Your form for the U’s earned a 2000 move to Newcastle. How did that all come about?

When I was at Colchester, a lot of teams were coming to see me. We were battling relegation and the coach, Mick Wadsworth, said if I could help them stay up, he’d speak to the coach of a Premier League team about me. He went to Newcastle [ as assistant manager] after leaving Colchester, and kept his word by telling Bobby Robson about me. On the day, I thought I was signing for Tottenham. They were the team I’d always supported, so I was really excited, but something changed on the way there and we ended up going to Newcastle instead.