NEIL ‘RAZOR’ RUDDOCK: MY BIGGEST GOAL WAS TO MAKE MY DAD PROUD

Former footballer Neil Ruddock talks to Luke Rix-Standing about finding balance with booze, his health wake-up call and being a changed man.

Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock has had his share of ups and downs over the years, navigating footballing fame to bankruptcy in 2011, and TV celebrity to serious health problems.

His 17 years as a toughtackling defender saw him play for a string of English clubs, including Tottenham (where he broke his leg on his first appearance), and Liverpool. He gained one cap for England in 1994, and was once dubbed to be among ‘the hardest footballer of all time’. After retiring from the game, Ruddock launched his TV career with a spot on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! in 2004. More recently, in 2019 he reached the final three on Celebrity MasterChef, before appearing in Harry’s Heroes, which saw Harry Redknapp train up a group of former players for one more game. Concerns over his health led to Ruddock to get a checkup that revealed serious problems with his heart. Now 52, his latest project is a book, The World According To Razor: My Closest Shaves, which is “like having a pint down the pub with the man himself”, according to his publisher.

Drink has been a major part of your life, hasn’t it?

“I was brought up with drinking. You’d go out with your team-mates on a Tuesday and after the game. You do what the older players do. It’s like traditions in families – I knew no different. Now, there’s no drinking after the game – they go home to bed.”

How was retirement initially? “Within a year, I was in rehab. I couldn’t admit back then that I had a drinking problem. It’s different now. You’d think if you were drowning you’d put your hand out for help, but back then the manager would tell you you’re a big girl’s blouse and man up and get on with it, so you wouldn’t tell anybody.”

More recently you credited TV with saving your life. Tell us about that?

“On Harry’s Heroes, they found my heart was racing at 130 beats a minute, but I thought that was just how everybody felt. I was a typical man – ‘I’m all right, it won’t happen to me’.

“They had to stop my heart and zap it. Then they tested it at night and it was stopping for seven or eight seconds at a time, so I had to have a pacemaker put in. Without Harry’s Heroes, that would have been it. It was a big shock.

The World According To Razor: My Closest Shaves by Neil Ruddock is published by Constable, priced £20. Available now.