The real Freddie Flintoff and why we should revel in his heroic TV comeback
He may have been one of Britain’s most renowned and fun-loving cricketers, but Andrew Flintoff is set to return to our screens to host the iconic gameshow Bullseye. It is a welcome return for many of his fans, but he has always had a vulnerable side even before his accident, says Jim White, who looks at the programme which started him on the path to true recovery
There is a telling moment in the middle of the first episode of Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams on Tour, the laboriously titled television series in which the former England captain takes teenagers from his home town of Preston to play cricket in India. Speaking of the all-enveloping nature of the sport that made his name, he says: “When I’m around cricket, I forget about everything else.”
And Flintoff has a lot he needs to put out of his mind. Not least the traumatic after-effects of the crash he had while filming for the BBC’s Top Gear back in December 2022. The documentary was the first time he had spoken publicly about the devastating accident which left him with significant facial injuries, requiring extensive surgery.
But it was a pile-up that not only delivered irrevocable physical damage. It brought bursting to the surface issues he had been struggling with for years.
“I’d not left the house for seven months,” he tells Kyle Hogg, his old Lancashire teammate and fellow coach for this series, making plain his fears about heading off to India on a filming trip. “When I did it was in a face mask and glasses. I worry I’ll not be able to cope.”
For many who have followed Andrew Flintoff’s career, the very idea of him – of all people – being unable to cope seems absurd. This, after all, was a sportsman who seemed to exude self-confidence, one immune to fear, even as he battered down every hurdle that confronted him.
When he bowled with terrifying venom for England, he would mark taking yet another wicket by standing straight-faced, with his arms spread wide, nodding in self-reference even as his teammates ran to celebrate their saviour getting them out of a hole once more. This was not a man who seemed remotely unsure of himself.
Off the pitch too, at least from what we saw of him, he appeared the epitome of certainty and carefree abandon. Real name Andrew, Freddie was a nickname given to him by schoolmates in Preston, as much to point up his simple, unadorned Flintstone-like characteristics as the alliterative possibilities.
He quickly became England’s most renowned – and flamboyant – cricketer. It was him who took a leak in No 10’s garden after celebrating the 2005 Ashes victory, who on tour with England was found drunk in charge of a pedalo and could neck 10 pints before the rest of the team had got stuck into their first. The boy from Preston was always the lad’s lad.
But this Fred was always a carapace, a device to hide behind. From his early days, Andrew was plagued with anxieties, forcing himself to throw up to keep his weight down, worrying constantly about how the world would perceive him. Where he came from, though, people didn’t have internal problems. Or if they did, they kept them to themselves and just got another round in.
It was after his playing career ended that Flintoff’s anxiety really came to the fore. Despite the sterling support of his wife Rachael (who he married in 2005) and their four children, he struggled internally. He needed the affirmation of a proper role. He tried to make a comeback, he attempted to become a professional boxer, but he floundered for professional purpose. Without cricket, what was there in his life?
This was frying his mind even as he began a second – even more lucrative – career on television. He first came to attention as a guest commentator on the coverage of the darts.
From there he was picked up as a regular on James Corden’s sporting quiz show A League of Their Own. He won the Australian version of I’m A Celebrity, which took some doing to succeed in a public vote in a country he had regularly bettered on the sports field.
This early exposure quickly revealed that he is a very good television presence. There is nothing laboured or forced about him. He is smart, natural, his personality warm, spontaneous, laddish but with a sensitive heart.
Top Gear seemed the ideal vehicle for him and for the BBC, which was struggling with the departure of Jeremy Clarkson and co. He could josh and daredevil, be the top lad. He was good at it too.
Then came the crash. Losing control on an airfield circuit at well over 100mph, Flintoff was significantly damaged by flying debris. His jaw was smashed, his face almost split in half, his mouth and nose torn apart.
And the anxieties, which were never far away, took control. Always a good-looking bloke, suddenly a fear of being looked at made him wear a face mask and glasses in public. He came off social media and hid himself away for months.
But intriguingly, latterly, slowly making his way back into public life, he has sought comfort and direction in cricket. It has, as he says in the film, helped him put everything else out of his mind.
Two years after his Top Gear accident, Freddie’s TV return is steadily gathering momentum, with the former cricketer set to host a Christmas reboot of ITV gameshow Bullseye.
As the horribly tragic recent suicide of Graham Thorpe suggests, he is not the first who has struggled away from the game. Catching hold of its rhythms, its processes once again have helped him through the trauma of his post-accident recovery.
He has quietly acted as a coach for the England team in the recent 2020 World Cup and been ever-present – if deliberately discreet – on the boundary this summer as his 18-year-old son Rocky begins his career in the game with Lancashire.
But it’s with his ragtag bunch of Preston lads and introducing to them the game’s myriad benefits that he has chosen for his return to the public spotlight. For him, he admits, this series is therapy, they are helping him every bit as much as they are helping him.
And what makes it such compelling television is the man at its core. This is clearly not a celebrity-driven bit of travelogue. As his occasional grumpy utterances about the boys’ behaviour make clear, this really matters to him: he wants them to succeed, is desperate that they discover the affirmative pleasures of the game which so sustained him. Whatever the title may suggest, this is not carefree Freddie at the helm. This is flawed, damaged Andrew.
What is so compelling is how concerned he is for the wellbeing of his lads. How observant and thoughtful he is. That seems an unexpected trait for a man reared in the self-obsessive world of professional sport, but it was always there.
From the beginning of his career, Andrew was ever present behind the Freddie mask. He has long been a rarity among his peers in always having taken notice of what is going on around him.
More than 20 years ago, before even the transcendent performances in the 2005 Ashes series that made him a household name, I interviewed him. It was “take your daughter to work day”, so I was accompanied by my then 13-year-old child. She had no interest in cricket but still recalls how kind Flintoff had been with her that day. How attentive and thoughtful. And nice.
Two decades on, a couple of weeks before his accident, she met him at a BBC party. She introduced herself by saying she doubted he would remember her, but she had met him before.
“That was you was it?” he grinned.
She said he must have met so many people he couldn’t possibly remember meeting her and surely he was just being polite.
“No, no I remember it well,” he said. “I remember you asked much better questions than your dad.”
Funny, generous, aware: Andrew Flintoff really is a hero for the times.
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