Melting skin, hidden scars and terrifying seizures. In an astonishing interview JAY BOTHROYD reveals he played for 23 years with a secret health battle - and holds an extraordinary record

The scars on Jay Bothroyd's body tell a story. Many stories in fact, of searing pain and melting skin, perhaps even one of police brutality. Some of the scars you can see and feel, like the thickened ridges on his arms and legs, or the crack in his skull.

Then there is the scar you can't see, the one that is responsible - partly - for many of the others. This scar could even kill him. It's almost a miracle it hasn't already. 'I'm blessed,' he says. I agree.

Bothroyd is the only footballer ever to play for England, or even in the Premier League, while living with epilepsy.

'It shows you can achieve anything even if you have epilepsy,' he says, defiant and proud. But no one else has done what you have, I counter. That shows how hard it is. It's an incredible achievement.

'Oh yeah… I hadn't thought of it like that.'

The scar that you can't see is on Bothroyd's brain. I have one too. It causes him to lose consciousness with little warning. His body will convulse violently, his muscles will harden into granite, his jaw will snap tight and his gnashing teeth will lacerate his own tongue. After his seizures are over, his muscles will ache and so will his brain, his mouth will sting but taste nothing. It will take two days' rest to recover.

This happened to Bothroyd throughout his 23-year playing career, when games came every few days, yet he managed to play for his country and in the world's most competitive leagues.

Blessed.

Sinking back into his chair at his north London golf club, Bothroyd is a picture of happiness. He's strikingly tall - 6ft 3in - lean and athletic, at 41 still looking the professional sportsman despite retiring three years ago. He now hosts a podcast, is a Sky Sports pundit - and plays golf.

The only blemish in the sky today is that his six-year-old son, Zar, isn't getting recognition for 'winning' at school sports. 'Everyone gets a medal,' Bothroyd laments. 'That's not right. You need to build a competitive mindset.' That ruthless, obsessive need to win explains a few things.

It was in the year 2000, aged 18, that the trouble started. After throwing his kit at the great coach Don Howe in a rage after being substituted in a youth cup final, Bothroyd was exiled by Arsenal, his boyhood club, to Coventry.

Then there was the scar. Bothroyd does not question why it is there and the doctors do not know: it just is, and it first made itself known while he was at a team-mate's house; one minute he was playing video games, the next he was convulsing on the floor.

'When I got told that I had epilepsy,' Bothroyd recalls, 'the first thing I said was, 'Can it kill me?' The doctor said, '99 times out of 100, no.' Right, fine. I put it to the back of my mind and did some silly things. I didn't take medication - not like missing a day's tablets, I'm talking weeks.'

After my own first tonic-clonic seizure, everyday sensations sparked dreadful memories of fierce, electrical agony ripping through my body. This only subsided once my new medication had earned my trust. Each year in the UK, around 1,000 people die from causes related to epilepsy. So Bothroyd's apparent insouciance feels incomprehensible.

The large, brown lesions on his upper left arm and his lower right leg are proof of how dangerous his attitude was. He was a Cardiff player when those scars were born, under scorching Portuguese skies.

'We went out and had a few beers. Next day it was really hot, but I trained well and felt fine, then was walking back to the hotel and blacked out on top of a car, having a seizure. It was a black car that had been out in the heat all day. My arm singed, and it was lucky my face didn't. I woke up in hospital, I didn't know what had happened.

'It was f***ing s*** for months, healing - deep, layers of skin, third-degree burns. It was bad, especially when you're changing your dressing - you can see the wound is red-raw, but you're peeling it back. I should have had a skin graft. It was so, so painful - and I continued playing! I had bandages all over my arm and leg. It's painful when you're barging someone with no skin.'

There's no hiding your epilepsy when you have a seizure in front of your team-mates. But that was not the case at every one of Bothroyd's 12 clubs. Merely a handful ever knew.

'I wish I'd have spoken about epilepsy earlier but I didn't because I felt that they might give me a short-term contract or pay-as-you-play,' he admits. 'I never denied it, I just didn't talk about it. I had to earn a living. I wanted security for myself and my family. There's probably more footballers out there that have the same condition who won't say anything.'

Approximately 630,000 people in the UK have epilepsy, and around three-quarters of children will either outgrow it or control it with anti-seizure medication.

But Bothroyd reveals the harsh truth when he says: 'Epilepsy affected my performance. There were loads of times I had bad games because of it, when I wasn't fully focused or I had in the back of my mind a worry like, 's***, I haven't taken my tablets'.

'I once had a seizure and played two days later - because I said I wanted to. They said to me, 'do you think you're all right to play?', and I said, 'yeah'. They didn't make me play, but they didn't say 'you shouldn't play'. I scored in that game!

'It's about results. Back then I couldn't say, 'sorry I can't come in, I've had a seizure' because I think people would have looked at it like a sign of weakness.'

This secrecy explains another of Bothroyd's scars - although this one, he alleges, came courtesy of a police officer.

'I blacked out and drove into the front of a house in Elstree. The police came and flashed a light in my eye. They could see my pupils were big, so they're thinking, 'this guy's on drugs', and they threw me in a jail cell. I stumbled forward and - bang! - hit my head against the wall. I remember sitting there slumped, then waking up like that. I had a grey jacket on and blood was coming down that.

'Who sleeps like that, upright with their head slumped forward? I wasn't lying down. I woke up and I was covered in all this blood, and I could feel the cut with my finger. They breathalysed me and tested to see if I was on drugs or DUI, and I wasn't so they had to let me go. I've still got a big scar on my head.'

Bothroyd was 23, playing for Charlton. So why did he not just tell the police that he had crashed because of a seizure?

'Because I thought that if I say it then I won't be able to play on the weekend.'

But you can't play if you're in a prison cell!

'It was just jail, I knew I was coming out the next day.'

By the highest standards set by contemporaries such as Rooney, Owen and Gerrard, Bothroyd's career was 'not stellar' - his words. His one England cap came as a big surprise when Fabio Capello called him up against France in 2010, even though he was then a Championship player.

Yet he also enjoyed success abroad, especially in Japan where, he likes to remind people, he scored more goals than Gary Lineker. But Bothroyd had a seizure there while playing football for the first time in 2017, collapsing during training, and his career ended after the discovery of a heart condition which required emergency surgery. Another scar.

Eventually it was guilt that proved unbearable.

First, he had a seizure in front of his then 18-year-old son, Mace, in a Japanese taxi. 'He was really scared, crying and stuff.' Then he had another seizure - but this time he remained awake through 24 hours of vacant, incoherent, pseudo-consciousness - an absence seizure. Bothroyd, as usual, was not scared, but he was scarred by his wife Stella's reaction: frightened, confused, helpless.

'I don't care about my feelings,' he says with surprising force, his emotions now bubbling over. 'I care about their feelings. I'm upset with myself for having a seizure because I've upset my wife and kids.'

It's the one pain he feels acutely: their pain. Finally I understand him. I remember the helplessness on my wife's face as she found me in a hospital bed after one seizure. I know the silent fear that epilepsy could one day leave my children without a father.

'That's the only reason I've started being more responsible,' Bothroyd insists. He is now fastidious about taking his twice-daily medication and ensuring he rests if his seizure triggers are being pressed: exhaustion, poor sleep, drinking a bit too much. His seizures are controlled.

In April, Bothroyd and the charity Young Epilepsy will host a football camp at Trent Park in north London that is open to all children, including those with epilepsy who might be excluded from similar events. He hopes that speaking frankly about his life - the good, the bad and even the downright stupid - will educate and inspire them.

'Fear will prevent a person from doing almost anything,' he says. 'We can't change the past or the condition we have but we can always be positive for our future and still achieve all of our dreams.'

Tickets are on sale for the Jay Bothroyd Premier Football Experience, a day of coaching for children aged 7-11 on 11 April. Proceeds go to Young Epilepsy.