Gascoigne still wallowing in self-pity
LONDON — The instruction is to meet Paul Gascoigne at 11:21 a.m., and not a minute earlier or later, inside Suite 82 of London’s Langham Hotel. Usually it is the prerogative of rockstars and temperamental Hollywood lushes to demand treatment such as this. But it transpires that even a soccer player who retired more than a decade ago, and whose every public incarnation since has carried a powerful undercurrent of tragedy, can have his diva-like moments.
At the appointed minute, Gascoigne appears in his full lounge-lizard glory. What hair he has left after years of destructive excess has been violently slicked back and paired with a grey goatee beard. A cream-coloured jacket, with a chunky silver chain poking out from under the right sleeve, is juxtaposed with the type of pale denim jeans that might once have drawn disdainful glances from the doormen here.
Gascoigne is promoting a film about his life and this, to borrow a term from the PR industry, is the junket. Almost immediately, he declares: “I can answer any question you want. Any in the world — I haven’t got a problem with it. I took cocaine. I got divorced. I’ve been in rehab. I fell down in the street drunk. I’ve had important, famous people ringing me up. I’ve scored great goals. I’ve been in car crashes. I can’t think of anything else. Well, I haven’t banged Miss World.”
His face lights upi n aluminous, lascivious grin. Clearly, I have caught Gascoigne on one of his better days, one where he is not wallowing in the despair of his alcoholism but revelling in what he perceives as the unhinged hedonism of it all.
Burrow deeper, though, and there is a torture behind the candour. Why, I ask, did the concept of making a film appeal? The reply is shot through with self-pity and more than a trace of a persecution complex.
“The fact that I have sued every newspaper meant that I couldn’t get my stuff out,” he says. “You can’t talk to someone when you’re suing them. I just wanted to get my point across about what it’s like to live the life of Paul Gascoigne. How many lies have been written about me, about the things that have happened to me and what I sometimes put myself through? People need to realize that I am human. I’m not some superhero. Don’t think that everything said about me passes over my head, because it doesn’t ...
“In England, it’s great becoming famous and then as soon as you’re famous they knock you down. They do it to everybody. And I have had to cope with a hell of a lot in my life.”
That last statement is true enough. Gascoigne’s has been an existence of epic indulgence and endless precariousness. One would imagine that no big-screen treatment could do it justice, and director Jane Preston’s tender biopic does not attempt to.
It luxuriates in his innate talent with a football, best freeze-framed by his sumptuous goal for England against Scotland at Euro ’96, but excises much of the dark epilogue to his career. A document of his wanton road to ruin is sacrificed in favour of a fond celebration of his more absurd escapades, not least the time he took an ostrich with him to a Tottenham training session.
Surely, a personality like Gascoigne — eager to be caricatured as lovable rogue, but pathologically anxious about intimations of anything more sinister — must be delighted at the film’s depiction. “I haven’t seen it,” he says. “No, I don’t need to, because I did it.”
Gascoigne gives off the air of a man who believes he is unfairly traduced. “Sometimes, journalists won’t give you a chance. Every time I moved up a level and felt back to myself, I got knocked down again. It has happened so often, and a guy can only take so much. ... I deal with things as best I can, but it’s the lies people print that can follow me all over the place.”
If you are starting to suspect Gascoigne is a touch paranoid, you would be right. At 48, Gazza is apparently so terrified by the idea of his name being in the news he claims to have a panic attack every time he sees a headline about the Gaza Strip.
Gascoigne has endured so much self-induced anguish that it can be hard to pick out a low point. But he is unambiguous, reflecting upon one episode so grim that he refers to it as his own death: three years ago in the U.S. during rehab.
“They put me to sleep for 18 days, I was so far gone with shaking. I woke up, asking, ‘Where am I?’ That was the scariest point. They couldn’t detox me and the only way they could keep me alive was to inject my heart and lungs. Everything after that is a relief. I knew that I couldn’t mess about with it anymore.
“When I was drinking, I didn’t think of that. I was just enjoying myself. But there’s nothing worse than becoming sad and then starting to drink on it. I was never depressed, though, that’s just an excuse. I was just miserable drinking. I isolated myself, and I shouldn’t do that, because I know that I have a lot to give people — and that others have a lot to give me.”
Gascoigne — brilliant player, feckless boozer and now, implausibly, film star — is belatedly preparing to step back from the precipice.