@@@John Scales - The Halfway House@@@

' “I always dabbled with that vicious, fumigated mean green since I joined the club. I think it was largely due to the fact that at Melwood there was always a fresh stash being outsourced from Dominic Matteo’s second-rate Civic. Under Roy Evans we’d all train for a while and then go and puff a fat one, reminiscing about Rob Jones heading the ball off the line against QPR in September 1995 or when we came close to signing Francis Tierney. The mean green would bring about such potent memories.

It was a liberal era with Roy in charge. Frequent oral in the changing rooms, bespoke foghorn filler sessions with escorts and a stockpile of cream suits from the spunkhappy warehouse in Milan.

However, some players at the time had upgraded to the pipe and this seemed like quite a leap. I wasn’t sure I was quite ready for this. I had seen the side effects on several players. Julian D!cks had lost his hair and decided to head back to East London to get away from it all. Don Hutchison also had similar problems and ended up at West Ham. Seeing him progressing into speedballing and catching a meat barney was scary. It seemed the pipe drove these players to this part of town in search of a more potent, decisive product.

The pipe was tempting though. It had worked well for Stevie Mac (Steve McManaman) and for Jimbo Salad (David James). I guess full-on pipe would’ve seen me head to West Ham but as you know I ended up at Spurs. So I had to carefully consider my pipe dilemma.

I found solace by sniffing a stash of some good fashioned charlie. I yearned for the pipe but just didn’t have the confidence to dabble. I didn't want to ruin my career. It was when I pulled my nose away from Phil Babb’s perfectly formed coke line and gazed into the night stars that I realised something. I was at the halfway house."

John Scales - The Halway House: Mean Green, Charlie & The Pipe is an exciting autobiography being released in August in both book and DVD format. Scales explores complex moral dilemmas concerning the updgrade from mean green to the pipe and discusses the advantages of charlie as an alternative pathway.

Bonus features include 'How to Roll a Fat One' with Phil Charnock, 'Pipe Dreams' with Michael Stensgaard and 'Cracking One Out Warner Style' with Tony Warner. '