Gazza: My Story

by Paul Gascoigne

  Unbeknown to me, Shel had rung him and told him about the state I was in and where I was. Bryan had immediately jumped in his car and driven all the way from Middlesbrough to Hertfordshire to rescue me. I’m so grateful to him for doing that. And grateful to Shel for making that call.

  Not that I knew much about what was happening at the time. I didn’t really take in what Bryan was saying to me, or what he was explaining about what he was going to do. I wasn’t aware of anything, really. I was out of it. He dragged me into his car and we drove off. The next thing I remember was arriving at a big white building. It was the Priory, in south-west London – one of the country’s leading private psychiatric hospitals, famous for treating celebrities for eating disorders, alcoholism and drug abuse, among other things – though I didn’t know that till several days later.

  They knocked me out for about four days, gave me tablets, tried to detox me. When I returned to some level of consciousness, they put me on a twenty-four-hour watch, fearing I might still be suicidal, that I might jump out of the window. I still didn’t know what was going on, or quite where I was, or why. When I eventually sobered up, I asked what was happening. It was then that I was told I was in the Priory, suffering from alcoholism and depression, and that they were going to make me better.

  Shel came to visit me. Of course, as I always did when I was at a low point, I asked if there was a chance she’d have me back, if I could come and live with her. She said no. She said I was an alcoholic, and I had to be cured before we could even discuss it.

  I shouted at her, ‘I’m not a fucking alcoholic!’ I refused to admit it to myself or to anyone else. For the next few days, I just stayed in my room.

  One day there was a loud knock on my door, and someone was shouting that I had a visitor. I called out, ‘Fuck off. I don’t want to see anybody. Go away.’ But the hammering and banging went on and eventually I opened the door. The visitor was none other than the rock legend Eric Clapton. A real fucking legend. Not like me. And he’d come to see me? He said he’d heard I was here and that he’d been through a similar thing himself. I was so touched that he’d bothered to come and talk to me, and it helped a lot, just listening to his own experiences.

  While I was in the Priory, one of the things they did was get me to answer about fifty questions about my life and habits. I thought I’d just lie, make it all up, that they wouldn’t catch me out. I reckoned I knew what they were trying to do. If you answered half the questions in a certain way, it would prove something or other. I responded to about thirty-five of the questions, making things up or hiding the truth, but it didn’t seem to make much difference. They still said the answers proved I was an alcoholic.

  I continued to deny it. I felt I could control my drinking. I only did it when I got depressed, to give myself a nice buzz, to blot out all the bad things in my head. I didn’t call that being an alcoholic. I didn’t even like alcohol much.

  As I began to feel a bit better, I took part in various activities. I organised five-a-side football games and quite enjoyed myself. I felt safe in the Priory. But at the same time, I still did not believe I was an alcoholic, so I did not accept what they said about me or the ways they were trying to help me.

  I should have stayed there longer. Everyone told me that, Bryan as well as all the experts, but I was fed up with it. I didn’t think it was doing much for me. They didn’t seem to really understand my problems. Or perhaps I wasn’t giving them a proper chance.

  It costs a fortune to stay in the Priory, about £20,000 a month, but that wasn’t the reason I wanted out quickly. You’re supposed to stay in for twenty-eight days, and Robbo had said I had to finish the whole course, that was the point of it. But after three weeks I was begging to be let out, and I left before I had had the full benefit of the course. I was determined to show that I was not an alcoholic, that I could stay off the booze if I really wanted to. I could do it all by myself.

  I should have been going regularly to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. I managed only about three. I wouldn’t admit I was an alcoholic; instead I vowed to stay off the drink, never again to touch another drop. I know that when I put my mind to something, I can do it. It’s just another form of excess, after all. I was resolute about staying sober, even over the Christmas period, whatever happened.

  But I’d left the Priory still full of anger. I was angry at what they were telling me, that I was an alcoholic. I was saying no, no, I’m not, that’s not my problem, and they were saying yes, I was now an alcoholic.

  “Genius alone does not make for the Gazza Factor. The Gazza Factor is something strange and capricious and delightful. It cannot be contrived and it cannot be controlled. Any sport that has a Gazza Factor must revel in it and hope that the effect lasts.”

  Simon Barnes, The Times, 24 September 1997

  24

  BINGES AND BREAKS AT BORO

  I missed only two games during my stay in the Priory, far fewer than Tony Adams and Paul Merson were absent for when they had had treatment for alcoholism. I suppose I looked upon football as the best cure, the one aspect of my life that has always kept me focused, cleared my head of all my worries and phobias, allowed me to escape from my worst self.

  I returned at least half a stone lighter, in time for the game at home on 1 November against Nottingham Forest. I was given a thunderous reception from the Boro fans. The match was being shown live on TV and the commentators made me Man of the Match. I could sense the crowd wanting me to play well, out of sympathy as much as anything else, and I think I did. We managed a 1–1 draw. When I came off, ten minutes before the end, I shook hands with Chris Bart-Williams of Forest, embraced his team-mate Scot Gemmill and even went to the Forest bench to shake hands with them. I was just so relieved to be playing football again – when I might well have thrown myself under a train on Stevenage Station, though of course no one in the crowd, or anyone else for that matter, knew about that.

  In the next game we were away to Southampton. The team was due to fly down from Teesside Airport. I wanted to drive, but it wasn’t possible. I hated the idea of flying without a drink to steady my nerves, so it was tough for me, but I managed it.

  I scored from a twenty-five-yard free kick and then, from another of my free kicks, Southampton headed in an own goal. I also set up our equalising goal and it finished 3–3. Afterwards, Bryan Robson said I had been fantastic, that it had been the best game I had played for Boro so far.

  In early December we met Newcastle at home. I’d been seeing Shel again, and we’d spent a weekend in a hotel in Glasgow. We were getting on well and, of course, the fact that I was staying sober helped enormously. Mason and Regan were mascots for that game. Regan was about two at the time. He wore a number 8 shirt with ‘Regan’ on the back and scored a goal when we were warming up (Middlesbrough goalie Mark Schwarzer kindly moved aside to give him a helping hand). We got another draw, 2–2, but I had another good game and the papers were starting to speculate that Hoddle was thinking of bringing me back into the England squad.

  For our next game, in which we beat West Ham 1–0, John Gorman turned up, which seemed a good sign. By Christmas, Boro were lying fourth in the league after an eleven-match unbeaten run, about the highest they’d ever been. I spent that Christmas at a Loch Lomond hotel with Shel and the children. I was beginning to think she might take me back again.

  Middlesbrough had a poor run in January and February, getting stuffed 5–0 by Everton only a couple of months after we’d beaten Man United at Old Trafford. But I was still sober, and so was Jimmy. He’d come off the booze as well and had lost four stone. We looked everywhere for it. He was now so gorgeous and attractive that the Daily Star fixed him up with a Star Bird for the weekend. She was a stunner, though no more gorgeous than Jimmy.

  In February 1999, Kevin Keegan took over as England manager, initially just for four games. Everyone said that was good news for me, that I would be back in the squad. I had played with Kevin years back at Newcastle, but I knew
that would not make any difference, or make him fancy me more. Still, I was quietly hopeful. Especially as Keegan was saying publicly that he was having trouble finding a creative midfield player apart from me. And the team wasn’t doing so well, either.

  Boro improved towards the end of the season and we finished ninth in the league, which was pretty good, considering we had only come up that season and there had been talk at one time of relegation. I made twenty-six league appearances and scored three goals, which wasn’t bad, given that I’d had a few injuries as well as a spell in the Priory.

  As the end of the season approached, I started drinking again. I stuck to soft drinks when I was out in public but at home on my own I was drinking vodka, which I hoped no one would smell on my breath. I had been taking antidepressants and other pills to calm me down, but they were beginning to make me feel worse, not better, and I thought maybe a quiet drink of vodka would help.

  The relationship with Shel was all off again so in the summer I went off with Jimmy and some other pals to Portugal, which was not exactly the best way of staying off the booze. But it was summer, it was holiday time, and I had managed to stay completely sober for nine long months, which showed I could do it.

  In August, in London, I met up with Hugh Grant, Liz Hurley and Liam Gallagher and various other stars at a film premiere, and that led to a few drinks. I did have several nights on the binge, which upset Bryan Robson when it made the press. And it didn’t impress Kevin Keegan, either. Then yet another kiss-and-tell story appeared. Some Newcastle waitress gave me 11 out of 10 for my performance in bed, which was much better than Ruud Gullit’s, apparently. She gave him only 7 out of 10. It was mostly bollocks, but of course all the papers started hounding me again, to see what I was up to and find out if I was seeing any girls.

  The new season started well enough, for me anyway, but poor Jimmy got into some bother. Like me, he’d been off the booze for over six months, but one evening he fell out with his girlfriend and had six pints. On the way home, these kids started shouting ‘fat bastard’ at him, and it really upset him. He went home, got his gun and ran at them with it, just to frighten them. It wasn’t even loaded. Next thing he knows, there’s a helicopter overhead and the police are looking for this mad gunman running wild. Jimmy legged it, throwing the gun in a hedge. When they cordoned off the area and caught him, he showed them where the gun was.

  He went to the magistrates’ court and it was chaos. About thirty press and TV people turned up. Then he had to go to the crown court. We had lots of character witnesses lined up for him, including Chris Evans. In spite of their support, he was sentenced to six months for threatening behaviour and possessing a firearm without a licence. I helped with his legal costs and he appealed and got his sentence reduced to three months. He spent eight weeks in Pentonville Prison. He says he made some good mates inside, who knew all about him, but no, he wouldn’t like to go through it again.

  The next thing was Shel deciding to tell her story in the Sun, all about how I beat her up, threw things at her in Italy, tried to control her. ‘I know people think I stayed with Paul because of the money,’ she wrote. ‘But I can honestly say I kept trying to make it work because I loved him and because I thought I could be the woman who would save him.’ She also said I didn’t like myself and would probably never be happy. That might be true.

  But I was furious about all the personal details she was revealing about me. I would never have done that to her. We had divorced, and I had given her a fortune, and was still paying her a fortune, but even so I was trying to see her at regular intervals, for Regan’s sake. I didn’t want him harmed by all this, and I didn’t want Bianca and Mason to read all this private stuff about me and Shel. Even if they didn’t, I knew what would happen at school when the other kids read it.

  She wasn’t doing it for personal gain. All the money was going to Refuge, the organisation to help battered women. That was all very well, but I was still extremely upset. I got my lawyers to try to stop the rest of the serialisation. At one point she was also planning to be interviewed on TV by Martin Bashir, who did that notorious interview with Princess Diana. The judge agreed that she had to stop revealing details in the Sun of my personal relationships with her and her children. They did print more, but with some paragraphs blanked out. No wonder I was tempted to have a drink or three, with all that going on. And no wonder I wasn’t playing so well. And taking more antidepressants. Once again, I had to put up with rival fans shouting at me, ‘Gazza beats his wife.’ I was tempted to pack it all in and emigrate to the USA, get away from everything. Forget Shel and the family for ever.

  But I knew that football was my only hope, so I had to keep going. I was doing well enough, in patches, for Fulham to come in and make an offer for me, to help their bid for promotion to the Premiership just as I had helped Boro.

  Before our home game in February 2000 against Aston Villa, which Kevin Keegan was coming to watch, Villa’s George Boateng was quoted as saying he was going to mark me out of the match. I knew this was just the papers stirring things, to wind me up. Towards half-time, I was in a tussle with Boateng near the centre circle, and I flung out my arm at him, hitting him on the head. I apologised, as of course I hadn’t meant to actually injure him. But I was just over-eager after two months out and what I’d done, once again, was hurt myself. I felt my arm go and feared I’d broken it. I was stretchered off and went to hospital for tests.

  They gave me oxygen in the ambulance, I was in such a state. I remember counting the bumps in the road. At the hospital, one of the nurses looking after me chatted to me about how she was fundraising for this hospice. I thought that was amazing, helping sick people in her work time, and in her spare time as well. I somehow managed to get my Boro shirt off my back, despite my damaged arm, and signed it for her, to be auctioned for the hospice.

  From the hospital, I got a call through to Paul Merson. I worked out that he would probably be on the Villa coach by that time, and so he was. After he’d asked me how I was, I said it was George Boateng I wanted to talk to. I apologised again to George for what I’d done, explaining that I hadn’t wanted to hurt him, and that anyway it had been my arm that had caught him, not my elbow. He told me not to worry. He understood. It had been an accident, and I’d come off worst.

  After a lot of tests, I was allowed home. But all night I was in agony. I just lay there in my big, rented house, and in the middle of the night I was in such pain that I dialled 999 and asked for an ambulance to come and take me back to hospital. They said they didn’t have any. I dialled 999 again and asked for the police this time, begging them to take me to hospital. They said it wasn’t their job, I should get a taxi. But there were no taxis available locally at that time of night. In the end I just took a load of painkillers and suffered all night.

  Next morning when I went into the club, Gordon McQueen asked me how I was. I said fine – apart from a broken arm.

  It was broken, too. I had to have an operation to have a pin put in and I was out for over six weeks.

  Idiots in the papers who knew nothing about football, or me, like David Mellor, slagged me off, taking the opportunity to lay into what they considered an easy target. It’s not brilliant journalism to do that to people when they’re down. We can all do that. I was much more upset when several players were quoted as saying it was one of the worst fouls they had seen, even Gary Mabbutt, whom I’d always thought of as such a fair person. More than that, he was a friend, and I’d done a lot for his testimonial. But I know exactly how it happens. A reporter rings you up and asks a slanted question, and you grunt some sort of reply, or even just half-listen while they grind on. If you don’t clearly disagree, you immediately have words put into your mouth that you never actually said.

  But the worst consequence was the fact that I was hauled up before the FA, given a three-match suspension for misconduct and fined £5,000.

  After a few weeks with the plaster on, I couldn’t stand it any longer and I took it o
ff myself, with a bread knife in the kitchen. I made such a thorough job of it that I also took off some of my skin, and had to have stitches.

  When I got back to full training, it wasn’t long before I collided with Curtis Fleming and thought I’d broken something again. I went to hospital for an X-ray, but this time all was OK. Phew. All the same, my season ended in a bit of a mess, as I’d missed so much, what with the broken arm and all the aggravation and legal worries over Shel’s outpourings in the Sun.

  In spite of the Sun business, in the close season, I took Shel and all three children to Dubai for a holiday. How could I do that, after what she had done to me? Yeah, it made my advisers despair. I just so wanted to have a happy family, and I was desperate to keep in touch with Regan. And I never like being on my own, especially on holiday.

  “You tell me where you can find any really adventurous midfield players who can change a game in a moment or make a goal out of nothing? After Gazza, it is difficult to come up with another name.”

  Kevin Keegan, England manager, The Sunday Times, 13 June 1999

  “I was sorry to see Gazza go. He is probably the kindest man I’ve ever met in football. I had a golf day and he gave me his putter to auction, which he’d had since he was in the 1990 World Cup squad. Everton won’t change him – he’ll do things that will wind them up, but deep down there’s a heart of gold.”

  Robbie Mustoe, Middlesbrough player, 2000

  25

  EVERTON AND ARIZONA

  My time at Boro wasn’t wasted. I got to meet Tony Blair when he came to open the club’s new training ground. We all had to be there at a certain time to meet him. I was put to work on the treadmill, ready for his arrival, so he could see how it worked.