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Troy Deeney has revealed a blackmailer tried to extort £10,000 from his wife while he served the prison term that turned his life around.

In a new glimpse of his reformed character, the Premier League’s most candid captain is now light years removed from the wayward soul who landed behind bars for affray.

Instead of smuggling chocolate bars into jail, the Watford skipper - still awaiting his 100th goal for the Hornets after spending two months stuck on 99 – now distributes presents to children in hospital every Christmas.

And after treating himself to a £150,000 Lamborghini when he signed a £4million-a-year contract last summer, Deeney allows kids in Chelmsley Wood, the tough Birmingham neighbourhood where he grew up, to sit in his supercar – to prove there is a route from urban rage to riches.

In an astonishingly frank interview on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Get Inspired programme, the pied piper of Vicarage Road revisited the night that nearly cost him his football career and left his wife Stacey at the mercy of a predatory racketeer.

Deeney, who served three months of an 10-month sentence for his part in a late-night brawl in Birmingham city centre, admitted: “I was way past drunk when I got there.

“I was just trying to suppress everything (after his father had died from cancer) and back in the day I used to think everyone was against me.

“Any type of confrontation, like someone barging to get past, it was like two lions and who is going to back down first.

“I can’t tell you everything that happened, just the bits I watched back on CCTV. I kicked the guy in the face and it’s a bad thing because I could have killed him.

“I thought I was a man about town, but I was just a muppet, trying to do things to impress other people and I had to take my punishment like a man.

(Image: Ross Kinnaird)

“The hardest part was going back into work the next day because I was doing all right and I had just got back into the Watford team and that, potentially, could have ruined everything.”

Asked about the lowest point of his sentence, which spanned the summer of 2012, Deeney revealed: “Someone tried to demand £10,000 off my missus – someone close enough to be called family.

“There was another inicdent that had happened and they said they were going to grass me up for it if we didn’t pay up.

“They knew me and my family were at our weakest and they were trying to take the p***.

“The second lowest was quite funny – I had a visit from my missus and she bought me a Snickers and a Twix.

“I was sat across the table thinking, ‘I don’t really want this now but at 1o o’clock tonight it could be so good. I dropped them straight in my trousers - she thought she was going to jail for that and I’m saying, ‘Shut up, play it cool, keep talking, you’re going home now’.

(Image: 2016 Getty Images)

“That was a low point because I’d gone from earning thousands a week as a Championship footballer and now I’ve got to rob a Snickers and a Twix.”

Deeney, who was the subject of two bids from Leicester up to £30m in the summer, has scored 80 goals for Watford in the four seasons since his release, leading the Hornets to promotion in 2015.

Now he has become a role model – he hates that accolade, but that’s what he is - for aspiration on the estate where he grew up, letting local kids sit in his prize motor.

“It’s not because I want people to say, ‘Look at Troy, he’s got a Lamborghini’ but you can see it and you can touch it. People round here don’t see one of those very often and I say to them, ‘Do you want one of these yourself? Then you are going to have to work for it.’

“That message is then reinforced not just with words but actions. I’m not the most talented player in the world, but I can work harder than everyone.”