Oi, Gabby! How many footballers have you notched up on your bedpost?
... the boorish taunt shouted by a well-known male presenter that left GABBY LOGAN ‘dying inside’ as she battled her way to the top of the misogynistic world of TV sport
IWAS on a gap year between school and university and living in London on a diet of sugary cereal, Tia Maria-infused milk and ice cream when I got the call inviting me to be on the first series of ITV’s Gladiators. Now, you’d think such an invitation suggests physical prowess, or seriously defined muscles. I had neither. I was in no shape to trouble Gladiator Jet on the swingshot bungee challenge.
But I had in my earlier teens been an international rhythmic gymnast, representing Wales at the Commonwealth Games in 1990, until I’d been forced to retire by a hideously painful bout of sciatica.
And now the British Gymnastic Association had put my name forward for Gladiators. Well, why not, I thought? It will give me something to talk about at freshers’ week.
So I said yes and joined a gym to get myself back in shape. The cereal and ice cream were a reaction to my earlier fitness regime. They had to go.
I’d arrived home from the gym one balmy May evening and was about to turn on the shower when the phone rang.
‘Gabby.’ It was my mum’s voice. ‘Daniel is dead.’
Daniel, my 15-year-old brother, was fit and healthy and gorgeous, 6ft tall and full to the brim of life and love. He didn’t suffer from coughs or colds; he never had a day off school. He was a footballer of huge repute. He’d signed for Leeds United, who had just won the League, and he’d been scouted by Wales.
My head was utterly scrambled. I couldn’t hear what Mum was saying. She was sobbing too loudly – or maybe that was me.
My mind fumbled for an explanation. I pictured him in a car with some boys, one of them losing control. They were going too fast round a bend, it was a bank holiday Monday, the driver had only just passed his test. That’s what young boys do.
The sound of my mum’s voice interrupted my thoughts. ‘He collapsed in the garden, playing football with Jordan and Daddy,’ she told me.
There was no terrible accident. He just dropped down dead in his own garden.
Mum did her best to explain. She had been clearing up after the evening meal while Dad, Daniel and my six-year-old brother Jordan had a kickabout.
My father, Terry Yorath, the former Wales international footballer and manager, had kicked the ball a little too hard and Daniel went over to the long grass to fetch it.
He bent as if to pick it up, Mum told me, then stumbled and fell over, face down.
Dad wandered over, expecting to be pranked, and to see his beloved boy turn and laugh at him for being overly concerned. They had a perfect relationship – I only truly understand how perfect now because I have a boy of the same age. You can love the bones of your 15-year-old boy, but don’t expect to ever really understand their moods or why they go to bed as one person but rise for breakfast the next day as another. Not Daniel, though. He rode through his teenage years with charm, joy and humour.
That bank holiday Monday, he and Dad had played 18 holes of golf together in the morning, then watched more golf on TV in the afternoon. They adored each other’s company.
But Daniel didn’t turn when Dad approached him in the garden. So Dad rolled him over, and saw his eyes were vacant, his pulse gone, his body limp.
Dad went in the ambulance to St James’s hospital in Leeds with Daniel. Mum drove behind with Jordan. Dad was praying, willing Daniel to breathe. ‘God, bring my son back to life. Open your eyes, son, say something to me. We need to play football again. We need to watch golf and go to matches. We have so much to do. You have so much to do.’
The ambulance went around a bend at speed, and one of Daniel’s arms flew out and landed in our father’s lap. Dad took his hand and caressed it, held it tightly to his face. The hand was lifeless.
He said later that was the moment he knew.
In the months after, because of the high-profile nature of Daniel’s death, we received thousands of letters from families who had been affected by what we later found out was hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, sometimes called sudden death syndrome. In my grief I’d listen over and over again to Elton John’s song Daniel, imagining my brother leaving on a plane, flying so high that I couldn’t see him. Elton had apparently been told that Daniel had been named after this song, and later sent flowers to our family, along with a beautiful note.
For me, there is ‘before Daniel died’ and ‘after’. The 25th of May 1992 really did change everything. While I’d always been an independent and determined child, Daniel’s death made me fearless. I wasn’t worried about failing or looking a fool, because, well – what could hurt me as much as his death had?
I became a young woman on a mission, in a hurry to achieve something, to have something that would make the pain of his death worthwhile. There’s seizing the day and then there’s grabbing hold of it with both hands, squeezing out every last drop. The latter became my preferred technique.
I’m sorry to start my story on such a sad note. You might be thinking ‘this is not what I was expecting from that smiley blonde woman who presents the sport on the telly’. But this is about the most important moments in my life that have brought me to where
My brother’s death made me fearless – nothing could hurt me
I am today. This is about the real me, and about the events that have shaped me.
FOUR years later, on May 5, 1996, Newcastle United were playing their final match of the season against Tottenham Hotspur. I was in my usual pitch-side position at St James’s Park, waiting to do an interview for the local radio station, Metro FM, when a cameraman approached me. ‘Hi Gabby,’ he said. ‘I’m from Sky Sports. I’ve been asked to give you this card.’
Then he sauntered off, casual as you like, having potentially just delivered the great Sliding Doors moment of my life. On the card was the name ‘Richard Keys’ and a phone number. ‘Er, excuse me,’ I shouted after the cameraman. ‘What is this?’
‘Richard Keys.’ He gestured to the Sky TV studio. ‘He’s making a show about women in sport, and he wants you to contribute.’
Richard Keys was the Sky TV football host. Together with Andy Gray, an ex-professional player from Scotland, they had reinvented the way football was presented. They were ‘Sky Sports’.
But there was no plan for a TV show about women in sport. When I rang Keys the next day, he apologised for the fib. He told me he wanted to introduce me to his bosses at Sky.
They were looking to recruit more women, and he’d noticed me on the touchline at matches. Then he’d heard that my dad was Terry Yorath, an additional draw.
I was 23, newly graduated with a law degree from Durham University and cutting my sports presenter’s teeth on the Newcastle radio station Metro FM. I’d done shifts there all the way through university, having set my sights years before on a broadcasting career, and now I worked for them full time. This was the opportunity of a lifetime.
I don’t really want to write a lot about Richard Keys; he was dismissed, along with Gray, when they were caught talking lewdly about the lineswoman Sian Massey, and after he was caught asking pundits in the studio if they would ‘smash it’, referring to another woman.
In one painful-to-listen-to monologue aimed at saving his UK career, he tried to argue that he couldn’t be sexist, because he’d helped get me a job and kickstarted my career. He truly didn’t get it.
The boss at Sky was a man called Mark Sharman, who was recruiting for Sky Sports Centre, a live sports news show. I did a screen test and the following day he called to say I’d got the job.
My initiation into live TV was memorable, to say the least.
I’d opted for a pale taupe Prada two-piece – part of a glorious wardrobe of designer clothes bought for me by Sky – for my first day. As I was leaving my flat, I decided at the last minute that I should bring a spare pair of pants, as I was wearing black underwear, and if the pale suit was in any way see-through, my knickers would show.
You wouldn’t actually see them on set, as I’d be seated, but I didn’t want to be walking round an openplan office filled with alpha blokes flashing a black G-string. The pants I grabbed and put in my bag were nice, sensible M&S nude ones. When I got to the wardrobe department, I was in a bit of a flap and couldn’t find the spare nude pants, but it turned out I didn’t need them, so I didn’t think any more about it.
The bulletin went off well, and I made my way back up to the office to get some feedback from the editor, Nick, and the deputy editor, a brutally honest Northern Irish ex-hack who took no prisoners. It was his booming voice I heard as I headed into the huge office where all the sports departments were based.
‘Does anyone know where these pants have come from?’ he was asking. He had my knickers held aloft on the end of a pen and was parading them around the room,
making sure everybody in all the sports departments could see.
I panicked. ‘They’re mine – but they are clean!’ I shouted.
There were gales of laughter from my new colleagues as I grabbed the pants and stuffed them into my bag. I never figured out how they fell out – but I decided that on balance, my rite of passage into this macho world could have been a lot worse.
I am so grateful that I was able to go through my formative years in the industry without the added pressure of social media. It is a minefield, as I discovered while scrolling through Twitter one afternoon in 2011.
At that time there were a load of injunctions being slapped on tabloid newspapers, as famous and wealthy people were trying to keep bad news out of the press. There was a rumour swirling about an ex-footballer trying to keep a story hidden, so of course people were speculating about who it was and what he was trying to hide.
A message popped up on my timeline: ‘I hear this injunction concerns @gabbylogan who is having an affair with Alan Shearer.’
I laughed when I read it. Then I got angry. Then I panicked. I had a few minutes before a facial appointment, so I replied to the message in a hurry: ‘I think you should be careful what you write on here. The publishing laws apply and you are guilty of defamation of character with that.’
I had obviously prodded the bear. The tweeter quickly replied: ‘So @gabbylogan, are you saying that you haven’t been having an affair with Alan Shearer?’
‘No, of course not,’ I replied, then went in for my facial.
He had my knickers held aloft on the end of a pen… I panicked
THE following Sunday morning, I got a call from my agent, who told me to go and buy the News of the World. The headline ‘TV’s Gabby Logan denies affair with Alan Shearer’ ran across the top of pages four and five. Underneath ran a story of absolute nothingness, pictures of my husband Kenny and me walking the kids to school, and an article about me being at the World Cup in 2010 in South Africa with Alan Shearer.
Which was not really correct; although we had both been at the World Cup for the BBC, I was nowhere near him, as the studio team, which Alan was on, was based in Cape Town, while I was based in Rustenberg with the England team. Kenny and I knew there was not a grain of truth pertaining to anything this article suggested, but that didn’t stop the gossiping. People Kenny had known for years rang him to ‘lend support’.
SKY Sports was a tough school, but I find it hard to say I was sub
jected to discrimination. I was there because they wanted more women on screen, for a start, so there was an air of positivity to that. I was occasionally the butt of comments and scenarios that my male peers might not have had to endure.
As I wandered through the office one afternoon, one well-known male presenter shouted: ‘Oi, Yorath! How many Premier League footballers have you notched up on your bedpost?’
At 23 years old, I lacked the verbal elasticity to knock him out with a witty retort. His gang of cronies giggled. I smiled and carried on walking. Inside, I was dying.
An older rugby league presenter stopped me in the corridor one day and said: ‘Your a*** is amazing right now, but sadly for you, it’s one of those a **** that will be by your knees when you hit 30.’
‘Well you might find out – if you’re even still around when I’m 30.’ That was the best I could do.
Even years after I’d left Sky, it appeared I was still fair game for Gray and Keys. I sat a row behind them on a flight to Istanbul for the Champions League Final in 2005, which I was covering for ITV. I was seven months pregnant with twins, and I was huge. I looked like I’d swallowed a space hopper.
In full earshot of me – and anyone who might be listening in our business-class cabin – Richard said: ‘So, Andy, what do you think of pregnant women?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t find them very attractive, Richard. In fact, I never slept with my wife when she was pregnant with our kids.’
‘So you didn’t have sex, Andy?’ Keys asked.
‘No, I didn’t say that, Richard.’ Then they laughed their heads off at their little ‘comedy’ routine.
I was embarrassed, of course, and thought their comments were especially cruel, bearing in mind they both had children and wives of their own. Luckily, by that time I had been working with lovely men such as Ally McCoist and Andy Townsend at ITV, who were kind and caring, always asked after my wellbeing, and seemed genuinely excited for me about the babies. Keys and Gray were dinosaurs, waiting to become extinct.
To be clear, sports TV wasn’t an island of filth while the rest of the world and society circled around being virtuous. In the mid to late 90s, I reckon I would have seen and heard the same kind of idiotically sexist stuff if I were working in a top law firm or as a trader in an investment bank.
It was just a very male ego-driven environment. I am sure there were quite a few men there who also found the alpha atmosphere a bit too much.
It was male-dominated behind the camera, too. The camera operators, sound technicians, statisticians, directors and producers were 90 per cent male.
It’s like turning round a tanker, isn’t it? The first movement is very slow and it feels like nothing is changing, but you have to keep going, and then eventually the whole boat comes along, gaining momentum. My attitude was, being there and doing the job, being visible and trying to be good at it, was as powerful as anything else I could do to speed up the change.
PRESENTING Sports Centre was fine, but I really wanted to do live sport. Specifically, I wanted to do live football. Vic Wakeling was one of the founding fathers of Sky Sports, the man who helped pull off the initial Premier League deal for Rupert Murdoch.
He was a County Durham native, so we had the North East in common, but he didn’t take my requests to host live football seriously. ‘You won’t be presenting football while I’m here,’ he told me between puffs of his Benson & Hedges. ‘You won’t be on screen after you’re 28.’
I believed him. With the news that I had about four years left of my career ringing in my ears, I started pestering my boss, Mark Sharman, instead.
Then one day he told me he had good news. ‘Right, from next season, you can host the ice hockey.’
Sky were clever. They knew the audience for ice hockey was minimal, but it was a good place to learn the mechanics of hosting live sport. I loved presenting the ice hockey. The players were like street fighters with blades on their feet – a fight broke out in almost every match. It was an exhilarating time.
In many ways, those Sky years, the years before I met and married Kenny, were more like typical university years than my actual time at uni.
Having broken up with a longterm university boyfriend, I was newly single, heading out on the town a few nights a week and getting off with inappropriate blokes. I didn’t like myself very much back then, but I always seemed to forget that the next time I was drinking too much chardonnay in a sweaty nightclub at 2am.
I had gone from being fastidious about diet and exercise to buying a box of white Magnums on my way home from work at 10.30pm from the Shell garage at the end of the road. I’d then finish them off in front of The Late Show With David Letterman.
I didn’t eat breakfast because I rose late, and I often had freshly baked chocolate chip cookies from the Sky canteen for dinner. I don’t remember who it was that subtly suggested I try getting a personal trainer, but all these years later, I thank you from the bottom of my very large bottom.
My private life was not in great shape. But my career was about to take off in a way I couldn’t have imagined.
The First Half, by Gabby Logan, is published by Piatkus on October 13 at €24.99.