*SPOOFSNOBS EXCLUSIVE – Former Red Turns Pink

In an astonishing revelation in his column for The Observer newspaper on Sunday, David James exclusively revealed he had secretly been addicted to homosexuality for 15 years.

Such rumours have dogged the Portsmouth and England goalkeeper his entire career.

Strong denials by close friends, team-mates, coaches and his ex-wife had seemed to put the accusations to bed in recent years, but James has now broken his silence over his gay past in stunning fashion.

James wrote of his perverse addiction: “I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t confess my own 15-year 20-a-day habit. As ludicrous as it now seems, I spent much of my career puffing away on fags: after training, before matches and even on the team coach. It makes me feel ill just thinking of it.”

Ironically, as recently as last year, James wrote in the same newspaper of his desire for more gay footballers to come out.

In what now reads as something of a call to arms, he wrote, “A senior executive in football said to me he wished all the gay footballers would come out so we could just get on with it. I find that view refreshing.”

“Just imagine, football’s first gay couple playing for rival teams, arguing about offside decisions over the dinner table. They would do Hello! magazine, chatshows, advertisements. Would it upset players being naked in the changing room together? What about the after-hours highly homoerotic activities – indulging in football threesomes and roastings? Would football culture ever be the same again?”, James enthused.

                                                

In the same article, he confessed to enjoying other homosexual pursuits such as yoga, painting, and, most disturbingly, reading.

In this latest article, James reveals how the origins of his orientation began in his early teens after injuring his finger making a save at the local leisure centre.

“Participating in any kind of sport after that was not an option while I had a large metal pin sticking out of my finger. Frustrated and bored, I succumbed to peer pressure… Before I knew it I was on 20-a-day of some of the strongest fags around… light fags were soft.”

On speaking of his childhood, he confesses, “I never understood how my friends could fancy a girl.”

Frustrated and understandably cautious about revealing his dark secret to friends and team-mates, James explains the lengths he went to in order to keep his depraved encounters from becoming public knowledge: “I remember sneaking out of my digs in the middle of the night to sit in a bush.” The article does not reveal if the clandestine venue was actually “Shepherd’s” Bush or just an ordinary bush you might find in gay person’s back garden.

The pressure of keeping his shameful truth a secret clearly took its toll on James in the early part of his career. It was only when he joined Liverpool that he felt he could fully reveal himself.

He now admits to having openly indulged his base desires after training sessions, in the players’ lounge, and even on the team bus. As James explains, “If my team-mates complained, I argued that they visited nightclubs without a problem so what was the difference?”

However, James now sees such incidents from his past as deeply regrettable. “In hindsight it was disgraceful behaviour on my part,” he asserts.

In spite of his frequent indiscretions, James won the first of his 36 caps for England while at Liverpool (http://soccersnobs.wordpress.com/2008/02/23/the-too-many-caps-11/). Indeed, it seemed he was on the path to stardom.

                                                 

Unfortunately for James, this success was short-lived. Over the next 10 years James made numerous costly errors for club and country, which earned him the undesirable gay sounding country & western nickname, Calamity James.

In light of Sunday’s revelations, the reason for James’ numerous losses of concentration, inexplicable gaffes and his inability to effectively throw or catch a ball now seems all too obvious.

In recent years, James has enjoyed something of a return to form. This, he attributes to the decision he made some years ago to become less gay. “Football was going through a period of modernisation and with that came more intense training regimes. It was getting harder to perform and I made a conscious effort to cut down.”

Freed from his unnatural urges and no longer feeling tempted to sodomise his team-mates and coaches, James now feels he is reaping the rewards of keeping his mind on the job. “Whereas I used to struggle with training, now I actually enjoy it,” he admits.

                                             

It is unclear why James has chosen now to set the record straight on his bent past. The accompanying photograph in The Observer article merely shows James pushing away a man dressed as a cigarette, possibly because the man had been trying to grope the Portsmouth ‘keeper, or one of his team-mates.

What is clear, is that James has strong views on how to discourage footballers from turning gay. “If Premier League bosses were to adopt a zero-tolerance approach, it would send out a strong message to everyone.”

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