I WAS DRUNK, SELFISH AND SELF-OBSESSED

this happening? He’s not as good as me.’ I honestly didn’t think he was.

“But I had burnt all my bridges. I still blamed him for me not being in the team. I scored a hat-trick one week and got dropped the next week. I found that incredible.

“The reason being Paul Stewart was doing a lot of the same sort of things that I was doing but he paid £2million for Paul and £500,000 for me.

“That’s the way it was. He was trying to make

Paul Stewart work. But I couldn’t accept it. I couldn’t accept a lot of stuff.

“Now I realise that once you let all that resentment go it’s great. It’s been like carrying a rucksack of crap on your back everywhere. It’s gone and, like Kenny, if I was to see Terry Venables now I would apologise to him.”

Walsh, who is a Sky Sports pundit, believes his life has been turned around after admitting he needed help.

“After football I had to earn my money a different way and I struggled with that. I hated my life and at times I hated myself,” he said. “Part of the healing process is to trade in anger, resentment, aggression, abuse, arrogance, ego for humility.

“I had a mate who helped me so I joined Alcoholics Anonymous and I’ve been in it four years and I’ve not been drinking. “You have to take yourself out of yourself and stop thinking about you and start helping other people.

“Although I feel I’ve provided well for my family and stuff, my life predominately revolved around me and football.

“One day a week now I help out in a rehabilitation centre.

“I just knocked on the door one day and asked if I could be a volunteer.

That was two and a half years ago and I have become part of their set-up.”

Walsh, now 57, went on: “There are people in there from all different walks of life. I sit in with two therapists as a peer supporter.

“When they come out of the clinic there is after-care where they come back one day a week and everyone shares their experiences of reintegration back into life.

“In my earlier life I made my own rules up.

“When you do that for all of your life, ultimately, somewhere along the line it’s going to come back and bite you on the backside.”

■■Paul Walsh was speaking on The Old Footballers Club to Rob McCaffrey on Switchbox TV. For the full interview search Switchbox TV on YouTube.