Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
ON ME HEAD, SON
now I’ve stopped playing. I might still be away working on TV covering matches but the second I walk in she’ll just talk to me about the kids. If I talk about football she’s not really listening.
“But I respect Abbey’s opinions on everything. If I’ve got any work stuff to discuss or anything else, I’ll run it by her and she always likes to say she’s always right. Which obviously isn’t true. Although she is right a lot.” Having a model wife is also handy for getting tips on how to look good – especially if you are a 6ft 7in beanpole like Peter, who has compared his own arms to linguine.
His main challenge post-retirement appears to be staying in shape. Peter says: “Abbey makes me a green juice every morning as I don’t eat enough veg and so far so good. I’ve not been training properly for three months but up until now there’s been no discernible difference to my body. Running bores me so I’m avoiding that but I might start to play more tennis.”
Retirement also means Peter has more time to spend with kids Sophia, eight, Liberty Rose, four, Johnny, who turns two in January, and four-month-old Jack.
He says: “I was always hands-on, even when I was playing. But it’s even better now. And what’s nice now is I can take them to school and pick them up.”
Mind you, Peter suffers the same kind of parenting headaches as the rest of us.
He says: “I took Sophia to summer camp and when I got there she didn’t want me to come in. I said, ‘Why not, Sophia?’ and she said, ‘Oh Daddy you’re too tall. I don’t need you to come in’. So I was like, ‘OK, that’s a bit much’. So she was hiding me away because all the kids are like, ‘Oh my God, your dad’s so tall’.”
But once the footie-mad boys learned