A FORMER stripper who chased Paul Gascoigne around the pitch naked while streaking at a football match claims it was the best experience of her life.
Rachel Sadler, now 41, and her best friend Vanessa Richards hit the headlines back on December 6, 1998 after interrupting Middlesbrough’s 2-2 draw with North East rivals Newcastle.
Wearing nothing but a G-string while her pal had a sexy Santa outfit on, they brought the Premier League clash to a halt as they raced onto the pitch to chase England legend Gazza in an attempt to “cheer him up”.
Recalling the infamous night to Teesside Live, mum of two Rachel, who lives in Stockton-on-Tees, said: “We were so young, 18 or 19. I wanted the limelight, we thought we’d get lots of publicity.
“I was working as a stripper at the time. If I wasn’t doing that kind of job, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do it, but I was well up for it.
“Vanessa ran first, I was panicking. I was petrified. I thought ‘if I don’t go now, I’ll never do it’.
READ MORE FOOTBALL
“People around us must have thought ‘what the hell are these two doing’, especially with us coming dressed like that anyway.
“I fell over an advertising board, trying to get on the pitch. All the cameras snapped Vanessa and there were only pictures of my behind, but I’ve since seen some full frontals of me with my boobs blurred.”
She continued: “Gazza was just running backwards, shaking his hands and laughing, saying ‘please don’t do this to me’. Vanessa tried to jump on his back. He was stood with his foot on the goalpost laughing as we got taken off.
“It was absolutely freezing, even though we’d knocked a couple of whiskies back before we went in. It was the Middlesbrough-Newcastle derby match and there were 36,000 in the crowd.
FREE BETS AND SIGN UP DEALS – BEST NEW CUSTOMER OFFERS
“People put their coats around us and took us off the pitch. I’d never been arrested in my life, but I wasn’t bothered. The whole experience outweighed it all.
“We ended up being released from the police station, they let us take a blanket with us then we went to South Shields, to a pub I worked in, and had a massive party.”
Rachel and Vanessa, who sadly passed away in her early 20s, found themselves front page news the next day after their antics.
She added: “I don’t think we realised the attention it was going to get.
“It was unbelievable, calls from reporters, we ended up going on The Guilty Show, which was a Sky One show with a mock-up courtroom at the time.
“People were ringing up asking for the ‘Boro Streakers’. We were told we had a lifetime ban from the Riverside but I’ve since read it was only a year.”
