Botham: My Autobiography

If I drove a sports car I had to drive it faster than anyone else, as the men from Saab found out when I managed to write off two in the space of an afternoon’s sponsored racing at a cost of £24,000. When I decided to try and raise money for leukaemia research the only way to do it was to walk the length and breadth of the country (or over the Alps with some unenthusiastic elephants), and if I was drinking with mates, I had to drink them under the table as a matter of principle. I would do anything or try anything to show how big I was, and that included drugs.

I won’t go into details now because you will read more later, but, yes, of course I have overdone the booze in my time and smoked the odd joint. I may have been depressed, I may have been tempted to do it for kicks – and believe me, on the international cricket circuit during the years I played, there were a multitude of kicks to be had – but the fact is that I did so for no other reason than because they were there. I broke the law. I’m not proud of it and there were occasions when I could have gone seriously off the rails.

But when people ask me what I dislike most about myself, the answers are very simple and straightforward. It has taken me long enough to confront the facts, but I am not afraid to do so now. When it comes to getting myself into hot water, a lot of what you will have heard and read about me is absolute rubbish, but some of it is not. I have been a selfish bastard. At times I have also been aggressive, tyrannical, chauvinistic and hot-tempered.

My only plea in mitigation is that if I hadn’t been, none of what you are about to read would ever have taken place.

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