TV & Radio

Gazza: It was like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest with Gazza as Jack Nicholson

TV review: The first of this two-part series about Paul Gascoigne reeks of deja vu

Gazza tackles the triumph and tragedy of Paul Gascoigne. Photograph: Stu Forster/Getty Images

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Ed Power
Wed Apr 13 2022 - 22:00

World Cup star, court jester, gap-toothed sacrificial lamb of British tabloid culture – the Paul Gascoigne story has it all. And in Gazza (BBC Two, 9pm) director Sam Collins tackles the triumph and tragedy as Gascoigne journeys from the highs of an Italia 90 semi-final to the lows of nightclub punch-ups and red-top notoriety. It’s Shakespeare in a baggy 1990s tracksuit.

But if the story is unique, Gazza nevertheless reeks of deja vu. That may be because Collins has plumbed for the same found footage style of documentary-making pioneered by Oscar-winner Asif Kapadia in his films about Amy Winehouse and Diego Maradona.

It’s the Maradona parallels that chime especially loudly throughout part one of Gazza. They even briefly clash on the pitch, when Gascoigne’s Lazio meet the ailing Maradona’s Seville in Europe.

Gazza, we learn, arrived at the match after absconding to EuroDisney with his family, turning up late for kick-off exhausted and hungover (possibly still under the influence). Inevitably, having waddled about pointlessly for most of the game, there is a moment of genius, as he slices through the Seville defence and plants the ball in the corner of the net. Later, he admits he has no recollection of scoring.

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Gascoigne doesn’t participate in the film. There are interviews with his sister Anna, his friend, the glamour model, Linda Lusardi and former personal assistant Jane Nottage. None appears on camera, however, with director Collins instead knitting together old news coverage to construct a narrative of Gazza as a little boy cast adrift in the tooth-and-claw world of 1990s celebrity.

There was a tendency in the 1990s to portray him as a scissors-kicking savant – a genius on the pitch who could hardly string two words together off it

“He was very sensitive – he wanted to be loved,” says his business adviser Mel Stein. “We weren’t sophisticated or experienced enough to know how cruel the press can be. We all became paranoid about media.”

A more dramatic picture is painted by his Spurs team-mate Paul Stewart. “It was like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” he says of Gascoigne and his entourage. “With Gazza as Jack Nicholson.”

And yet, as with Kapadia’s Diego Maradona there is a blank void at the heart of the picture. We see where Gazza came from and how he carried into adulthood demons from a troubled childhood dominated by a distant father. But Gascoigne himself remains a mystery. There was a tendency in the 1990s to portray him as a scissors-kicking savant – a genius on the pitch who could hardly string two words together off it. And if that was obviously a classist caricature, Gazza doesn’t go far enough in picking through the cliches and giving us a glimpse of the man behind the cheeky chappy persona.

Still, there is some glorious on-field action (though my hopes of seeing footage of Gascoigne laughing at the referee who dared book him when Spurs played Cork City at a tumble-down Musgrave Park in July 1989 are dashed). He dances past defenders, scoring from impossible angles and pinging passes about as if possessing an understanding of time and space beyond that of mere mortals.

But even here, the darkness bubbles up. Clashing with Roy Keane’s Nottingham Forest in the 1991 FA Cup final, Gascoigne put in two suicidal tackles that could have ended the careers of the opposing players – and succeeded only in doing a job on himself (“We were just watching a tragedy unfold,” says Mel Stein).

'He was being used and abused. I don't think he had the stability to deal with it'

That was less than a year after the World Cup semi-final, at which he cruelly received his second yellow card of the tournament. That meant missing the final in the event of England defeating Germany. Tears flowed, Gazza fell apart, England lost in penalties (Chris Waddle, who scuffed the final spot kick, had stepped in for the disconsolate Gascoigne).

Many of those close to Gascoigne profess to having seen his downfall coming and to have feared for his wellbeing. And yet, in the moment, one of the few to warn him was, of all people, Terry Wogan.

“We have a tradition in this country: as soon as you become enormously successful there reaches a point where they decide we’re going to knock him off the parapet,” he tells a beaming Gascoigne, when the footballer is a guest on Wogan’s chat show. “It could turn out to be a nightmare.”

And a nightmare is what it became (the alcoholism, violent rages and arrests for assault will be unpacked in part two). “He was being used and abused,” concludes Linda Lusardi. “I don’t think he had the stability to deal with it.”