Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
A pretty rable git 0 years now I’m unniest e family HARRY REDKNAPP
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ly me w.” ntion of hought when he hought, ‘That’s it, I’m going to retire now, I love my racing, I’ve got 10 horses and I’ll spend my days going down to the yard to watch them working.
“Being on TV was the last thing on my mind. Then I agreed to do just that one programme, and after that it’s got crazier than ever.”
His latest ITV show, Harry’s Heroes: Euro Having a Laugh, sees him trying to train up England stars from the 1990s such as Paul Merson, Matt Le Tissier and Neil “Razor” Ruddock ready to take on their old rivals Germany in one last grudge match. He says: “I loved every bit of doing it, it was absolutely brilliant to be with those footballers, they are great lads.”
He remembers the “strangest moment”, when David Seaman stormed off the pitch when he found out he was going to have to play against a team of French nudists. Harry chuckles: “David got the hump with that. The lads gave him a bit of stick, as you can imagine with him being called Seaman and playing against a team of nudists. They were quite good footballers actually.
“Then we had Vinnie Jones come in and play with us, in San Marino. He was going and my respect level for teachers has gone through the roof.”
While Harry, who has another son, Mark, a model, hasn’t been able to see his five grandchildren, he says lockdown hasn’t been too bad – and certainly nothing like being stuck in the jungle for three weeks.
He says: “It’s no hardship compared to the jungle. There they make you live with no food, no nothing. Here we have TV and food, that’s everything we need. We look forward to our one-and-a-half hour walk per day. We don’t walk very far, people are always stopping and talking to me – from a distance, of course. “We’re both over 70 and in the vulnerable group, so we haven’t taken any chances.” It helps, he adds, that he and Sandra, who have been married for 53 years, get on so well. The couple have “never had an argument” and lockdown hasn’t changed that.
He says: “We just don’t argue, I can honestly say that. Of course, it’s not like we’re stuck in a flat all day, we’re not on top of each other.
“Most of the time Sandra sits in one room watching all the soaps, Corrie, Eastenders, Emmerdale, and I’m in the other room watching all the sports news on telly. I pretty much spend the whole day doing that. “Sandra is a fitness fanatic and would normally have some 10 friends over a couple of times a week to do pilates and boxing. I’ve had to help her by holding the boxing pads while she punches them. I am quite scared though that she might give me a right hook. “I know it is much more difficult for a lot of people. “If I lived where I was brought up, in a block of flats in the East End of London, then it would be much harder. We’re very lucky and I do appreciate that. “My pals all still live in the East End. “One of them has had the virus and been in and out of hospital.”
Harry has also done what he can to support NHS staff. He says: “We go out and clap every Thursday. I found out that there is a group of nurses around the corner who are renting a house together while they work in the hospital. “The other day when they came out clapping I sent them all off with bottles of wine.” Redknapp’s Home Fixture, Fridays, 10pm on Sky One and NOW TV.
Harry’s Heroes: Euro Having A Laugh, tonight, 9pm, ITV.
ON LIFE DURING LOCKDOWN
along lovely, but then ended up giving someone a forearm smash with five minutes to go in the game, and laid the guy out cold. He’d been very tame until then, but it’s not in Vinnie’s nature to be nice for the whole game.”
The show was filmed last year and life is now very different. Harry and wife Sandra, 72, are in lockdown in their home in Poole, Dorset, while Jamie is at his home in Surrey, sharing looking after sons Beau, 11, and Charley, 15, with his pop star ex-wife.
Jamie says: “I’m sharing the kids with Louise, which has worked out really well.
“Homeschooling has not been easy though,