A heartwarming walk with Paul Merson as he trades in booze for birdsong
Telegraph Reporters
2 min read
The footballer Paul Merson has never, in his 54 years, been for a walk in the countryside. At one stage – during the time he spent playing for Middlesbrough – Merson actually lived in the countryside. But he didn’t notice it, let alone enjoy the fresh air. Mind you, he was living with Paul Gascoigne at the time. “We played football, trained, went home, got drunk – the only time we ever walked was probably to the pub,” Merson said.
Paul Merson: A Walk Through My Life (BBC Two) changed that. It was an extended version of last year’s meditative BBC Four series Winter Walks, which sent household names into the great outdoors and asked them to document their journey by talking to a camera on the end of a selfie stick.
Walking across the North Yorkshire Moors, Merson marvelled at the peace and quiet and the fact that people had time to stop and chat. Not that they always said the most tactful thing. Merson bumped into a couple who recognised him, but weren’t aware that he is a recovering alcoholic. They directed him to a pub. “I walk past pubs now, I don’t walk into pubs any more,” Merson explained.
The programme was more therapy session than nature show. Merson talked candidly and sometimes tearfully about his addictions to alcohol and gambling. There was a lot of self-analysis, and evidence that he is still plagued by anxiety: about being an older father, or feeling that he has taken his wife for granted. But Merson also did his best to sound optimistic. He was walking before 8am; in his old life, he noted ruefully, he’d just have been getting in from an all-nighter. Now, he listened to the birdsong and loved it; in the bad old days he “wanted to throw a brick at the tree, to be honest, just to make them fly away”.
Perhaps because it was stretched to an hour, the programme felt more studied than Winter Walks. Did a bagpiper just happen to be practising in his garden at the moment Merson walked through the village? But it was good to see Merson appreciating life, after many dark days. “Thank God,” he said, “I’m still here and I can enjoy this.”
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