Gazza documentary a sobering insight into alcoholic’s life

TV Watch with Dave O’Connell

Such is the range of multiple personalities at his disposal, Paul Gascoigne probably has enough of them to form his own team – with a few left over to fill the subs’ bench on top of it.

So Being Paul Gascoigne (UTV, Tuesday) was never going to be a simple story – although the tabloids have managed to narrow it down to ‘brilliant former footballer, now hopeless alcoholic’ over the last decade or two.

But Gazza was always a more complex character than that – and this documentary at least managed to dig a little deeper than the footballing genius with the drink problem.

He was neither painted as the victim nor the epitome of all that’s wrong with the modern game; indeed Being Paul Gascoigne had very little to do with football – this was the story of a man battling a life-threatening illness that just happens to come out of a bottle.

The tabloid Gazza is always in trouble – downing a bottle of neat gin in an off licence in full view of the CCTV cameras that then found their way to the Sun, beating his wife, attacking security guards, falling down on the street, bringing drink and a fishing rod to a multiple killer.

But the same wife who has come in for so much abuse is also the woman who opens her door and her heart to him every time he comes to his senses.

Sheryl and their children give him chance after chance and just love him when he’s sober; days after another incident, for example, they forgave him yet again and took him to the races for his birthday.

Because at heart Gazza wouldn’t appear to have a bad bone in his body; he just didn’t cope with fame and he cannot cope with drink.

He surrounded himself with people who weren’t good for him, but it didn’t matter as long as he was playing and earning – he was a genius with a football whose life on the pitch was in complete contrast to his existence off it.

Being Paul Gascoigne was a sad story to watch, but a salutary lesson for those who see only the positives in fame.

The lovable Geordie lit up the football world but these days his only headlines relate to his drink problem – he almost died during a recent rehab stint in the US when he suffered a serious reaction to his bid to go cold turkey and was rushed to hospital.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.