Paul Gascoigne came to my club, Glasgow Rangers in the mid 90's and stayed for three years. I have to tell you he was absolutely brilliant most of that time and one of my favourite memories is going with my brother and dad to see Rangers clinch the title at their home stadium with Gascoigne scoring a brilliant hat trick on the day.
This two hour documentary shown in two parts documents his rise and fall from grace starting with his humble beginnings playing for his home team of Newcastle and then progressing stratospherically to Tottenham Hotspur and Lazio as well as receiving international recognition from England at a young age. He certainly was a supremely talented footballer with an attendant reputation as a joker and carouser, the question always was could he stay on the straight and narrow and do justice to his talent...
He became a national hero to the English public when he was caught on camera, reacting tearfully to collecting a booking in the World Cup semi-final which meant he would miss the final if the team qualified. Actually England lost the game on a penalty shootout but the emotion which Gascoigne showed on the pitch at this low point in his career endeared him to the public at large as well as garnering him massive personal publicity turning him into a front page rather than just back-page media personality.
His career had many ups and downs although the fans seemed to love him wherever he went. Away from the pitch he couldn't find happiness, entering into a tempestuous personal relationship with his later wife but all the while still playing the lad, which often meant drinking to excess and generally acting the fool all in front of the full media and public gaze.
The low point in his personal life was undoubtedly when he admitted to hitting his wife while staying at the Gleneagles Hotel, while in his professional life, it was probably being dropped by England manager Glenn Hoddle from his country's 1996 Euro squad.
I don't think Gascoigne ever actively courted controversy, indeed it's obvious that he was targeted by the gutter press as an easy target for cheap news stories. It wasn't surprising to me to see Rebekka Wade, the disgraced but since rehabilitated News International executive, acting as the vulture circling over his fast fading marriage.
Watching these two programmes I felt they rather accelerated their way through Gascoigne's life and career to get to the meaty stuff. There was little about his development as a young footballer and playing at an early age alongside the likes of Kevin Keegan and the young Chris Waddle in the talented Newcastle team of the time.
I certainly can't and won't condone some of his unpardonable actions off the pitch and am sure he regrets them too, but considering the media-onslaught he endured, it's almost impossible not to feel some sympathy for his plight, especially when subjected to the "News Of The World's" illegal, not to mention vile phone-hacking journalistic practices.
For the closing scene at the end of the two hours we see a rather gaunt, almost vacant-looking man walking straight to the camera from a spot where he's just been fishing. Now in his mid-50s, he seems to pass his time enjoyably enough fishing on his own. It's a striking, almost shocking image of this one-time national hero now turned damaged individual, finding perhaps some consolation in relative anonymity.
We see in Gascoigne attributes similar to other self-destructive sporting fellow-mavericks such as the genius Northern Irish winger George Best or that same country's snooker champion Alex "Hurricane" Higgins. As Gazza falteringly approaches the camera for that stark, final shot, a subtitle informs us that he now lives alone somewhere on the south coast. I for one hope that he can cope on his own and lives out his days in relative peace and quiet.
Although the programme inevitably missed out chunks of his life and has no current interview footage with Gascoigne himself, or, unsurprisingly, key figures like his ex-wife Sheryl or Rebekka Wade, I think it did a good enough job of presenting this complicated and conflicted individual in such a way as to make it possible for the viewer to make up their mind about him one way or the other.
I think I know where I stand on that question.
