The Gazza Strip Show continues at Channel Four
(Gazza: Bombed again…)
Paul “Gazza” Gascoine was one of the most talented English football (or soccer) players of his generation.
He also was and still is a stupid fuck-up. The kind of professional train wreck that can only be compared with the likes of Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse.
He had talent and he wasted it. He let his team mates, his fans and his country down during a world cup, when his poor discipline lost them the chance to win that tournament.
Much more seriously though, his stupidity and alcohol addiction hurt his family. He beat up his wife, neglected his children and broke more promises to his nearest and supposedly dearest than he ever scored goals during his sporting career.
So, of course, Channel Four, the broadcasting pimp house that also gave us Big brother, is doing a documentary tonight, called ‘Surviving Gazza’. (Even the cynical C4 crowd did not dare title it ‘Saving Gazza’, in the end.)
As a Times article shows, his twelve years’ old son, Regan, is already in the ’survival’ mode - which is probably for the best:
“Gascoigne is already approaching or at the point where he is beyond salvation. The cruellest words of all those that will be broadcast this evening will come from his 12-year-old son, Regan, who tells the television cameras that “I don’t think there’s any point in helping him” and that “he’s probably going to die soon”.”
Of course, millions of people - much encouraged by the media - still talk about this whole sorry mess as if it were a profound tragedy; one of those Greek tragedies, obviously, where a virtuous but flawed hero comes to a tragic end.
The not so subtle subtext to this way of thinking is that by having a certain talent, one automatically becomes a hero. Which is, of course, a nonsense. None of the strengths or virtues of any potential hero matters if he does not overcome a certain amount of problems and bravely faces enormous challenges.
Gascoine was, as I already said, a fuck up. A greedy, stupid little man who squandered the one talent that he had been given. He didn’t overcome or face up to any of his private demons: He surrendered to them, every bloody time. Colleagues, friends and family gave him chance after chance after chance, to change his self-destructive ways and save his stupid arse. He refused to do so, every single time.
This makes for a domestic tragedy, yes - and if we must partake in yet another bout of public grieving, let us do so for Gascoine’s immediate family and (what is left of his) friends.
For the man himself, I can only think of (paraphrasing) one fitting epitaph, written by a man who knew a thing or two about real tragedies, and real heroes:
“I come to bury Gascoine, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones”
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