Harry Redknapp: 'I'm not bothered about friends, I've got Sandra and that's all that matters'

Harry Redknapp has an autobiography out. Over 432 gripping pages it covers everything from playing with the great, late Bobby Moore, to Harry’s 2012 trial for tax evasion, to being passed over for the England manager job, to his endless fallings out with football club chairmen and his extraordinary love for Sandra, his wife of 46 years.
And so today we’re sitting in the garden of his multi-million pound mansion in Sandbanks, watching the pleasure boats bob by at the end of the garden and having a nice chat about it all.
As is usual with sporting memoirs, the book has been ghost-written by a professional writer.
‘Well I didn’t write it, did I? I can’t write – I don’t even know how to punctuate. If I wrote a line for you now I’d do some capitals and some small writing and you’d think it was a six-year-old’s writing. I went to the worst school you’ve ever seen. It was just a nut house. So of course I couldn’t write it. How could I? I just sat down and did a load of interviews, which was fun.’

Harry Redknapp and wife Sandra at home in Sandbanks. The legendary football manager's autobiography has just come out, of which he says: 'I haven't read it yet... Well I didn't write it, did I? I can't write - I don't even know how to punctuate.'

 ‘In fact, d’you know what?’ continues Harry. ‘I’ve never written anything. I don’t have an email. I can’t work the computer or anything like that. I’ve never wrote a letter in my life. I’ve never sent a card to no one but Sandra.
‘Sandra!’ he yells in the general direction of the

'Was I scared of going to prison? Yes I was. You’re relying on 12 people who might not like you. They might have been Arsenal fans for all I knew. One had a stained jacket, for goodness sake'

kitchen, ‘Have I ever sent a card to anyone but you?’
She pops out with a beatific smile. ‘No Harry, never. I’m the woman behind the man – isn’t that what they say? I write everything that needs writing around here.’
‘But at least I can read!’
‘Of course you can read, Harry.’
Harry Redknapp isn’t quite as I’d imagined. He is of course massively famous as a footballer (Spurs, West Ham, Bournemouth), manager (Bournemouth, West Ham United, Portsmouth (twice), Southampton and Spurs), self proclaimed wheeler dealer and patriarch of the Redknapp/Lampard football dynasty.
Sandra’s late sister Pat was married to Frank Lampard senior and mother to ‘Young Frank’, as they all call him, and one of Harry and Sandra’s two football-mad sons is Jamie Redknapp.
He is blunt, adored by fans and ready to take a risk or two, if perhaps not in the tax department.
It was, after all, Harry who, when a tattoo-covered fan yelled on and on about how rubbish that ‘effing Lee Chapman’ was during a match between West Ham and Oxford in 1994, told the fan to get booted up and on for the second half. And then cheered madly when he scored a goal.

But it turns out that he’s also gentle, kind, ridiculously soppy about Sandra, extremely clean, obsessed with animals, and has very good hair (‘I’ve never dyed it! Never, ever. Sandra, she’s asking if I dye my hair.’ ‘Never! No Harry, never.’)

He is also still badly bruised by his court case last year (he was acquitted).

Harry Redknapp and wife Sandra at home in Sandbanks. They met age 17, at a pub called the Two Puddings in Stratford, east London

‘Was I scared of going to prison? Yes I was. You’re relying on 12 people who might not like you. They might have been Arsenal fans for all I knew. One had a stained jacket, for goodness sake.
‘Then you start thinking, who will I be in a cell with?  Would I be with some lunatic scruffy bloke who’s not clean? I don’t know what goes on in prison. I’ve never been in trouble with the police in my life.’
The trial focused on a supposedly secret bank account he’d opened in Monaco with the password, Rosie47, after his favourite bulldog (‘She was so beautiful’) who’s now in the great dog basket in the sky. There were three - Rosie, Buster and Lulu, but today it’s just Lulu snuffling about the house. Buster passed away a few weeks ago.
‘I love animals so much, all animals. Apart from cats, I’m a little bit scared of cats.
‘Anyway, it was me who told them about the bank account in the first place. You don’t rob a bank and say, “Oh yes, by the way I’ve hid the money at the bottom of the garden” do you?
‘It all came down to about £10,000 and I’m not being funny Jane, but £10,000 ain’t going to change my life. I just gave £10,000 away a couple of weeks ago to four different charities – two and a half grand each. Why am I going to try and nick ten grand? People who know me well know how I spend money like it’s going out of fashion.
‘I’m murder with money. I could write a book – if I could write, ha ha - about how many times I’ve been ripped off lending money to people. I’m an absolutely unbelievable soft touch. Unbelievable. I never learn my lesson.’

‘I’m murder with money. I could write a book – if I could write, ha ha - about how many times I’ve been ripped off lending money to people. I’m an absolutely unbelievable soft touch. Unbelievable. I never learn my lesson.’
 

Any examples?
‘There was that jockey, Lee Topliss. He had me going for three years. Argggh, don’t Jane! I was always giving him money. He’d want £500 to go and ride some horses in Dubai, then his mum wasn’t well and he needed money to go and see her. There was always something. I felt sorry for him.
‘The odd thing was, he ate so well. I took him to a lovely Italian in Chelsea and he was eating steak and drinking all this wine and I said, “Lee, how can eat all this if you’re riding tomorrow?” and he said, “Don’t worry ‘Arry. I’ll  go for a run at 5 am and sweat it all out in the sauna”.
‘Turned out he wasn’t Lee Topliss the jockey at all. He was the glass washer in some pub. No wonder his racing tips were rubbish. You gotta laugh. But I’ve lent money to loads of people.’
Gosh. Doesn’t Sandra hit the roof when she finds out?
‘Nah, she’s as bad as me. Last time it was the Polish cleaner who wanted ten grand because she needed somewhere to live. She’d only been with us about three weeks, but Sandra lent her ten grand.’

When Harry and Sandra first got together she was a hairdresser earning £1.50 for a wash and set, he was playing for West Ham. Money was tight and Harry stacked shelves in a supermarket in the evenings to make ends meet

Ten grand! And is she still here?
‘No, funnily enough, she’s gone back to Poland. But Sandra says she’s going to pay her back, so… ha ha. We’ll see. I don’t dare argue over it..’
Blimey. Ten grand. It’s a far cry from when they met – age 17, at a pub called the Two Puddings in Stratford, east London.

‘A lot of the boys had extra jobs. Bobby Moore worked in a factory in Barking. We’d coach in schools for £2.50 an afternoon.'

‘I was just like, you know.. she was just lovely.’ He goes all pink. ‘And that was that. We got married at 20.’
Sandra was a hairdresser earning £1.50 for a wash and set, he was playing for West Ham. Money was ridiculously tight and Harry stacked shelves in a supermarket in the evenings to make ends meet.
‘A lot of the boys had extra jobs. Bobby Moore worked in a factory in Barking. We’d coach in schools for £2.50 an afternoon. The maximum wage was £20 a week and no one lived in posh houses – all terraced or semi detached. Bobby was the only one – he moved out to Chigwell and bought a detached house – but he was always the king.’
The conditions weren’t great either. Pitches thawed out with chestnut braziers, icy showers and physios armed with wet sponges and no knowledge.
‘Now there’s all sorts – physios, masseurs, dieticians. We used to come in and start booting the ball around. Now they’re stretching for half an hour and their food is all hand picked.’
But the money must surely be the biggest change.

'Was I scared of going to prison? Yes I was. You're relying on 12 people who might not like you. They might have been Arsenal fans for all I knew,' Redknapp said of his trial for tax evasion

‘It’s crazy madness. Gareth Bale – he’s a nice kid, but £85 million - crazy money for a player.
‘They come from a little housing estate in Leeds or Oldham or Bradford or London and next thing they’re in the West End drinking £300 bottles of champagne and all that nonsense.’
All of which, he claims, makes them harder to manage.
‘There’s definitely a change. These days half of them don’t even want to play for England.
‘I had loads of players come to me when I was managing Tottenham asking me to get them out of it.
‘Shocking, isn’t it? They all wanted to go on holiday, or it spoilt their summer or they didn’t want the pressure and the agro. So it’s the same group playing all the time – Gerrard, Lampard, Ashley Cole, Rooney – that’s why they’ve got all them caps. The others all seem to be unfit on a Wednesday and then suddenly able to play again for their club side on a Saturday. They get paid so well at their clubs that that’s more important to them. It’s outrageous, but that’s definitely the way it is.’
And if anyone should know, it’s Harry. He’s been in the business five decades. He’s had massive successes – winning the 2008 FA cup with underdogs Portsmouth and steering Spurs to greatness. And weathered horrible dips – sackings from, well, pretty much everywhere. At one stage Sandra kept the family afloat with her wash and sets and he was toying with becoming a cabbie.

There was a terrible backlash from Portsmouth fans when he upped sticks, first to Southampton and, later, after returning and winning the FA Cup, to Spurs. Fishermen sailed up Poole Harbour and shouted abuse over the garden hedge.

Harry Redknapp with son Jamie Redknapp

He’s also survived a horrific minibus crash in Italy which left him with strange droopy eyes like Garfield the cat and the whole family are still reeling from the death from pneumonia of Sandra’s sister Pat (also a hairdresser) aged just 58 in 2008.
And then last year as well as the trial there was all that hoo-ha over the England job.
‘I thought I was going to get it. I really did. And then I was in the car and a newsflash came on that the new England manager was Roy and that was that.
‘I’d have took it for sure. Course I would. But when it didn’t happen, I didn’t go into a deep depression and lock myself into a room.’
And if it came up again?
‘I think my time was last year. But if it did, well, you’d like to manage your country, wouldn’t you?’
While he’s adored by the fans, he’s had a tendency to speak before he thinks.
‘All the time I’m thinking, ‘Arghhhh, I should have kept my mouth shut’. But if people talk crap, I find I have to tell ‘em. Sandra just says, “Gawd Harry, what would your mum say?”.’
The one person he never argues with is Sandra.

'The Frank Lampards are slow and fat, both of them, but the two most determined men I’ve seen in football.’
 

‘We’ve never had a row. Ever. After all these years, we’ve never had a minute’s problem between us. And that’s true. That’s not bulls***. If I get the hump, she’ll just say, ‘look at you Harry, look at you, just calm down’ and I do.’
He’s also a famously bad loser.
‘It makes me feel low. Stupidly low. If we lose a match I don’t talk all the way home. I don’t want to see no one but Sandra. And I wake up Sunday morning and think, ‘Oh, bloody hell, what happened.’
And then come 5.30 am Monday morning he’s back in the car and driving three hours back up to London.
‘But only after I’ve fed the birds. I love ‘em. I buy all this stuff – peanuts and all sorts. There are bird feeders everywhere and do them every morning. I used to feed the foxes as well until Sandra stopped me..’
Harry is great company – only he could get away with describing the Frank Lampards as ‘slow and fat, both of them, but the two most determined men I’ve seen in football.’
And Paulo Di Canio as ‘mental but brilliant and a massive Spandau Ballet fan’. And freely admit not having written a word of his autobiography.
He looks in such great shape – trim and tanned with just a hint of tummy – that it’s hard to remember he’s actually 66 with a slightly dodgy heart (Sandra’s constantly popping forgotten pills in his mouth), a knackered knee (‘I think I need a new one’) and a nagging fear that something might happen to Sandra.

He is of course massively famous as a footballer (Spurs, West Ham, Bournemouth), manager (Bournemouth, West Ham United, Portsmouth (twice), Southampton and Spurs)

‘I couldn’t cope. I wouldn’t cope. I’m useless. She treats me like a baby. She does everything. I can’t cook, I can’t make a coffee, I can’t do nothing. I could make a cup of tea and a cheese sandwich, but that’s it.
‘But we’ve always been so close, I’d find it hard to cope. It scares me. Like this house scares me. It’s too big. I’d like to move really – somewhere smaller and easier.’
So does he have any plans to retire?
‘Not really, no. I haven’t got any hobbies really. I’m a big racing man. I’ve got a few horses.’
A few?
‘Don’t tell Sandra, she thinks I’ve only got one, but I think I’ve got eight. One really good one called Movie Star that I’ve stupidly given shares in to other people. The others are all mine, but they’re not so good. Bloody typical.’
Harry is a lovely man and he seems to have it made so I am surprised at the end of our time together when I ask about his friends.
‘I ain’t got any friends outside my family.’
Course you have. You’re Harry Redknapp. Who do you go down the pub with?
There’s a long silence.
‘I can’t go down the pub. I’d never get to the bar, just imagine it. No, I don’t really have friends. Really. There’s Mervin my bookmaker, he lives up the road, but other than that, I’ve got a lot of acquaintances – hundreds and hundreds of people, but I’m not really bothered about friends. I’ve got my family. But most of all, I’ve got Sandra and that’s all that matters.’