Arsenal icon Paul Merson is battling to keep his place in Strictly Come Dancing as the beloved TV contest returned another weekend of glitz and glamour.
The ex-England star just scraped through Week 3, facing off with Toyah Willcox in a nerve-wracking dance-off but was ultimately saved by the panel, resulting in the 80s icon's departure. Despite the pressure, Merson is seizing the moment, embracing a new challenge, an impressive feat considering his history of personal demons.
The football pundit has openly discussed his past battles with gambling, booze, and drug abuse and now aims to be a beacon of hope through his stint on the BBC programme. "Being an addict and a recovering alcoholic myself... to show people watching this show who have got addictions, that you can go out and do something like this... is so important," he declared.
"Because addiction takes you away from everything. That's all it ever does. It wants you on your own.", reports Wales Online. Embarking on the Strictly journey, Merson reflects: "Now I'm going in front of millions of people doing something I'm not very good at. I used to think, 'I can't do things like that' but now I've got the opportunity to try."
Merson's struggle with addiction, particularly with gambling and alcohol, is no secret, and amidst the public eye, he has pushed for changes within the gambling sector, a habit that admittedly cost him a staggering £7 million over thirty years. He's now been barred from all betting firms, and his earnings, including the six-figure sum he'll pocket from his Strictly stint, are now directly transferred to his wife Kate in an effort to prevent him from squandering them on gambling.
He confessed that his gambling issues had him contemplating suicide "every day", revealing to talkSPORT that he only ever felt relief when he "had nothing left". "When I got to zero I was like, 'I don't have to do this any more'," he expressed. "How mad is that? I was playing at Aston Villa playing away at Charlton. No one ever shared a room with me because I was gambling and never slept in the afternoon and I wanted to break my fingers so I couldn't pick the phone up - that's how bad the compulsion was."
In another frank disclosure, he also admitted that his struggles persisted during the Covid-19 lockdowns, as he gambled away a £160,000 deposit for a family home on table tennis bets. Earlier this year, a proud Merson announced that he has been clean and sober from alcohol and drugs for five years, having also battled with those addictions during his career. In 1994, he confessed at a press conference that he was addicted to cocaine, leading the FA to intervene and send him to rehab.
Penning his thoughts in the Mail, he remembered how he would take drugs before training while his addiction also led him to give away club merchandise to pay off escalating debts. He candidly opened up in his book, revealing: "I started going to an all-night pub in Smithfield Market. Drinking on my own and snorting in the toilets," adding, "I'd hail a black cab at 8am to take me up to training and even have a couple of big hits sitting in the back."
Merson didn't hold back as he described the darker times: "I had bookies chasing me, dealers chasing me. I settled one cocaine debt by handing over my Arsenal blazer and reporting it stolen. Paranoia took over." After an illustrious playing career featuring stints with the Gunners, England, Middlesbrough, Aston Villa, and Portsmouth, Merson is now enjoying life with a net worth estimated to be around £12 million.
Love is in the air for the former footballer, who marked eight blissful years of marriage with his wife Kate this summer, and together they are proud parents to son Freddie and two daughters, Sienna and Sadie. Previously, Merson was hitched to his childhood love Lorraine Costin, with whom he fathered three sons. Their bond came to a halt in 2001 after she unearthed the full scale of his gambling addiction.
His subsequent marriage to Louise Bache, mother to his twin girls Mollie and Maisie, also collapsed in 2013 amid his ongoing struggles with addiction. Showing a lighter side on the Strictly launch show, he quipped about his limited dance history: 'I've danced three times - they were all at my weddings!"
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