 and blacking out. Things only became public in 1990, when he was sentenced to four months in prison for crashing a Ford Sierra while four times over the limit. Two years later he married Jane Shea and had two children, Olly, now 30, and Amber, now 27. But he hadn't slowed down. 'It was so selfish. Alcoholism is all about you. I left my five-year-old son [Olly, now 30] in the pub for three days while I went on a bender. Old Bill looked after him for a few days, then I got him back. So that's where I've come from.' With a footballer's salary enabling unlimited supplies of booze and invitations, he continued to spiral out of control off the pitch until Euro 96. He was the captain of the host side, and went on a hellish two-month drinking session after England crashed out on penalties. It was to be rock bottom. The decision to make that drink in August 1996){kind=link}
The Arsenal legend and former England football captain explains what drove this ‘awful dancer’ to become Mr Saturday Night
Tony Adams went to pick up his medication from his local Boots pharmacy the other day. He had life-saving heart surgery seven years ago, so it’s a fairly regular, uneventful errand.
“I’ve got six tablets I take – uppers, downers, statins, you know,” he says, circling a finger round his chest as if winding a clock.
Normally, the staff don’t pay him much heed. There was a time, in the mid-1990s, when Adams was so famous – as England and Arsenal’s beloved, once-more-unto-the-breach captain – that his mother-in-law visited Outer Mongolia and found they’d heard of him, but not Tony Blair.
That was a while ago, though, and he’s been retired for over 20 years, so the chemist can be forgiven for not acting starstruck. Only this time, Adams got home and realised there was a new, personal message handwritten on his prescription bag: “Keep dancing!”