Can anyone save Gazza?
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Can anyone save Gazza? 8am, two days out of rehab and Paul Gascoigne shambles across the road with a bottle of gin in his holdall
Frefall: Paul Gascoigne is struggling to cope with his drug and alcohol demons
His face a mask of despair, his holdall shambolically open to reveal a gin bottle and a child's piggy bank, he wanders dazed and disoriented on the streets of his native Gateshead at eight in the morning.
This was Paul Gascoigne earlier this week, just two days after he had been released from the exclusive Priory clinic in South-West London — where he was treated for depression and paranoia as well as drug and drink addictions after a reported suicide attempt.
It is simply the latest chapter in the downfall of the man once regarded as the most sublimely talented footballer of his generation. And what makes the situation all the more tragic is that 'Gazza', who once had millions of admirers across the globe, is facing his demons alone.
He has all but rejected the support of his family, been deserted by the legions of hangers-on and celebrity friends who were once always by his side, and received no support from the Football Association even though he won 57 England caps.
Just 40 years old, he lives today in a twilight world, spending endless nights in anonymous hotel rooms with only his memories and addictions for company. He was in Gateshead visiting his 62-year-old father John and his appearance there might have raised hopes that he was reaching back to his family and friends. But this is far from the case.
"Gazza may have turned up here this week, but he won't stay," said a family friend yesterday. "He'll disappear back to London in a day or two, I guarantee it, away from everyone who loves him and cares for him. He's done it before and he'll do it again."
Gascoigne's family looked after him in February after he was sectioned under the Mental Health Act following a disturbance in a Newcastle hotel to which the police were called. He went to a private hospital for treatment for cocaine abuse.
Seeing red: Gazza died his hair bright red, then changed his mind and had it all shaved off.
During his three-week stay at the hospital near Darlington, Gascoigne's father John and his 34-year-old sister Lindsay visited him daily. On his release, his father took the player back to the house in the Dunston area of Gateshead that Gascoigne once bought for him — just as he bought houses for his mother Carol, now divorced from his father but living next door, and for his other sister Anna, 42, and his brother Carl, 39.
But within a matter of days Gascoigne had left them, returning to the anonymity of a London hotel room. The player has even severed his ties with his life-long friend and companion Jimmy 'Five Bellies' Gardner, 42, after an argument about a debt of £40,000 that the player alleges Gardner hasn't repaid him.
Gascoigne's father John has refused to comment on these latest tragic episodes in his son's troubled life — while his step-daughter, Bianca, has only said that his family are now 'powerless' to help him.
There is a growing feeling in the North-East that Gascoigne has 'burnt his boats' there for the final time. "People have lost patience with him," says one friend. Which perhaps explains why he seemed so lost as he weaved his way along the middle of that Gateshead street this week, apparently unsure of where he was or where he was going.
This bizarre behaviour is nothing new. Just over two weeks ago, a thin and dishevelled Gascoigne tried to put down a £20,000 deposit on a £140,000 Ferrari at a car showroom in South Kensington, London, only for this to dissolve into farce when his trousers fell down to reveal he wasn't wearing any underwear and he stumbled out of the showroom into the street.
Still intent on his Ferrari, he then had his hair died red to match the cars' legendary colour — only to change his mind within hours and have his head shaved. Not long afterwards, Gascoigne was found smelling of alcohol outside a shop in Kensington, by Gianni Paladini, chairman of Queens Park Rangers football club. Paladini gave the player £70 and urged him to "clean up his act".
Leaving rehab: A smoking Gazza outside the priory earlier this month.
The appeal went unanswered, for the next afternoon police were called to Gascoigne's £232-a-night room at the four-star Millennium hotel in Sloane Street, London, not far from Harrods, after the star allegedly threatened to slit his wrists and demanded that staff brought him a steak knife. They refused.
Less than an hour later, eight police officers had to restrain the "hysterical" Gascoigne when he was found naked in his bath, screaming: "If I can't cut my wrists I'll drown myself." He was taken to a nearby hospital.
Gascoigne later transferred himself to the Priory in South-West London, where he was looked after by therapist John McKeown — whom Gascoigne always calls 'Johnny Mac'. The two men have been working together since the player's first admission to the Priory in 1998. Indeed, the psychotherapist collaborated with the star on his best-selling memoir, Tackling My Demons. "Johnny's been good for me," Gascoigne wrote. "The best I've ever had."
For his part, McKeown says: "Paul's back in the cycle of drinking regularly and in my opinion it has got a hold over him — and is getting in the way of work opportunities."
But the therapist adds: "He's acknowledged that it's no one else's fault — which is a positive sign." Positive it may be, but Gascoigne is still in desperate need of help. And today those prepared to help him are few and far between. "I can remember ten years ago standing beside Gazza on the station platform at Stevenage in Hertfordshire," says one friend, "when he rang the then manager of Middlesbrough FC, Bryan Robson, and told him he was going to throw himself on to the track after an argument with his ex-wife Sheryl."
Robson, the former England and Manchester United captain, got into his car and drove 300 miles to Stevenage to collect Gascoigne and take him back to Tyneside. "Nothing has really changed," the friend continued. "That was a decade ago, but his real friends won't do that now. They've been through too much."
We can't help him: Gazza's ex-wife Sheryl and step-daughter Bianca
To understand the torment of this gifted player, we need to look at the lifestyle he has chosen since his glory days in the 1990s. In the years since the turn of the Millennium, Gascoigne's career has gone into freefall, with ill-fated expeditions to play for Gansu Tianma Football Club on the borders of the Gobi desert in China, for Boston United in Lincolnshire and Algarve United in Portugal.
It all ended ignominiously in 2005 with his dismissal as manager of lowly Kettering Town amid accusations of drunkenness. In those same years his personal life disintegrated, too. His acrimonious divorce from Sheryl in 1998 — after a two-year marriage in which he admitted beating her repeatedly and breaking her fingers — seemed only to speed his decline.
The couple have one son Regan, 11, but Gascoigne adopted his wife's two children from a previous marriage, Bianca, now 21, and Mason. Bianca Gascoigne said she and her family had "done everything in our power to try and get my Dad through this hard time" but added that he was "seriously ill and it is something we are powerless to control or help with".
Gascoigne, inevitably, has rejected them. "They can say what they like about me. I'm not going to let her and Sheryl upset me," he said. But without his own family, or his wife's family, the former footballer is now utterly adrift.
"Gazza's not had a house of his own for seven years," explains Hunter Davies, who helped the player write his best-selling autobiography in 2004. "He just travels from hotel to hotel, on his own, locking himself away for days and days at a time — and turning off his mobile phone most of the time."
Man of the moment: Paul Gascoigne, in his former guise as footballer, on the pitch
Gascoigne says he spends his time in the hotels playing computer games or watching films or daytime television before ordering room service, although he is also a self-confessed bulimic, who makes himself sick after eating. And what of his former friends?
This, remember, is the man who went drinking with the disc-jockey Chris Evans and radio presenter Danny Baker just an hour after an England match, still wearing his football kit and boots. Now, they are nowhere to be seen. Baker's agent, Alex Armitage, who managed Gascoigne for six months in 2004, insists that Baker "never talks about his personal life", but there is no denying they are no longer close.
Armitage is highly critical of the Football Association for their failure to help Gascoigne. "I think they need to think about their pastoral care," he told me. "It reflects badly on football that one of the greats, who graced their game, has had no contact or support from the FA."
It is a view echoed by Gascoigne's friend, former England striker Ian Wright, who says the FA should have taken Gascoigne "under their wing," adding: "He did a lot for football in this country, so he deserves to get something back."
Certainly, the men who profited from his talents in his pomp have disappeared from his life. Mel Stein, who acted as his lawyer and agent for 15 years — until they fell out in an argument over money — says: "Paul is a troubled man. He's susceptible to pressure, and he can't handle it."
The same thing happened with Gascoigne's former accountant Len Lazarus, who also fell out with him over cash. Both Stein and Lazarus sued the star for money they asserted he owed them. The cases were settled out of court.
The wretched truth is that, without the support of his peers in football, or his friends, Gascoigne is left to console himself with the company of the room service staff in whatever hotel he is staying — persuading them to go out with him in the evenings for a drink.
Failed marriage: Paul Gascoigne on his wedding day with ex-wife Sheryl
"At least they don't sell stories about me to the tabloids," he says. The now paranoid Gascoigne is convinced that "the tabloid press is out to get me — they just want to give me a kicking" as he's put it to a friend.
"It's not true, of course," says Gascoigne's ghost-writer, Hunter Davies. "The press love him. I've never met a single person who didn't like him and warm to him, and that includes his former wife Sheryl, in spite of the terrible times they went through together."
But Gascoigne is convinced no one can help. "People don't really understand," he's said. "How can they? I know they love me, all my family and friends, but they can't do anything for me. There's nothing they can say that will help."
For now, money is not a problem. In spite of his lengthy stays at the Cottonwood clinic in Tucson, Arizona as well as the Priory and the clinic near Darlington — at an estimated cost of £2,000 a night in each institution — the former player is still said to have an estimated £2m in a bank account in the Channel Islands, part of the proceeds of his transfer to the Italian team Lazio in 1996.
But that money cannot last forever.
His most recent stay in the Priory is Gascoigne's eighth spell in a rehab clinic in the past six years —and that is on top of a major hip operation and private hospital treatment for pneumonia.
Predictably, the star has repeatedly refused to take the medication prescribed after his hip operation and for his depression — "I know I've been neglecting my medication," he admits.
And even when he does take it, he ignores his doctor's recommendation not to mix the drugs with alcohol. Paul Gascoigne is a man in the grip of the bleakest despair. And to judge the depth of that despair you have only to look back at something he wrote barely a year ago.
"Not topped myself yet," he said.
"That's a good thing. Obviously. Still being here is one thing, but it hasn't been easy. I've been struggling. Big Time. Paranoid. Depressed." Let us hope and pray that there is someone who can help this tragic sporting genius, be it his therapist, his family, his former friends in the North-East, or the Football Association. Surely someone can save Gazza from himself.
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Beer is a good thing.. why does he have to make it look evil?
