Gazza tackles his demons -- and hits the back of the net
THREE years ago, Jane Preston made an ITV documentary called Being Paul Gascoigne. It was a heartbreaking chronicle of the slowmotion car crash that had become the postfootball life of the man most of us know as Gazza (right), chronicling his apparently losing battle with alcohol addiction and other personal travails.
But now Preston has made this follow-up documentary, which is getting a limited but richly deserved theatrical release. It was done at Gascoigne’s urging, because he felt the last film was too downbeat, telling the story of Gazza the victim, not Gazza the success. It did not reflect the great joy that his playing career brought — if not always to himself.
For anyone who loves football it’s a pleasure to watch, largely because Gascoigne, who contributes his memories throughout, along with other prominent footie folk including Jose Mourinho, Wayne Rooney and Gary Lineker, is not the raddled wreck that we know
from too many snatched newspaper photographs. He looks fine, sounds as intelligible as that thick Gateshead accent allows, and tells some sparkling anecdotes.
Some of them, however, are more troubling than he realises, among them the tale of why, as a young Newcastle United player on the cusp of greatness, he didn’t join Manchester United after assuring manager Alex Ferguson that he would.
It was because Tottenham Hotspur, rivals for his coveted signature, offered to throw in a house for his parents if he would enlist with them, and when he told his father about the offer, the old man asked what he was waiting for. Like far too many others down the years, his own family treated Gazza like a winning lottery ticket.
Indeed, his dad told him to go back and ask for a car as well. Then his sister came on the phone and said, ‘if Mam’s getting a house from them, and Dad’s getting a car, I want a sunbed’.
It’s a funny story, but as a modern footballing parable it’s also unspeakably sad. Not least because, had Gascoigne been gathered under Ferguson’s protective wing, he might not have been allowed to fly quite so close to the sun.
■ Shooting For Socrates is another football film, the lightly fictionalised account of little Northern Ireland’s journey to the 1986 World Cup finals in Mexico, where they were predictably humbled by mighty Brazil, captained by the dazzlingly glamorous Socrates.
The adventure is set against the backdrop of the Troubles back home, where nineyear-old Tommy (Art Parkinson, a highly promising young actor fresh from avoiding falling skyscrapers in the disaster movie San Andreas) learns from his da’ (Richard Dormer) that football can unite folk across the religious divide.
Meanwhile, inspirational but grumpy manager Billy Bingham (John Hannah) cashes in shamelessly on the team’s success, even charging his players for suncream. Can that be true? Bingham is still around, a phone call away from a solicitor, so it had better be.
Shooting For Socrates has plenty going for it, and scarves aloft for the casting director, who somehow found decent actors who actually resemble the footballers they are representing. But it’s an uneven film, slickly done one minute, downright amateurish the next.
It is easy enough to see what writerdirector James Erskine is aiming for; a heartwarmer like Gregory’s Girl or Bend It Like Beckham, laced with gentle comedy but also a sharp dose of sectarianism.
Does he find his target? Let’s just say he hits the post.