The Times Magazine 25

he 6ft 3in, 18st World Cup-winning

rugby player Steve Thompson,

famed for his brute force

and fearlessness on the pitch,

wept when he recorded the

audio version of his memoir,

Unforgettable. He was in the

middle of reading his own life

story. “The problem was, by the

time the words were coming out

of my mouth, they made no sense.” He laughs

now, something he does a lot – at least when

he’s not emotionally poleaxed by his diagnosis

of early onset dementia and suspected CTE

(chronic traumatic encephalopathy). Or as

Thompson, 43, calls it, “brain damage”.

“I laugh at it now but it was horrendous.

I was sat in this little soundproof booth

in tears. I could see the poor lad from the

publisher thinking, ‘What have we got here?’”

It was as though his brain was sabotaging

him. He’d be doing fine – then one word

would throw him. He managed to get through

his book in the end, by reducing the text to

one paragraph per page. Finally, the words

stopped dissolving in front of his eyes.

It’s 16 months since Thompson made

headlines with his diagnosis, caused, he believes,

by years of violent head collisions playing

rugby for Northampton, Brive and England, with

73 caps (“It was my job to have the shit knocked

out of me,” he says in the book). According to

Sir Clive Woodward, England’s World Cup-

winning coach, without Thompson’s throw-in,

Jonny Wilkinson would never have scored his

legendary extra-time drop goal in the World

Cup final in 2003. But his brain cells over his

career literally took a hammering.

We meet at his home in a Cheshire village

on a sunny spring morning. I had wondered

how Thompson would cope with a stranger

in the house, but today’s a good day. He

sprawls on his sofa, hugging a cushion to his

chest, much like he would have done a rugby

ball. A big friendly giant. His wife, Steph,

tiny in comparison, sits beside him. Every

so often she’ll give his huge bear head a

stroke, as if comforting a toddler. When a

word eludes her husband, she automatically

fills in the gaps – “Shed,” she says when

he vaguely points to a makeshift structure

in the garden – as though she can read his

brain-damaged mind. His children – Seren, 9,

Slone, 7, Saskia, 5, Saxon, 3 – have learnt to

second-guess him too.

Especially when he forgets their names.

Seren, the eldest: “You don’t know my

name, do you?”

Her dad: “Yeah, I do.” (Bluffing.)

Seren: “All right then, three guesses. If you

get it wrong you have to give me a fiver.”

Sometimes it’s the odd word that draws

a blank. (He’ll scrunch up his eyes and reach

for his phone. Google is a marvellous thing.)

Sometimes it’s everyday stuff. His vocabulary

has shrunk. He can be in the middle of

cooking a Sunday roast and then abruptly

forget how the hell to do it. The other day

Steph discovered just in time that he had left

a frying pan on the hob without switching

it off. He can be in the car driving on roads

he’s travelled hundreds of times and look up

with “not a Scooby” where he is. He describes

it as like someone switching off the mains.

“I’ll be honest, when he goes out I’m

terrified,” says Steph.

Other times it’s once-in-a-lifetime events.

He has no memory of winning the World Cup,

nor any part of the tournament in Australia.

When he watches the final on television, he

could be watching a stranger: “All I see is a fat

lad, round head, big arse... Knowing what I do

know now, I 100 per cent wish it had never

happened.” He cannot remember meeting

the Queen to accept his MBE, nor the victory

parade though London’s West End, nor

winning BBC Sports Team of the Year.

His memory is like an Etch A Sketch

drawing – there one moment, wiped out the

next. Increasingly, he has forgotten the very

moments that make us who we are and it’s

those – never mind the fans and the medals

• that hurt the most. He no longer recalls
  the births of his children. His wedding day
  in Las Vegas is beginning to fade.

T

HIS MEMORY IS LIKE

AN ETCH A SKETCH

DRAWING – THERE

ONE MOMENT, WIPED

OUT THE NEXT

In action in the 2003 final against Australia

Training just before the

tournament, with a cut

visible on his left eye

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