There is more to Gayle than the bling and the bravado

Alison Mitchell meets the Universe Boss and discovers a man still trying to understand why he has been engulfed in controversy

Eyes glance up from computer screens and heads turn as Chris Gayle strides between the desks that make up the newsroom on the third floor of BBC New Broadcasting House. The self-styled ‘Universe Boss’ is clad in blue jeans and black leather jacket with gold medallions swinging over the V-neck of a dark brown T-shirt.

The imposing look of a 6ft 2in tall megastar with shoulders as broad as a barn door is completed with a black leather granddad cap pulled over a pair of dark glasses, which he keeps on even though he’s indoors.

He has already shaken hands with a security guard and stopped to speak to a receptionist who wanted to say hello. Now, he is accompanied by his publicist and agent as he approaches the radio studio where he is joining me for an hour as a special guest on Stumped on the BBC World Service. He steps forward for a firm handshake and a polite, “hi, I’m Chris”, when he and his team reach the studio door.

I’m really not sure how this interview is going to go. I’ve interviewed Gayle only a few times before – the last being a slightly chaotic ‘walk and talk’ on the outfield of the Premadasa Stadium in Colombo minutes after the West Indies had won the World T20 final of 2012.

After a few breathless answers against the backdrop of booming music he peeled away to lead the Gangnam-style celebration with his team. I am not expecting him to remember me. More to the point, the interview comes on the back of Gayle being in the headlines as much for his controversial Big Bash interview with Ten Sports’ reporter Mel McLaughlin, which brought him fierce criticism last January as for any feat he’s ever achieved on the cricket field.

So I am wondering how he feels about being interviewed by another female now. Does he think I’m going to be prejudiced against him because of what’s gone on before? Is he going to play things straight, or play up? How will he be, both on-air and off-air?

It’s not just me doing the interview, though. Stumped is a three-way presentation together with the ABC’s Jim Maxwell and All India Radio’s Charu Sharma.

They are in studios in Sydney and India respectively, so it’s just Gayle and me in the studio before we start the recording.

We pass the time with a pleasant chat about his home island Jamaica. It’s my job to put the guest at ease. I don’t brief him as to the specific topics of conversation coming up, but it is part of our interview plan to ask him about the McLaughlin incident. He is defensive about it in his new autobiography Six Machine, which he is here to promote, so he ought to be ready for the questions.

Over the course of the next 45 minutes, Gayle is professional, engaging, both good humoured and serious. He shows himself to be a total paradox of a human being, and that, in a nutshell, is why he has published a book. He wants to show that there is more to Chris Gayle (yes, the third person features a lot in the interview) than the Instagram photos of him in nightclubs and hot tubs, usually surrounded by scantily-clad women.

The hedonistic side of his personality absolutely exists. He loves women, sex and bling. He wants to live life in the fast lane. The extremes he goes to is partly due to his upbringing in a tin-roofed shack in Rollington Town, Kingston, where he and his four siblings shared two single beds between them.

He looked forward to Saturdays because that sometimes meant chicken foot soup for dinner as opposed to the fried ball of flour and water that was the meal on many other days.

His philosophy on life was adopted in earnest though whilst lying in a hospital bed with wires attached to his chest following heart surgery in Melbourne in 2005. The operation fixed a valve problem that he’d been suffering with since the age of 16.

“From this day on, I’m going to enjoy life endlessly,” he writes in the book. “Whenever – God’s will – I get better, I’m going to do everything to the fullest. No waiting, no hedging, no compromises, no apologies. Night won’t stop me, dawn won’t stop me. Wherever I go, I’m going to have fun.”

It goes some way to explaining the strip club he built in the basement of his house (it was apparently the builder’s idea – “I wanted a barber shop”, he tells us on the programme. “No regrets having it there. It’s good fun.”) Others, it must be said, might opt to climb mountains to live life to the fullest. Gayle’s definition is different.

What of the other side to his character? In person, it is possible to detect a certain sensitivity and humility despite the braggadocio. His first cricket coach was, in fact, a woman. Miss Hamilton coached cricket and football at Gayle’s school and he learned his early batsmanship through facing her quick bowling.

His regard for her cricketing knowledge and skill is sincere and Gayle has the utmost respect for her – 25 years later he still visits her when he’s back in Kingston. He also set up a charity and he incorporated nine bedrooms into his house so that he could give a secure home to his parents and siblings.

He also maintains that he’s quiet, at least with his closest friends. That’s why he starts the book with: “I’m weird. I’m a weirdo.” He says his mood and feelings are notoriously hard to read. When he’s around his best friends he’s reserved, preferring to sit and listen, not the Gayle who smashes sixes, dances Gangnam-style and posts infamous pictures online.

It turns out Gayle has been nervous about doing our interview. He tells us on air, with a slight shake in his voice, that he didn’t want to do it when he found out the main presenter (me) was a woman.

“I didn’t even want to do the interview with you because you’re female. It seems as if everyone is sending females to target Chris Gayle these days. If these things are going to happen then I can’t do interviews at this particular time. I don’t have a problem with females interviewing me, but if things are going to be twisted and changed around and make Chris look like this big sexism thing, then straight up, I’m not going to do any more interviews.”

I later find out that this sentiment relates to the recent feature published in The Times Magazine, where he is reported to have made lewd comments to the female interviewer. Gayle’s version of events is that the comments were made in a bar, it wasn’t part of the on-record interview, and he thought it was a conversation between two adults sharing a private drink. The journalist, feature writer Charlotte Edwardes, says their second meeting in the evening was set up by Gayle’s management and it was all part of the interview.

Despite maintaining the McLaughlin incident hasn’t affected him, Gayle’s voice on Stumped at times betrays that he has been stung by the grievances that have followed him over the last six months. What he said was wrong, but the level of criticism did become disproportionate.

I remember reading an opinion piece in an Australian newspaper at the time, which pointed out the Gayle interview was getting more airtime and column inches than a tragic murder-suicide in South Australia that had happened on the same day. Debates over sexism were absolutely warranted, but an element of perspective was required.

Gayle is unrepentant about the “don’t blush baby” interview, insisting it was all a joke.

What I’m keen to know, though, is whether he has been able to understand why the interview created such a furore; an interview with a female sports

journalist who, like every other woman working as a sports journalist, has had to prove herself in a male-dominated industry; an interview carried out at a time in Australian culture when women

in sport, and on a wider scale, women in business, have found their voice; and an interview carried out at the Big Bash League, when organisers had put women at the heart of their campaign that year, both in attracting them to the grounds and staging the inaugural Women’s Big Bash which had just propelled women’s cricket to new heights of respect and admiration around the world.

Gayle doesn’t understand. He remains confused, hurt and angered by the reaction, particularly from those who he thought were friends in the game. He feels victimised. “It was strange to see such a small thing being blown out of proportion for whatever reason. I have no idea who’s behind it.”

This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, Friday June 10 2016

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