Gazza’s pal drove 7 hours to get mug as star couldn’t sleep when it ‘lost mates’

Paul Gascoigne once made his mate drive seven hours to retrieve a missing mug from a teammate's house – because he couldn't sleep knowing it had "lost its mates".

Gazza apparently told his best pal, Jimmy 'Five Bellies, Gardner, to make the 400-mile round trip from the North East to Birmingham, in the dead of night.

He had been on his way to bed when he spotted a coffee cups was missing from the mug tree in his kitchen, at his home in Seaham, County Durham.

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When Jimmy realised Gazza's Middlesbrough teammate and housemate Andy Townsend had taken it to his family home, he was given the job.

Boro manager Bryan Robson had tasked "sensible" Townsend with keeping Gazza in check by living with him.

Gazza, Townsend and Jimmy had a routine where they'd each arrive at training with a mug of coffee brought from home.

But when Townsend was unexpectedly told he could head back to the Midlands after training one Monday, the knock-on effect played hell with Gazza's well-documented Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

Speaking on the Undr The Cosh podcast, Craig Hignett, who played with them at Boro in the late 1990s, said Gazza was thrown when he noticed a mug was missing.

He said: "About half 10 at night, Gazza goes to Jimmy, ‘I’m going to bed’. So he gets up and he goes in the kitchen and he looks at the coffee mug tree, and there’s only five coffee mugs on there – there should be six.

"He comes back out and he says to Jimmy, ‘Why are there only five coffee mugs on the coffee tree? There should be six coffee mugs. I can’t go to bed knowing one’s lost a mate. His OCD.

"He turns the place upside down, they can’t find it. Jimmy goes, ‘I know what it is. Andy’s got it in his bag. He’s gone home, he’s got it in his bag’. Gazza went, ‘Ok, go and get it then’.

"Jimmy said, ‘Well, he lives in Birmingham. We’re in Seaham. It’s three hours to Birmingham’. He said, ‘Yeah, I can’t go to bed knowing there’s a coffee mug out there without its mates. Go and get it'."

According to Google Maps, it takes roughly three-and-a-half hours to drive the 195 miles from Seaham to Birmingham.

Hignett continued: "So Jimmy drives three hours to Andy Townsend’s house. It’s the middle of the night. Andy’s lying in bed, the doorbell goes. He’s got electric gates so his missus has woken him up. ‘Someone at the door, Andy’.

He’s like, ‘It’s half two, why’s there someone at the door?’ Anyway, he gets up, boxer shorts, baseball bat. Looks through, p***ing rain and Jimmy’s stood there, soaking wet through.

"Andy opens the door, he says, ‘What the f*** do you want?’ Jimmy said, ‘Well Gazza wants his coffee cup back. He’s not going to bed until he gets the coffee cup’. He said, ‘You taking the p***?’ He said, ‘No’.

"He goes in, gets this coffee cup and gives it to Jimmy. Jimmy goes back out, drives another three hours, gets back about half four, five. Gazza’s still up watching the telly. ‘Have you got it, yeah? Put it back’.

"He goes and checks it then goes to bed. Couldn’t go to bed unless it was there."

Gazza, whose previous clubs included Newcastle, Tottenham, Lazio and Rangers, went on to play for Everton, Burnley, Gansu Tianma in China and Boston United before retiring in 2004.

Since then, he's had a well-documented battle with alcoholism and also suffered mental health issues.

He's reportedly signed up for a new Channel 4 show, Scared of the Dark, in which celebrities will be denied daylight for a number of days on end at a time as part of a challenge.

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