Gazza and the slow-motion collapse that started when he was 10 years old

Independent

4 days ago

Last Monday, notifications from multiple media outlets and text messages from friends and colleagues started pinging into my phone. Beep. Beep. Beep. I opened the alerts to see Paul 'Gazza' Gascoigne, the 58-year-old football icon and national treasure, had been rushed to hospital after being found semi-unconscious at home and was in an intensive care unit. My heart sank. Oh Paul. It was a moment I'd feared would one day happen.
All the memories of my time spent with Gascoigne, making documentary films with him 10 years ago, came flooding back; all the contradictions of a man so expressive in his football play, yet so unable to articulate his many inner struggles off the pitch.
People always refer to 'Gazza' as a troubled genius, but his demons were personal. And, as I was to discover, it is not surprising when you understand everything he's been through without the emotional and practical skills, or support, to deal with such extreme situations.
We all know about Gascoigne's iconic status as the best midfielder of his generation. We know he won 57 caps for England and helped take our national team to the semi-finals of Euro 1996. Perhaps his most defining moment, and the one that brought 'Gazza' such extraordinary fame, was receiving a yellow card in the 1990 World Cup semi-finals, which saw him leave the pitch in tears.
We also know all about his multiple off-pitch dramas that have happened since. His battle with alcoholism and drug abuse, stints in rehab, being sectioned, court cases, allegations of domestic abuse, drink-driving convictions, homelessness and mental ill-health.
When I was asked to direct a documentary following his treatment for addiction in an Arizona clinic, I was enticed by the possibility of discovering the real Paul Gascoigne.
At our first meeting, he was performative. He cracked jokes, messed about and gave me the public face of Gazza. But I came to realise there were two people living in Paul Gascoigne 's skin – Gazza, the cheeky national treasure and Paul the gentle and kind man struggling to make sense of internal trauma and extraordinary life experiences.
Gascoigne took me to Dunston, an area in the town of Gateshead where he grew up, to meet his family. I thought he was joking (he wasn't) when he said he'd bought his mum, dad, brother and sister houses in the same street – even though then he didn't own a home of his own.
The family was tight, and you could feel the love they had for each other. But Gascoigne later told me that the responsibility he felt to support his family financially, from the start of his football success at the age of 16, weighed heavily. He wasn't sure if his role within the family was as a son and brother, or as the family's breadwinner.
He became unsettled. He constantly raged about how he believed that people had taken advantage of him, how he thought those employed to help him had abused him financially over the years; how people wanted Gazza, but were disappointed when they got Paul.
He said he didn't trust anybody. Not his friends or family and definitely not the media, who'd fed off his fame and vulnerability. He recounted the terrible impact of being hacked by newspapers. How information he'd only shared with his closest family members ended up being front page news, causing him to cut off his family. It was a long time before he discovered they were innocent and that he had been hacked, but by then the damage to his relationship with his family had been sealed.
Gascoigne started being unreliable, failing to turn up for filming and being rude and aggressive. Several times, I thought the film would have to be cancelled. But then Gascoigne called, wanting to apologise for his behaviour – and to talk.
What I learned gave me an insight and understanding of a terrible childhood trauma, one which precipitated this complex man full of contradictions. The 10-year-old Paul had gone to the shops with his childhood friend Steven. He recalled them being chased out of the shop for pinching sweets and Steven running out between parked cars into the road. He was knocked down by an ice-cream truck and died in Gascoigne's arms. His grief and guilt were still palpable, and he said he still replays his friend's death in his head every day.
It was an era when there was no mental health support or infrastructure and Gascoigne was left, in his own words, to 'just get on with it'. He slumped into depression, unable to sleep and developed a slot machine gambling addiction. Soon, he started displaying tics and twitches and making peculiar noises.
As his football success grew, Gascoigne said his tics and twitches disappeared when he was on the pitch, but as soon as the game ended, he felt overcome, constantly thinking about death and feeling alienated from everyone around him.
He masked his discomfort by becoming the eternal joker, seeking validation by making people laugh with his uproarious and, according to Gary Lineker, outlandish antics. The stories are legendary and friends and former team-mates I spoke to said he was always keen to please and easily egged on to behave inappropriately.
We headed back to film in Bournemouth, where Gascoigne was living following his US rehab, and being supported by a local rehab centre. Sober, he gave talks to patients about how addiction to alcohol and cocaine abuse had ruined his life.
At the height of his career, he'd been drinking whisky and downing sleeping pills in the run up to matches. He said he went from being a virtual non-drinker, who only liked the occasional pina colada cocktail, to a fully-fledged alcoholic, numbing his anxieties and inability to cope with fame and success.
Once back at Gascoigne's flat, the reality of his struggles became clear. It was lunchtime and it suddenly dawned on me I'd never seen him eat a single thing in all the months we'd been filming. He always disappeared at lunchtime and suppertime and would return saying he'd eaten.
I asked him why he didn't eat and he opened his kitchen cupboards to reveal hundreds of bags of cheap penny sweets, the kind you buy with pocket money when you're a kid. He said eating sweets as his main source of food was the only way to keep his weight down. Gascoigne then went on to describe his lifelong struggle with his weight during his football career.
He was often chastised by managers, fans and the media for being overweight and developed an eating disorder that saw him develop bulimia and purge before matches. He recalled that opposing fans would throw Mars bars onto the pitch when he was playing and chant 'you fat bast***' every time he touched the ball.
He was also addicted to Botox and said he couldn't face the world if he didn't feel suitably 'botoxed'. Gascoigne's battle with OCD was evident on a daily basis. He would need to hoover, polish and dust everything, clean the bathroom and check every light switch and plug socket five times before we could leave the house. It was heartbreaking to watch.
Toward the end of filming, Gascoigne said he wanted to reconnect with his ex-wife Cheryl, his son Regan and adopted daughter Bianca. It had been years since Paul had been in touch with Cheryl following their acrimonious split, after allegations of Paul's domestic violence, and the multiple court cases over their divorce. The family reunion was emotional, tinged with love, sadness and a sense of frustration and recrimination on all sides.
Paul stayed at the house with the family for weeks before Cheryl asked him to leave.
I had an impending sense of doom as I began editing the film. Then I got the call that Gascoigne had been found collapsed drunk in the street in London. I received another call from a hotel asking me to collect Gascoigne as he was drunk and naked in the foyer and upsetting the guests. It was yet another incident in Paul's 30-year slow-motion collapse.
We kept in touch for a long time after the film came out in 2015. Sometimes Gascoigne would call when he was drunk, sometimes when he was sober. He gave me a watch with the engraving, 'Love from Gazza', and apologised for any problems he'd caused me.
Gascoigne always said he didn't know how to live when his career ended, how he regretted not preparing for a life without football. He explained that when you've had fans giving you unconditional love, validation and adulation – and earning a lot of money in the process – the transition to normal life is overwhelming.
His fame intensified his personal identity, not knowing who he was – whether it was 'Gazza' or Paul. And his problems with money forced him to make a living doing after-dinner talks where he recounts all the skeletons from his cupboard to a paying audience.
It has been cited that problems with his business may be the reason for Gascoigne's recent health scare and admission to ICU. The personal company he set up to channel income from his appearances was struck off and dissolved at the beginning of July for failing to file accounts – and rumours of a falling out over a business deal are said to have plunged him into depression.
Sadly, it all feels inevitable. The emotional and psychological toll of a life spent trying to be Paul when the world wanted Gazza, during an era that failed to recognise when someone needed help, is nothing short of a tragedy. Gascoigne never really stood a chance. Today, he is recovering at home in Poole, Dorset, inundated with well-wishes from his legion of fans.
Like a million others, I always hoped that Gascoigne would find a happy ending. I hope it's not too late.