Peter Crouch Prince Harry asked me how on earth I bagged my wife
Peter Crouch has hung up his boots to start a new career in the media and write a second book, reports Guy Kelly
All things considered, Peter Crouch ought to feel knackered. Four months ago, he played his final game of competitive football after a 21-year professional career. A few weeks later, Jack, his fourth child and the reason he “didn’t get a lot of sleep last night”, was born. And two minutes ago, in a boardroom at his publishers’ headquarters, he completed signing what looked, to me at least, like several thousand copies of his new book.
“I feel all right, actually. Not bad, all things considered,” he says, cheerfully contorting his rake-thin, 6ft 7½ ins frame in to an office chair; an act you too could see if you imagine an ironing board collapsing.
Crouch is still adjusting to “retired” life – both the pleasures (going on holiday when he wants, seeing his kids every day) and the pains (cooking for himself) – but decided last year that he didn’t need a break between playing and a second career in the media.
“I don’t think backpacking around South Africa on a gap year was really for me. I’m 38 – in the grand scheme of things, that’s young. I didn’t want a rest.”
Instead, he’s found serious success capitalising on the one thing, other than his extraordinary physique, that set him apart from all other professional footballers: never taking himself, or his often ludicrous job, at all seriously.
Which isn’t to say he lacked focus – more than 100 Premier League goals, 22 England goals, an FA Cup winners’ medal, a Champions League final and one iconic goal celebration dance is a CV any player would settle for – but that he always seemed like a normal, funny bloke in a thicket of bawling prima donnas. He was an emissary for the fan class. The world’s most conspicuous spy.
“I always feel everyone in football takes themselves really, really seriously. My problem was people scoring and not celebrating. You’ve got the best job in the world, just f------ enjoy it,” he says.
“I’d look at other players who were all, ‘urgh, I’ve got to do this, do that’, and couldn’t get my head around thinking it was a chore. Put it in perspective: you could be finishing at 8pm every night. We were finishing at one.”
Crouch’s singular approach meant that his career findings were always going to be worth reading, and his first book, How To Be a Footballer, certainly delivered. The winner of “bestselling sports book of the year” at The Telegraph Sports Book Awards in June, it was an unconventional autobiography that mainly consisted of absurd tales from behind the curtain of professional football.
“I bought about 30 copies on pre-order, just to be able to think, ‘well, at least I’ve sold 30’. But then it did really well. Someone sent me a photo of a hotel pool abroad this summer where five different blokes were reading it.”
A popular podcast and newspaper column followed, in addition to punditry gigs and an Amazon Prime talk show, but he had plenty of stories left, so a follow-up, I, Robot (a nod to that trademark celebration dance) has been rattled off in time for Christmas.
It’s just as funny as the first. There’s the unnamed footballer who would eat his dinner every night sitting opposite an iphone that would be Facetiming his wife, at home, having the exact same meal at the kitchen table. There’s the named footballer (Gareth Bale) who had to have baked beans on toast before every match, while everybody else was given pasta and chicken.
There’s Prince Harry, who came over to Crouch on a tour of the England dressing room only to ask, “How did you bag Abbey [Clancy, his model and Strictly-winning wife]?” And there’s Clancy herself, dancing drunk on a table in Crete, before disappearing off the side and breaking her coccyx on the tiled floor. “I’ll never forget the image on her lying face down on the bed, the female doctor massaging cream into Abbey’s naked arse as she repeatedly threw up into a bucket,” Crouch writes, movingly.
“I haven’t tried to be controversial or explosive, I’ve just tried to be honest. It’s fun stories, but I’ve tried to be insightful about what really goes on day to day, because nobody really knows that.”
He seems to have a prodigious memory for details, I say.
“I haven’t. Abbey will tell you that. But once you get talking, the stories just come back to you. I could probably do another 10 of these.”
Crouch and Clancy met at a bar in Liverpool in 2006 and have been together ever since, if you don’t count a brief break after she was one of the WAG army that descended on that year’s World Cup in Baden Baden. The tabloids found a scandal about just about every one of them: Clancy’s was her “cocainesnorting past”, which she admitted to, and was shipped back home.
“It was a bit intense, that tournament and my first World Cup, so I thought that scrutiny was normal,” Crouch says. “It didn’t help that the families
‘How did you bag Abbey Clancy?’, Prince Harry asked me
were staying in the same hotel as the press, so there was a story every breakfast time. But I always loved my experience with England.”
Both books have touching moments, including details of the vicious abuse Crouch received throughout his career for looking odd, but he’s careful to keep things broadly light.
I wonder what his thoughts are on some of the game’s more complex issues, such as the fact that there are no out LGBT players in the top tiers of men’s football. “I’ve got no thoughts,” he says. “It’s certainly not an issue for me, and I don’t think it would be for anyone else. If I was gay, I think I’d be fine and comfortable coming out. But I’m not in that situation, so…” Does he know any gay players who’ve not come out? “No, I don’t.”
What about the salaries – when he was young, he was happily earning £800 per week at QPR, until he discovered all his team-mates had negotiated to be on £10,000. By the end of his career, after three seasons at Liverpool and two separate stints at both Portsmouth and Tottenham, plus eight years at Stoke, one at Southampton and a few appearances for Burnley, he got a lot more than that. Are they paid too much?
“No, no, they’re just a product of their environment. The club owners and the TV companies are earning extortionate amounts, so the players are the products. If you want the best players in the world in the Premier League, you’ve got to pay them.” What’s his most extravagant purchase? “An Aston Martin that Roy Keane had a go at me for buying, or an £800 jumper. But it’s probably my house now.”
Crouch and Clancy live in a sprawling Surrey mansion, near a few other footballers and Andy Murray. They’re busy – her with modelling and a high-street fashion line for Lipsy, him with his many media jobs – but “we always make sure we’re home to put the kids [as well as baby Jack, they have Sophia, eight, Liberty, four, and Johnny, two] to bed.” Clancy’s the cook. “I’m awful. If Abs isn’t there, I do a pasta and stir-in sauce or I go out.”
What’s nice about retirement, he says, is the school run. “One of my girls told me to stay outside the gates because I’m too tall and the other kids would talk about it. But now the football boys speak to her because of me, so she asks me to come in. I’ve gone from embarrassment to top dad. It’ll swing back when she’s a teenager, so I’ll enjoy it for now.”
Do they fancy a fifth?
“God, no. I know I probably said that before the fourth, but that’s me done. Two each is more than enough.”
Maybe he’s more tired that he looks. He’s straight off to Sheffield to cover a match after this. I’m not surprised he hasn’t bothered to kick a ball since that last match at Burnley FC in May.
“I’ve actually just got in touch with an old mate to play in their five-a-side team. It’s a law firm,” he says, grinning brightly. “I’m looking forward to it. It should be 10-nil Crouch.”