Peter Shilton interview: ‘Gary Lineker and I are good friends. You should be able to disagree’

Our interview is well into its second hour when Peter Shilton, England’s all-time record appearance holder, springs up off the sofa and begins energetically darting up and down the carpet as he speaks.

“You’ve got to move around the goal as if you are skating on ice… like Muhammad Ali… not just jumping up and down,” says the now 74-year-old Shilton, bending his knees to rock forward, before rotating to his left and right to illustrate techniques upon which a 1,387-game career was founded.

It is more senior matches than anyone in football history and, as he continues describing the intricacies of his old routines, you are reminded that sporting greatness invariably rests upon an obsessive quest for perfection.

“I trained every hour I could from the age of seven, taking bits from the top goalkeepers, but one big influence was a guy called Len Heppell – a self-taught ballroom dancer and golfer who was brilliant on movement and body positions,” says Shilton, now demonstrating how to stay compact and low for one-on-ones.

The slight commotion prompts a raised ear from dog Charlie and a tweet from budgerigar Tilly before being followed by the voice of Shilton’s wife, Steph: “Pete, can you put the kettle on? And come outside.”

Steph has been staking out the best potential picture locations with the Telegraph’s photographer and the Shiltons duly show us around their immaculate garden, pointing out more than 20 rose bushes they received for their wedding, before cuddling up together on the bench. It is blissfully quiet and, with their bungalow just a short walk from West Mersea beach – an island in Essex with only one road in and out – daily walks by the sea with Charlie and a flask of coffee are a cherished routine. “I could be sitting here with a £2 million mansion but I don’t think I’d be any happier,” says Shilton, somewhat wistfully, before declaring that he has never felt more content.

The reason is sat next to him and, while finally confronting a gambling addiction that has cost north of £1 million was at times torturously difficult, the rewards have been incalculable. “I say, ‘Climb the mountain together, hand in hand, and when you get to the top, the view is great’,” says Steph.

Shilton nods and gazes almost doe-eyed at Steph before they come back into the lounge and recount how “fate” brought them together one evening in Colchester almost 12 years ago. Steph, an NHS manager and part-time jazz singer, was on a spa weekend with three friends. Shilton, who was living alone in the Midlands after separating from his first wife Sue, was speaking at a dinner in the same country club which was also hosting a jazz festival.

A chance meeting in a crowded lift was later followed by an impromptu drink in the bar before Steph’s friends implored Shilton to lift her down from what was an elevated stage once she had finished performing.

“I thought, ‘Who’s this man of mystery’,” says Steph, who had no idea about Shilton’s wider fame. “I said, ‘Are you one of the musicians?’ He said, ‘No I’m here speaking’. I thought, ‘How dull. He’s taking the mickey. No one speaks about football’.”

It was at this point that Shilton could finally feel grateful for Diego Maradona’s infamous ‘Hand of God’. Steph had asked what was inside Shilton’s holdall and so he produced a pile of photographs that included the moment when Maradona punched Argentina into the 1986 World Cup semi-final. “I just remember saying to him, ‘Look at your thighs!’” says Steph, giggling. “They were the best looking thighs I’d ever seen. I thought, ‘I’m definitely seeing this guy again!’

“We had this sense of humour together and just clicked. He was very interested in my career in the NHS.”

Shilton was only staying at the hotel because he was opening a nearby Corals betting shop the next day but fate would intervene again the following morning when there was a third chance encounter, this time at reception. Shilton did ask for Steph’s telephone number and they began dating. “I phoned my dad up and said, ‘I met this really lovely man last night and he used to play football. I think he was a goalkeeper called Peter’. My dad said, ‘That sounds like Peter Bonetti’.”

Indeed, it was not until an invite to Wembley several months later to watch England play Brazil – when Steph found herself dining with Sir Bobby and Lady Norma Charlton before noticing a giant picture of Shilton in the players’ tunnel – that she began to realise the scale of his past career.

Further trips to Wembley have included audiences with Boris Johnson, who simply bellowed the words “PETER SHILTON!!” through the room by way of a greeting, and the current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who regards him as a hero for his stint at Southampton.

“He completely underplayed it – and I didn’t have an iPhone or computer when we first met – so I wasn’t searching his name or anything,” says Steph.

As they grew closer, however, Steph sensed “a sadness” in Shilton’s eyes as well as some unsettling behaviour. She eventually borrowed his phone and discovered that the number he kept calling was a gambling company. “I would wake in the night, look down stairs, and see he was gambling on races in Australia,” she says. “He had what looked like a betting terminal on his laptop. I was like, ‘Whoa, this is not good’.”

She concluded that ultimatums would fail and so a game of “cat and mouse” ensued.

“I liken it to heroin when I’ve seen addicts,” she says. “The high they can get from gambling, and the win, is massive. It was like there was another woman. I was in big competition with Betfair and I thought, ‘There is no way I’m losing him to the bookie’. He’s such a fantastic person, and he’s achieved so much in his life, he didn’t deserve to be in its grasp.

“I felt like he was in this tower and it was, ‘How can I bash through?’ I said, ‘You’re ill Pete but, when you want to talk, I’m here’.”

The turning point would arrive in 2015 after yet another costly weekend and Shilton found himself calling an agent to request an advance on a future appearance.

“When I looked around, Steph was there,” he says. “Something in me, which had been building up, said, ‘What are you doing at your age? You’ve had 40 years to win. You’re an addict. I’ve finished with it’. I knew I loved Steph. I didn’t want to lose her.”

Steph says that it was “one of the greatest moments of my life” but it was initially still a question of getting through each day and managing the withdrawal symptoms. “We didn’t run off into the sunset – it was remapping his whole life,” she says.

Shilton is unsure how his gambling addiction started and, while a betting culture remains dangerously embedded across many sports, he is adamant that it never impacted upon his football. “It was another world – a release,” he says, recalling a passion that began by firing balls off the wall of his father’s greengrocer’s shop and then even hanging off the inside bannister in an attempt to lengthen his arms.

At exactly 6ft, Shilton was small by modern goalkeeping standards but, with his square shoulders, giant hands and thick neck, there was a presence that filled the goal. Mick Channon, his old England team-mate, still recalls shooting practice from outside the area and how “no one ever scored” past Shilton. Or, if you were one-on-one, the thoughts of most strikers could be summed up in two words: “Oh s---.”

Shilton says that he was “fanatical” and, by the age of 10, he was being invited by the Leicester coach George Dewis to train two evenings a week on either the stadium car-park or the club’s tiny gymnasium.

It was there that Gordon Banks first set eyes on Shilton and, having seen how he would bounce up off the concrete floor “like a rubber ball”, knew that his first-team place would soon be in danger. Shilton, in turn, stood behind the goal to watch Banks train during school holidays, and made his first-team debut aged 16 just a few months before the 1966 World Cup finals.

Banks was sold the following year and Shilton’s Leicester reached the 1969 FA Cup final before a 20-year international career started in 1970 in a team still captained by Bobby Moore and managed by Sir Alf Ramsey.

“You didn’t cross Alf,” says Shilton. “He was approachable but not the sort of person you got to know: he had an aura and an authority.”

Bobby Charlton, recalls Shilton, would perfect his trademark rising finishes by shooting with either foot against a wall which had a line that would ensure he combined power from distance with keeping the trajectory low.

Shilton moved to Nottingham Forest in 1977 and, having been seen by Brian Clough as the decisive missing ingredient, duly won the league title, two European Cups, the League Cup and the European Super Cup in his first three seasons. Man-management, says Shilton, was Clough’s genius, remembering how he would employ subtle but highly individualised mind games. Kenny Burns, for example, would be addressed as “Kenneth” in a show of respect that was designed to discourage ill-discipline.

Clough would sometimes also make a point of moving Shilton’s meticulously laid out kit at 2pm on a Saturday before towelling down in his goalkeeper’s space after playing squash. “He was basically saying ‘I’m the manager’,” says Shilton, who looks briefly emotional as he then recalls visiting Clough at his home many years later after hearing that his health had faltered. “I think he was quite taken aback,” he says. “Brian was magical – a very special man.”

Memories of Bobby Robson managing England prompt another smile. “I remember him laying the ball off for shooting practice and them eventually all rolling down a big dip behind the goal,” he says. “But, rather than tell the players to get them, Bobby went flying down and was booting them all back up the hill. He was that into it – like a little kid.”

Talk of Robson leads inevitably to Shilton’s World Cup experiences, where he still jointly holds the all-time finals record for clean sheets. The lowest moment, he says, was England’s failure to qualify in 1974 and he remains absolutely adamant that he would have cleared the ball had Maradona not cheated in 1986.

Of the “gut-wrenching” World Cup semi-final defeat on penalties in 1990 against West Germany, Shilton says: “I used to think the pressure was on the penalty taker – I’d wait and then go in case they went down the middle because it has to go right in the corner to beat you. I only faced four penalties – we missed two.”

Social media is hardly a sound guide to the temperature of the nation but it can be strange still now to see some of the reactions to Shilton, as if a monumental career that included some 66 clean sheets in those 125 internationals should somehow be defined by a few utterly freakish moments.

It has not stopped him from sharing his opinions and, as well as advocating Brexit, he has been willing to stray into other controversial debates. For example when Kevin Keegan said recently that he preferred men to commentate on England men’s games, Shilton (an avid fan of both senior national teams) admitted that he could “see what Kevin was getting at” in terms of men’s and women’s football not being an identical experience.

Or when Liverpool fans booed the national anthem ahead of the King’s Coronation and Shilton’s condemnation provoked a threat to break his neck in a message that was left on Steph’s answerphone. There has since been a criminal conviction.

“I’ve seen a lot of changes from the 1960s and 1970s,” says Shilton. “I obviously have my opinion about things and sometimes you feel, ‘I want to say something’. I think sometimes people don’t realise what Covid did in terms of the country and the money it cost the Government… as well as obviously the fuel crisis through the war in Ukraine. The country’s had to fork out billions.

“There’s a good side [to social media] but some people are unbelievable. The one recently… I basically said that I used to love playing at Liverpool and the fans were very sporting because they used to applaud the goalkeeper coming down and would be quite witty with some of the chants.

‘Lineker and me are good friends. You should be able to disagree on things’

“I said about how great the fans were but that I don’t think you should boo the national anthem. As a player, before a game, you were so proud. It’s our country. People have died in wars.

“The next day this fella phoned up Steph. It was a bit frightening. It was not as if he was out with his mates having a few drinks and thought, ‘I’ll phone Shilton up’. He’d had a chance to think. I don’t know what goes through the brains of some people. They feel as though they can say anything.”

On the subject of respectful debate, Shilton points out that Gary Lineker, who was very much on the opposite end of the Brexit question, wrote the foreword for their recent book, Saved. “We’re good friends. You should be able to disagree on things. We roomed together and he’s backed me on the gambling.”

Shilton and Steph now want to use their experiences to bring hope to other addicts and further change to the laws. They have been contacted by people who were contemplating suicide before hearing their story and have been amazed to find themselves being consulted by Government on the gambling White Paper and in demand internationally to speak on the subject.

“We’ve still got a long way to go – the regulator must seriously look at the advertising – it’s just saturated,” says Shilton, who likens the situation to how Formula One became synonymous with tobacco. He constantly emphasises the need to protect young people and highlights research last month by 5 News showing that fans were bombarded with 11,000 gambling messages during the opening weekend of the Premier League season.

There are also decidedly mixed feelings about the announcement by Premier League clubs to outlaw front of shirt gambling sponsorship from 2026-27 but still allow it on other parts of the kit and inside the stadium.

“As for doing a shirt ban, and putting it [advertising] on the [shirt] sleeves, it’s just taking the P to be honest,” says Steph. “It was a real kick in the guts. I’m really pleased the White Paper has come and ecstatic that there is the [gambling] levy. The next piece is to try and get the affected others recognised because sometimes we are the antidote for the gambling addiction.”

Shilton nods: “Helping the people around the addict is helping the addict enormously. I want people to know that you can stop. I was in denial. As soon as I stopped, I realise I had wasted so much time. I’m far more relaxed, I’ve got peace of mind, and I feel as though I’ve never been happier.”

Advice and support for a gambling addiction can be found at: https://gordonmoody.org.uk