The sadness of Gazza...a lost boy who seems beyond help
PAUL GASCOIGNE was not present when Tottenham’s gorgeous new ground officially opened on Wednesday night. How could he be?
What role is there for the former player whose memory inspires such affection but whose reality turns any occasion into a logistical nightmare?
It was Gascoigne, not Tottenham, who announced his participation in a test-event game against Inter Milan legends at the weekend. The club would have loved to make him part of the fanfare but nothing can be guaranteed around Gascoigne anymore.
He was supposed to be part of the closing ceremony at White Hart Lane but did not show and this time Tottenham did not want such a positive occasion to be overshadowed by another round of Where’s Gazza? If he made it, then that would make a wonderful surprise. If he didn’t, well nobody could miss what they did not know was happening. Then Gascoigne (right) performed his own reveal and everybody was on tenterhooks for the rest of the week.
He was always random but at 51 the years of addiction have taken their toll. Having overcome the issue of whether he will turn up, how he turns up is now just as unpredictable. unfortunately, on this occasion, he arrived injured and could play no more than a cameo role. His old team-mates loved seeing him again, as did the fans, but the club?
Addicts who struggle with recovery can be extraordinarily demanding company. It’s like the life and soul of the party. Those types are fun but sometimes everyone relaxes a little more when they’ve moved on to the next gig. The days when it was thought Tottenham could help Gascoigne, give his life meaning post-football have long gone.
He will always be there in spirit at Tottenham’s new home because the cockerel that stands atop the mighty Park Lane end bears his highly- individual signature. It is a replica of the one at White Hart Lane, right down to
the dent Gascoigne put in it with an air rifle one day. The sort of prank that is hysterical if you’re his team-mate, less so if you are the stadium administrator who has to explain why the club’s emblem is missing its head.
There are a hundred stories like that and many are wonderful. Robbie Keane no doubt spoke for many when he revealed Gascoigne had his legendary team-mates in stitches on the bus on the way to the match. ‘A story about a pheasant,’ Keane said, but wouldn’t divulge more. Firearms may have been involved this time, too. They often were. And ostriches. And stolen — or acquired, shall we say — vehicles. Gascoigne had a talent for comic mayhem that was second to none.
There is a chapter devoted to him in Danny Baker’s second autobiography, Going Off Alarming, that recounts a journey from Shepherd’s Bush to Park Lane. Stuck in traffic, Gascoigne leaves the taxi and persuades the driver of a London double-decker bus, complete with cheering passengers, to let him take the wheel. He then leaves the bus to engage with construction workers who allow him to use their pneumatic drill to dig up the road and he abandons the drill to commandeer a stranger’s chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce the rest of the way.
‘Whenever I have told friends this story, I inwardly wonder whether, like most men’s tales, it has become polished and embellished over the years,’ Baker writes. ‘But it hasn’t. Paul Gascoigne really did drive a London bus full of people around Marble Arch in broad daylight.’ It was more than 20 years ago and what has unfolded since has been more car crash than joy ride.
Whenever Gascoigne the footballer resurfaced in any conventional environment it used to be asked why the game could not do more for him. The duty of care rested with his former clubs — Tottenham, Newcastle, Rangers — and the Football Association.
Those calls have dried as Gascoigne’s behaviour has become more alienating. The clubs are in an impossible bind. Tottenham, certainly, tried to help on several occasions but without long-term rewards or results and the erratic nature of Gascoigne’s illness, even ambassadorial employment is impossible.
It was fondly imagined his indulgence of children and brilliance with a ball might find expression in an academy or community programme, but safeguarding issues leave no room for manoeuvre. This is a man who was sectioned under the Mental Health Act and is currently facing trial for alleged sexual assault. Equally, the hospitality lounges are no place for an individual who cannot be around drink, particularly as society’s strange relationship with celebrity means there are folk only too happy to accompany him to the bar, despite what they know.
Dimitar Berbatov and David Ginola were among Tottenham’s legends on Sunday, Javier Zanetti played for Inter Milan, Jurgen Klinsmann switched between the sides, Jose Mourinho was on the touchline. Yet Gascoigne’s brief appearance was, by common consent, the highlight of the afternoon. It drew the biggest cheer and overwhelming warmth. Yet with the love comes a feeling of powerlessness, of a lost boy, beyond help.
The bitterest irony is that in truly tragic circumstances football would know exactly what to do. They would have stands and suites to rename, statues to build, the legacy of Paul Gascoigne would be working overtime. It is just the man that eludes them: the pitiful little dent in their golden, gleaming cockerel.