used to poo in the England football team’s communal bath, according to ex-team mate . Yes, you heard that right.
The Match of the Day presenter, 63, divulged more than one poo story today while talking to on his first and only – .
Of course, the natural first (and only) guest on such a pooed-cast is top tier pooper himself Gary, who made history when he soiled himself on live television in the first round of the 1990 against Ireland.
The Tottenham player was on the pitch, when he ‘slid’ and ‘relaxed’ his bowels having had a dodgy tummy all day, and a poo with the consistency of ‘shepherds pie’ deposited into his shorts. But more on that later.
One of the many incredible moments of the episode saw Gary recalling how Paul Gascoigne – aka, Gazza – used to actually poo in their, wait for it, communal bath after matches.
After retelling his own poo tale, Joe asked Gary whether any of his teammates suffered similar accidents.
‘Not accidentally,’ the BBC presenter replied with a laugh. ‘Gazza used to let one go in the big communal bath occasionally.’
I’m sorry… What?
‘Sorry, communal bath?’ asked Joe, first dealing with this bombshell, before the smelly one.
‘It’s not a thing anymore, but can you believe that’s how it used to be in sport?’ said Gary, explaining: ‘At the end of the game you would be covered in mud and whatever else, and you’d all jump in a bath together.’
‘How big a bath is this?’ Joe pressed.
‘They vary,’ Gary replied. ‘Usually I would say the communal one would be like a big hot tub.’
The footballer-turned-pundit added: ‘There was no bubbles except when people farted obviously.’
‘Or when Gazza s**t himself,’ added Joe.
‘Well, yeah. It did happen on a couple of occasions, he’d do it for a laugh. You’ve never seen baths evacuated as quickly,’ laughed Gary.
Joe then focused in on the real shock.
‘Sorry, but I like a joke as much as the next person, but I’ve never sh*t myself in a bath with other…’ he began.
‘No, well, Gaza always found it difficult to know where the line was. He was genuinely very funny on other occasions,’ Gary replied. ‘He never lacked confidence to do a joke.’
Clearly!
Although Gary said he could ‘not’ do that to his teammates – or himself – like Gazza could, he did go into heavy, refreshingly unashamed detail about the World Cup moment which lingers on his Google search results.
The TV presenter admitted he has to to mute the word ‘s*it’ on his X page, because that’s everyone’s go-to insult for him – to bring up that time he pooed himself on national television 30 years ago.
‘The night before the game I started to feel a little but unwell. I was up half the night with diarrhea,’ Gary explained, saying he was unsure of the cause (though it’s been long-rumoured it was some bad spaghetti bolognaise).
Gary explained how he didn’t say anything about his turbulent insides to coach Bobby Robson, for fear of being benched.
He scored after eight minutes, but at the end of the first half started to cramp up; while his half-time loo stop helped, it was not enough for his angry bowels.
Mid-slip, Gary revealed how he pooed himself as he ‘relaxed’ for just a second.
‘So it was a world cup game and I’d just had a shit in the middle of the pitch,’ he recalled, wryly.
While his teammates and family knew, it took ten years for Gary to tell his poo story to the world. He bravely did so when asked by Radio 5 live about the long-held rumour he’d had an accident that fateful day.
‘Eventually they found the coverage. You can’t see any sh*t but you can see me rubbing my backside on the floor like a dog, and shovelling it out my pants,’ Gary said.
‘There’s another bit I always remember, because Gary Stevens who was playing right back came up to me and went, “Are you okay?” and if you really look close you can see me saying, “I sh*t myself!*.
He then had two bits of good fortune: no one wanted to get close to him for the rest of the game, and it had rained beforehand so it all mushed into a muddy, pooey mess.
There were no clumps or separate large lumps, Gary recalled after some consistency-related probing from Joe. It was, ‘a full on sludge’ Gary could only compare to ‘shepherd’s pie’
Gary also thinks he might have pooed with his feet in the air. That’s some big claim.
But one thing’s for sure, the quantity of excrement was not modest.
‘It felt like a lot. I was shovelling it up my shorts,’ Gary said ‘It was just like mush. Like shepherd’s pie.’
In the third poo story of the 25-minute podcast episode, Joe revealed he’d recently pooed into his pyjamas during a particularly nasty tummy bug while at home on his own.
‘My pyjamas absorbed the immediate blast,’ he assured concerned listeners.
Turdcast is – sadly – only fated for one episode, after Joe announced it last year in a big stunt to draw attention to the state of the UK’s sewage system.
Joe’s documentary airs on Tuesday 20 February on Channel 4 at 9pm.
