The Sunday Times June 5, 2022 9C
larke Carlisle was an impos-
ing centre half who at times
conveyed an aura not dis-
similar to that of Liverpool’s
Virgil van Dijk, but he was
inconsistent. The reason
why is staggering.
“There was a period in
my career when big black centre
forwards intimidated me because
they were my dad,” he says. “Psycho-
logically I’d go into the game thinking:
‘I’m going to get battered today, this
guy is going to beat me up.’ ”
Would the statistics bear that out,
would they reveal that Carlisle won
more tackles and made more clearan-
ces when he faced a white striker?
“I’m inclined to say yes,” he says. “I
remember playing against Geoff Hors-
field, one of the biggest guys I’d ever
played against, and I was only a slip of
a kid and I beat him up — and in the
next game I come up against Leo
Fortune-West and he battered me
every which way. Psychologically I
was at a disadvantage. I hated playing
against Jason Roberts, he’s not even
tall but, to me, he epitomised a black
man — the way he talked, the way
he held himself. Whereas I was a
charlatan.”
There is a good deal to unpick here.
Carlisle is in therapy, which is helping
him to analyse what led to his depres-
sion and five attempts — he remem-
bers four of them — to take his own
life. The impact of his relationship
with his father, Mervyn, who died
aged 61 four months ago, is pivotal.
An example. Carrie, Carlisle’s wife,
is heavy footed and when he hears her
upstairs, he suffers a visceral reaction
“but through therapy I realise it’s not
Carrie upstairs, it’s my dad. Is he
coming down? Have I been good?”
Mervyn, a semi-professional player
who went back to college in the hope
of getting a job in IT, placed emphasis
on discipline. “Corporal punishment
was standard procedure,” Carlisle
says.
“I wet the bed until I was 17. Dad
had been the disciplinarian and Mum
offered the love, but every morning I
pissed her off by wetting the bed. My
desire to achieve academically and
behaviourally was to redeem myself
for my mum. I had to come back with
100 per cent in this or a certificate for
that to try and redeem myself.
“That cycle of success and failure
and redemption is what I lived in.
There was never a middle ground. I
could never just be OK. If things were
OK and I didn’t see any means for suc-
cess I might contrive a failure so I can
then redeem myself.”
For the last five years of Mervyn’s
life they enjoyed an “incredible rela-
tionship”. This shift came when Carl-
isle’s father visited him in a Blackburn
psychiatric hospital after Carlisle had
gone missing in September 2017.
“I know there is nothing unsaid
between us and that’s incredible
when you think of the culture and the
dynamic I grew up in. He told me he
loved me unconditionally. It was the
first time I had heard it and it broke
the dam. I always thought I had to
earn his respect and affection and
pride. Everything was success or fail-
ure. Had I done enough?
“He had been a real disciplinarian
and there had been a shadow of fear,ALYSON
RUDD‘I was never
black enough
for the family.
I felt like a
charlatan’
Carlisle is now
a corporate
speaker and
mental health
consultantClarke Carlisle opens up about his father, therapy
and the depression that led to five suicide attempts
so it was about re-establishing the
boundaries. ‘I never wanted you to be
afraid of me, son,’ he told me.”
Carlisle, 42, had a borderline per-
sonality disorder diagnosed after he
was found, looking for “a responsible
way to die”, in Liverpool and this led
to appropriate therapy and medica-
tion that in turn made sure he was
able to cope with his father’s death.
“My dad is the greatest human I’ve
known. When he passed, it was hor-
rendous but not dangerous for me,”he says. “That is a mark of progress.”
Feeling like a charlatan contributed
to his depression.
“I am 50 per cent white and 50 per
cent black,” he says. “Growing up, in a
predominantly Caucasian commu-
nity, it was beat into us about man-
ners, respect, Queen’s English and, in
doing so, when we came back to the
family in the centre of Preston, we
don’t speak like the black side of the
family. Then we go to the white side of
the family in Henley-upon-Thames...we definitely don’t look like anyone in
Lower Shiplake. I was never black
enough for the family or the commu-
nity. In Henley, you might ask for
something and be told: ‘You’re well-
spoken, aren’t you?’
“Going into football was a compli-
cating factor. It was compounded by
doing an interview and being told
you’re well-spoken and thinking;
‘What, for a footballer? For a black
person or for a black footballer?’ ”
He started to exploit his “surprise
factor”. He got the tattoos, the Louis
Vuitton washbag, all the accoutre-
ments of a well-paid footballer but also
went to the other extreme by being
philosophical when interviewed.
“It would smack people in the face,
I enjoyed that,” he says. “It’s only now
I feel a kind of shame about it because
I was gaslighting subconscious
racism. There’s a lot of conflict in me
at the moment about my identity. It’s a
death by a thousand thoughts.”
We are chatting in a quiet pub next
to Newcastle railway station.
“Walking in here today, it’s a con-
sideration of mine of how we look,” he
says. “Are people wondering if she’s
OK? If I’m running, I have to look like
I’m running for reasons of running.”
Carlisle was frequently stopped by
the police when working for ITV as a
pundit and asked about the “nice car”
he was driving on his way home from
London. Dressed smartly in a three-
piece suit in the lobby of a London
hotel in preparation to receive a Mind
Media Award in 2018, he was asked by
another guest to load some luggage.
More recently he visited a store to
buy doors for the large house he isbuilding in a village near Newcastle
and was told he should go to Ikea if he
wanted run-of-the mill doors.
“What is it about me that makes
you presume that I need run-of-the-
mill doors,” he says. “Why should I
have to justify my ability to buy doors?
“I don’t want to be tolerated in my
home town, or my kids to be toler-
ated,” he says, but how can he know if
he is being tolerated or embraced?
“You can’t know and that’s what
makes it insidious, the doubt and para-
noia creep in,” he says. “How far do
you question everyone else’s inten-
tions while at the same time having
accountability for your own actions?
But then you look at someone like my
dad with 97 job interviews in two years
and never a job, how much self-reflec-
tion and progress can he make?”
Carlisle struggles with timelines —
“there are parts of my life that are
almost missing” — and does not, for
example, remember anything at all
about his season with Leeds United. In
2014 he stepped in front of a lorry on
the A64 and somehow survived. Three
years later he was reported missing
and recalls the time he wandered
around Liverpool as if through a mist.
“I knew I had depression, I knew I’d
tried to kill myself before,” he says. “I
realised that was having an impact on
other people, not least the truck
driver, my family, children, so I’m
wandering around thinking, ‘How
would they want to find me dead,
where will there be few or no wit-
nesses, where might nobody find me?
If I was a first responder, what’s a
responsible way to find a dead per-
son?’ It’s a totally warped compass. I
wasn’t in any therapy and not in com-
munication with my wife or family
about suicide. I was talking only about
depression. I was a different person.”
A stranger, whom Carlisle’s family
call a “Scouse angel”, urged him to
call his loved ones and the next phase
of Carlisle’s life opened. He describes
himself as a corporate speaker and
mental health consultant. “Football is
what I did once, it’s not who I am.”
He still cares about the game and
was among the experts appointed by
Tracey Crouch for the fan-led review
that recommended an independent
regulator. He says he found the expe-
rience “enlightening” but that it was
frustrating that the Newcastle United
takeover by a Saudi-led consortium
was approved once their fact-finding
had ended.
“It blew up on the [panel’s]
WhatsApp group,” he says. “The tim-
ing was incredible. What is it the estab-
lishment has against transparency and
communication? All this obfuscation is
just horrible. In football, success and
money can make a whole community
turn a blind eye to many things.”
I wonder if the therapy and medica-
tion obscure the real Carlisle. Is he the
version of himself that the medical
profession wants him to be?
He ponders this for a long time and
concludes that his medication allows
him to “be the best version of me, it
enables me to be who I am”.
To contact the Samaritans about
issues raised in this piece call 116 123‘There was a period
when big, black
centre forwards
intimidated me
because they
were my dad’CHARLIE HEDLEY