Geordie football legend Paul Gascoigne has vowed to challenge ex-boxer Chris Eubank – claiming he mocked him over his boozy past in a new TV show.
Gazza and ex-world champ Eubank appear in new TV show Scared Of The Dark, which sees eight celebrities thrown together for a week in a blacked-out bunker. A clip shows Eubank pretending to drink from pints in each hand.
Alcoholic Gazza, 55, is sure the gesture was aimed at him – and will challenge Eubank when the cast attend a get-together tomorrow, according to an exclusive interview with MirrorOnline. Gateshead-born Gazza said his fellow star is arrogant and loves himself, accused him of making actress Donna Preston and reality star Chloe Burrows cry – and revealed he wound him up by calling him "Eubanks".
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Former Newcastle, Tottenham and England star Gazza – who goes on to hilariously poke fun at himself – says: “I will have a go at him at the premiere. He’s not getting away with that. That is, if he has the b**** to turn up. He probably will, because he’s that arrogant, things will just go over his head. But when that f****** clip comes up, I will say something.
“In the one I saw he was saying, ‘He’s full of that’ and miming necking pints with both hands. And I was the only alcoholic in there, so it was about me. He was nice to my face on the show, and was even calling me ‘Paul Gascoigne, the King of England’ so it just shows you how two-faced people can be.”
The new Channel 4 show Scared Of The Dark is on five nights this week and is hosted by actor Danny Dyer.
Gazza, who joined the show in a bid to conquer a fear of the dark, said his heart sank when he realised he was stuck with Chris. But he denied any suggestions that they came close to a physical altercation.
He said with a grimace: “When I first got in there, I ended up sitting next to the worst person I could have thought of... Eubanks. I’ve met him before and when I heard his lisp next to me in the dark, I was like, ‘It’s f****** him.’ I knew we wouldn’t be able to shut him up.
"He thinks he’s better than everyone else because of all these big, stupid words he uses. It’s like he was born with a dictionary up his a***. He was telling us how he proposed to his wife and it went on for about five minutes. I said, ‘You’re lucky she didn’t divorce you before you were married’. He did rub people up the wrong way. Apart from him everyone was nice. It was a good atmosphere, we all supported each other.”
Throughout the interview, Paul refers to Chris as ‘Eubanks’. Asked if it’s deliberate – he grins: “I wound him up by calling him ‘Eubanks.’ He’d shout, ‘It’s Eubank, there’s no S’ and I’d go, ‘All right, Eubanks.’ Another time he complained about swearing, and I just replied, ‘F***’ and walked off. At times, he wasn’t a bad guy, but he just loved himself too much.”
Paul, widely hailed as the best footballer of his generation, has suffered a lifelong fear of the dark. His family urged him not to do the show and there was speculation his previous struggles would see him excluded.
But he had a mental health screening before being accepted and insisted he was more than equal to the challenge. He says: “I’ve been scared of the dark since I was a kid. I slept with the lights on. As an adult I slept with the TV on and the sound turned down. I think it’s a fear of the unknown. I think I did the show because I wanted to conquer it.
“But my family thought I was mad. Mam said, ‘Don’t do it, Paul’. One sister said, ‘You can’t do that, you’re s*** scared of the dark’ and my other sister said, ‘But you’re petrified’. I told them I’d be all right. But I’ll tell you what, I wouldn’t do those first few hours again. I was waiting with Danny and I asked him, ‘We’ll be alright, won’t we?’ He told me, ‘I will, I’m not going in. It’s horrible.’
“Then the lights went out. I nearly collapsed. I was sitting on the floor, crying, saying I wanted to quit. But after the first few hours, I started to get my bearings and I got to grips with it. After a few days I was taking the mickey out of the others and having a laugh. People think I’m not mentally strong enough to do something like this, but that’s a load of b*******.”
Eubank is not the only boxing star on the show – Olympian Nicola Adams is also in the bunker, as are comedian Chris McCausland and reality star Scarlett Moffatt. Viewers will see Paul taking food from Scarlett, swapping Max and Chris’s clothes and tossing cheese at Donna to make her jump. He laughs: “I’m going to be bang to rights at that premiere, they’re going to see what I was up to. They’re going to be like, ‘You b******’! It really was some experience. I cried when I came out.
“And now I can sleep without the TV on... most of the time.”
While Eubank may not be top of his contacts list, Gazza says he is still in contact with plenty of his soccer chums – including migrants tweet row star Gary Lineker, who helped pay for one of his rehab stints.
He adds: "I still talk to my old pals, though I’m not too good on the phone. The problem is I send one message and get 10 back. But I still get on with everyone. Gary I’m still good pals with – I was surprised he was kicked off Match of the Day as he’s normally such a squeaky clean guy. I can’t watch football any more though. Aged 55, I still miss it too much. And I couldn’t go to games anyway, because so many people want selfies.”
I can see his point. As we step outside to take photos, we are quickly interrupted by two fans. Paul shrugs:
“I say ‘yes’, because I don’t want people thinking, ‘What an arrogant b******’ because I’m not. Do I ever wish I hadn’t been famous? No. I’ve had a good life. It’s had ups and downs, but I take responsibility for the downs, and I look forward to the next thing. When things are good, I make the most of it, when they’re not, I just try to get through it.”
“Like the premiere?” I ask. He agrees, and adds: “I am dreading it. But not because of Eubanks. Because of those pranks! I might be more nervous walking into that room than I did walking out in front of 100,000 people at Wembley Stadium.”
Channel 4 insisted no complaints were made about Chris’s behaviour. A spokesman added: “It’s untrue to suggest anyone was asked to leave because they were smoking. Smoking was strictly prohibited. There were alarms throughout the building. Celebs remained in the bunker, filmed 24 hours a day, by over 50 cameras.”
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