Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp told police he writes like a toddler and paid his accountant handsomely “to look after me”, the jury in his trial on allegations of tax evasion heard yesterday.

Redknapp told detectives three years ago that he struggles with basic literacy, saying: “I write like a two-year-old and I can’t spell.”

The Spurs boss and his co-accused Milan Mandaric both deny charges of cheating the public revenue during their time together at Portsmouth.

In the taped interviews, Redknapp, 64, said: “I couldn’t even fill a team sheet in” and insisted he was the “most disorganised person in the world”.

But he insisted to officers: “I am not going to fiddle taxes, I pay my accountant a fortune to look after me.”

Redknapp, whose success at Tottenham has seen him tipped as a future England manager, said he had not seen his pay slip in years, adding: “You talk to anybody at the football club. I don’t write.”

Questioned about an account in Monaco which is the focus of allegations he hid $295,000 (225,000 euros) from tax authorities, Redknapp told police he relied heavily on his accountant to take care of his financial affairs.

“He writes all the cheques for me and my wife. He pays my bills. He runs my life basically,” he said.

Jurors at Southwark Crown Court in London heard that Redknapp had made “disastrous” business decisions. He had lost £250,000 in a “very unsuccessful” takeover of Oxford.