Page 74 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

whole year?’
‘Yes,’ says the father, ‘but we’d lose three dollars, son. Interest.’
He also taught his butler how to make a fire that would last an hour longer, how to construct it that
way. And he was a billionaire.

Rockefeller’s hard work instilled a frugal nature in him. He didn’t waste. There is a touch of that in
me. Even today, if my grandchildren leave something on the plate, I take it. I was the same with my
three sons. ‘Don’t leave anything on your plate,’ was a mantra. Now, if I went near Mark, Jason or
Darren’s food, they would cut my hand off!
You cannot beat hard work.
Of course, graft and stress place an invisible strain on the body. So does age. From somewhere in
that mix I developed heart trouble. In the gymnasium one morning, with the belt on, I saw my heart

rate soar from 90 to 160. Summoning the weight trainer, Mike Clegg, I complained: ‘There must be
something wrong with the belt.’
We tried another. Same numbers. ‘You need to see the doc,’ Mike said. ‘That’s not right.’
The doctor referred me to Derek Rowlands, who had looked after Graeme Souness. It was
fibrillation. His advice was to try electric shock treatment to control the heart rate. Seven days later it
was back to normal. In our next game, however, we lost, and my heart rate shot back up. I blame our

players. A victory might have kept me inside normal parameters. The treatment had come with a 50–
60 per cent success rate, but now I knew more action was required. The advice was to have a
pacemaker fitted and take an aspirin every day.
The insertion in April 2002 took half an hour. I watched it on a screen. I’ll always remember the
blood spurting up. The device was changed in the autumn of 2010. They last eight years. That time I
slept right through the changeover. Throughout these consultations, I was told I could still do what I
liked in life: exercise, work, drink my wine.

The initial episode did unsettle me, I admit. The previous year I had taken a health check and
returned a heart rate of 48. Albert Morgan, our kit man, had said, ‘I always thought you hadn’t got a
heart.’ My fitness was excellent. Yet 12 months later, there I was in need of a pacemaker. What it told
me was that getting older comes with penalties. We are all susceptible. You think you are
indestructible. I did. You know life’s door will slam in your face one day, but consider yourself
unbreakable up to that day. All of a sudden, God’s drawing the reins in on you.

In my younger days I would be up and down that touchline, kicking every ball, immersing myself in
every nuance of the game. I mellowed with age. By the end I was tending to observe events more than
getting caught up in the drama, though some games still had the power to suck me in. From time to
time I would offer a reminder that I was still alive. That message would go to referees, my players,
opponents.
On health generally I would say: if you get the warning, heed it. Listen to your doctors. Get the
check-ups. Pay attention to your weight and what you’re eating.

I’m glad to say that the simple act of reading is a marvellous release from the hassles of work and
life. If I were to take a guest into my library, they would see books on presidents, prime ministers,
Nelson Mandela, Rockefeller, the art of oratory, Nixon and Kissinger, Brown, Blair, Mountbatten,
Churchill, Clinton, South Africa and Scottish history. Gordon Brown’s book on the Scottish socialist
politician James Maxton is in there. Then there would be all the volumes on Kennedy.
Then I have my despots section. What interested me here were the extremes to which humanity will

go. Young Stalin, Simon Sebag Montefiore; the dictators – Stalin and Hitler, and Lenin; World War
II: Behind Closed Doors by Laurence Rees; Stalingrad and Berlin: The Downfall 1945 by Antony