwing themselves at me. We could have slept with three girls a day if we wanted to. I played the field in Ayia Napa. I wasn’t as prolific as some of the lads, mainly because I was too p ***** . I was so wasted one night, I slept through one of England’s matches.

We played a game where you had to stay awake for 24 hours and one day the lads put a shot of tequila on every single bin on the beach for 500 metres — so 10 bins, 10 shots of tequila.

You had to sprint to the first bin, gulp down the shot, sprint back. Then sprint to the second bin, down the shot, sprint back, and so on. Run, drink, run, repeat. Once, I tried to hurdle a sun-lounger, hit the top of it and went sprawling face down in the sand.

After our first day, there were some pictures printed in one of the papers back home with the headline: ‘Animals’. But you know what? We didn’t give a s***. It was the end of the season and we thought we were invincible.

Rio brought some friends with him and they were in charge of the camcorder. They filmed everything. One night I was having sex when one of Rio’s pals came into the room and started filming us on the group camcorder. I hadn’t set it up and it wasn’t done with my consent.

When we realised, I jumped off the girl and told the guy to get lost. It was completely wrong. The girl was mortified. I apologised profusely and took her to get a taxi back to her hotel.

There was another night when Rio and Frank and a couple of others took some girls back to their room. The girls knew there was a camera filming and they were up for it. They were all filmed having sex in the room.

I’m certainly not trying to portray myself as an innocent party. I was having a good time. My actions didn’t show a lot of respect to the woman involved but I wasn’t complicit in secretly filming her. Nor did Frank and Rio secretly film anyone. No one was tricked into anything they didn’t want to do.

There were other people around, hangers-on, friends of friends who weren’t really friends at all, and they knew there was lively stuff on that tape. One day, whoever was in charge of the camcorder was attacked. He was followed and somebody put a knife to his throat and said ‘give us the camera’. He handed it over.

I got back to Ipswich on Friday lunchtime. I met up with some friends and went on an all-day session. We went to a club and one of my mates got into an argument. I jumped in, thinking I was the king of something or other, and the guy smashed me in the eye. I went to hospital and had to have tests to check whether my vision had been damaged.

On Sunday, I asked my mum to get me a paper to see what they had said about the fight. She had a face like thunder when she got back and threw a copy of the News

of the World at me. ‘You’re an embarrassment,’ she said. I stared at the front page and suddenly everything became clear.

The paper had got footage of some of the sex sessions in Ayia Napa, including where the guy sneaked into my room.

‘England Stars in Video Sex Shame,’ the headline said. It was spun that the girls had been duped into being filmed when actually, in the case of the girls who got together with Frank and Rio, it had been done with their consent.

I would never deny that the way I behaved wasn’t exactly ideal. I wasn’t proud of it.