The Calm After the Storm; Following Years of Turbulent Times, Betrayals and Hurt, the Marriage Between Miriam and Andy Goram Is On the Rocks. Again. As the Legendary Goalkeeper Fights to Regain His Health, the Footballer's Wife Says She Is Finally Going to Walk Away for Good. But Will She Find the New Horizons She Craves?

The Herald › July 31, 2004

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Summary

Miriam Goram is in a buoyant mood for the first time in months. She's just come back from visiting her estranged husband Andy, the former Rangers and Scotland star goalkeeper, in hospital. It was his second medical emergency in a month, and this was the second time she rushed to his bedside. Last time her visit prompted frenzied media speculation that their beleaguered marriage was about to be reconciled - and she says he had indeed talked about their going away on holiday together.

This time, however, things are different. Minutes after returning from Inverclyde Hospital, she is on the phone to me, breezily describing the visit. She tells of how thin Andy looked, how shocked, how down in the dumps he was about not being able to walk. He has suffered a second attack of the virus that hospitalised him earlier this month with chest pains and this time, she says, it has caused his knees and ankles to swell up painfully.

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Extract

The Calm After the Storm; Following Years of Turbulent Times, Betrayals and Hurt, the Marriage Between Miriam and Andy Goram Is On the Rocks. Again. As the Legendary Goalkeeper Fights to Regain His Health, the Footballer's Wife Says She Is Finally Going to Walk Away for Good. But Will She Find the New Horizons She Craves?

If her cheeriness seems strange, it is understandable. This latest drama fell on their third wedding anniversary. Miriam is light-heartedly incredulous. "Can you believe his timing?" she asks. The way she laughs says more than words about how she has separated herself emotionally from the man for whom she "would once have stopped bullets with my teeth".

The 35-year-old explains that when she looked at him lying there, he looked "like a pal" rather than a lover. Unable to care for himself, he was a shadow of the legendary, much-loved player - the man dubbed simply "The Goalie" - who had unnerved so many opponents of Rangers and of Scotland during his heyday in the early nineties.

Yet even with the line between lover and friend finally drawn, she still cares for him. "I asked him, 'Andy, is this the slippery slope? Is this the start of your health going?'" she says now. "I...

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