Les Ferdinand has revealed he did not laugh like his Newcastle United team-mates when Keith Gillespie lost £62,000 at the bookies because the pair's parents knew how hard it was 'to make a pound note'.
Gillespie gambled a year's salary in the space of just two days back in October, 1995. Phone betting had just come in and, with time to kill after training, Gillespie had taken to betting thousands of pounds on horse racing, the dogs and football matches.
After blowing £47,000 on a day he refers to as 'Black Friday', Gillespie sought to win back some of his money over the weekend but ended up a further £15,000 in the red.
To put that hit into perspective, Gillespie had never previously lost more than £10,000 in one day before.
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No one knew it at the time but Gillespie had a crippling gambling addiction and the Northern Ireland international had even bet on a game he played in for Newcastle against Stoke just a few days previously.
There was another reason why no one suspected anything was awry; such had been Gillespie's performances at the time, Kevin Keegan went as far as to say that 'he could just be the best player in the country'.
However, a national newspaper soon got wind of Gillespie's losses at the bookies and Newcastle had to forward money owed to the winger - signing-on fees and the like - to help him out.
Keegan even personally phoned the bookmaker to assure him he would be paid by a certain date.
While Gillespie's team-mates tried to make light of everything that had happened - it was, admittedly, a different era - Ferdinand did not quite see it that way.
"Footballers being footballers, you go and the boys were taking the mickey out of him," he told Fever Pitch: The Rise of the Premier League.
"I always remember I was sitting in the sauna and he came in and said, 'Why weren't you laughing like all the other boys taking the p---? Why didn't you take the p---?'
"I said, 'Well, basically, I know that you know that my Mum, my Dad, your Mum, your Dad, knows what a pound note is and how hard it is to make a pound note so what you lost I don't see as being funny'.
"From a young boy who was a long way from home without his family influence around him...now, in today's football, we talk about mental health issues and stuff that goes on with people but back in '95/'96, because you're a footballer, it's deemed that you should just get on with it."
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