He got Dad to roll up his trouser leg as well. Arnie looked at me and looked at the bump on my leg I was worried about. He fixed us up to go down and see the chief scout, a guy named Arnie Warren who passed on a couple of years ago now. Anyway, I had a cousin – Steve MacKenzie – who was a player at Crystal Palace. I can see it now but didn’t then: I was worried about Dad, scared of what was going to happen. I was already playing football but, for six months afterwards, I walked with a limp. My dad had his first heart attack when I was about ten.

The effect we have on our children can be mysterious poignant even. My parents had their own issues, obviously, and I inherited an addictive personality from them. I know the charity is about the children of alcoholics but, for me, addictions come in all sorts of flavours: drink, drugs, betting and the rest.

Mum was indoors all the time, cooking food. He used to come home with everything pent up inside him. They weren’t alcoholics but they were both addictive personalities and so my story starts with them. She overate constantly, blood pressure off the scale, and eventually died of bone cancer. He was scared of the anger inside himself. You could have called him a rage-aholic, I suppose. He kept everything buttoned in, all his feelings. My father was a smoker, died of lung cancer. To tell my story, I have to talk about Mum and Dad. My parents weren’t alcoholics but I became one. Founder of Sporting Chance Clinic, former Arsenal and England footballer

Addicted by tony adams