Paul Gascoigne’s tell-all memoir is one of the most candid you will ever read. In yesterday’s extract he talked of his utter desolation following his descent into alcoholism. Today, in the final part of our serialisation, the troubled star talks of his (often hilarious) encounters with pop stars and royalty…
Sitting on the balcony at the Chelsea Harbour Hotel in London, sipping on a glass of wine, I answered the phone to Robbie Williams who was calling from the room above mine.
He was organising the 2006 Soccer Aid tournament in which I was about to take part. Held in aid of UNICEF, it would see teams of celebs and ex-footballers battling it out on the pitch but it wasn’t that Robbie wanted to discuss as he invited me up for a drink.
First, he started rapping his new song Rudebox and asked if I thought it would be a hit. I didn’t understand a word of the lyrics, they sounded absolutely mental to me, but I said: ‘Yeah, that will win, that will. Number One!’
When it was released later that year it was a bit of a flop in the UK, but it did reach the top of the charts in Italy, Germany and Switzerland, so I wasn’t completely wrong.
Our conversation soon turned to a more serious subject.
‘How much did you lose in your divorce, Gazza?’ he asked, referring to my split from my wife Sheryl eight years previously.
‘A canny bit of money,’ I told him. ‘Maybe more than three million.’
Robbie Williams and Paul Gascoigne on the pitch at Soccer Aid in 2006
‘Ah, f****** hell,’ he said. ‘Just wait here, I’m going to the toilet.’
When he came back, he handed me a bit of paper and said: ‘Here’s a present for you.’
I gasped when I realised it was a cheque for £3million.
‘I can’t accept that,’ I told him and, though it pained me, I ripped it up into tiny pieces and put it in the bin.
‘It’s all right, Robbie,’ I said. ‘I don’t need it.’
Well, he got out his cheque book and wrote me another one, there and then, again, for three million quid.
‘Please, Gazza,’ he said. ‘Just take it and cash it in.’
I had too much dignity to accept his charity. But I could certainly have done with the money.
Angus Deayton, Paul Gascoigne, Robbie Williams and Ronnie O’Sullivan
Four years previously, the downturn in my career had seen me signing with the second-tier Lancashire team Burnley FC. I joined them from Everton where I’d been struggling with injuries which made me realise that, at 35, I just wasn’t the player I used to be.
I still loved to train, but on the pitch, I’d find myself barking at opponents: ‘You’re f****** lucky I am this age. Not so long ago, I would have torn you inside out.’
Depressed by my injuries and drinking heavily, I wasn’t prepared for my first real experience of a lower league club like Burnley.
I’d never even had to think about where my things got washed before. It was all taken care of for me. But at Burnley I had to pay an apprentice £5 a week to clean my boots, and £20 a month to wash my kit.
Neither did I enjoy Burnley’s style of football, which seemed to be mostly about kicking the ball as far as you could. In the privacy of my hotel, I’d break down in tears as I asked myself: ‘Why the hell am I still bothering?’ But I simply couldn’t contemplate a life without football – the idea was incomprehensible to me.
I only stayed two months, playing in just six games before deciding I’d like to go abroad, where I wasn’t as easily recognisable and I could get a bit of peace, away from the paparazzi and everyone else.
That’s how I ended up in the most polluted city in the entire world – Lanzhou, in deepest China, while playing for Gansu Tianma, the worst team in their Second Division.
I felt optimistic as I flew out to Hong Kong with my dad and my mate Jimmy ‘Five Bellies’ Gardner in March 2003, excited to begin a new chapter in my life.
Gascoigne with Katie Davies, who walked into court with him every day when he was on trial for sexual assault
I’d been at rehab in the Priory for a week to prepare but, unfortunately, I fell off the wagon at Heathrow Airport.
Me and my dad were terrified of flying and we fed off each other’s fear, which made it even scarier for us both, so during that 13-hour flight I allowed myself a few drinks and we all arrived in high spirits.
Although that wasn’t the best of starts, I hoped things would improve once I started playing with the team but I started getting through a bottle a day of a brand of Chinese liquor which is 100 proof, and one day I suffered a terrible panic attack ahead of a training session.
Sitting at the side of the pitch, with my head in my hands, I struggled to breathe as I wondered how it had come to this, and I lasted only eight weeks at the club before the SARS epidemic gave me the perfect excuse to leave.
Back home, despite brief stints with Boston United, a League Two side based in Lincolnshire, and Kettering Town in Northamptonshire, I had to face the fact that my footballing days were over and I was bereft. Football was all I knew.
In the years ahead, its absence left me with a void only booze and drugs could fill and, at one point, in 2008, I went on a cocaine binge for a month, travelling from hotel to hotel. For weeks, all I did was snort coke and down booze.
The final straw came as I lay on a hotel bed, eating a packet of wine gums. All of a sudden, one of them, I think it was a red one, appeared to spring to life and started to talk.
‘How are you Paul?’ said the wine gum.
‘I consider myself one of the best football players to have walked this Earth,’ writes Paul Gascoigne
‘Ah, s***,’ I thought to myself, ‘I really do need help.’
I called my dad and ended up getting sectioned, which was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. As you can imagine, I felt quite at home in the nut house, and it sobered me up, but it didn’t get rid of the root cause of my problems.
I eventually managed to get off the cocaine but I continued hitting the bottle and struggled to do much else. I had no one in my life but then I moved to Poole in Dorset, a place I’d fallen in love with after visiting a rehab facility in nearby Bournemouth.
One day, in 2014, I was in a coffee shop there when I met Katie, a young student. From the start, we simply hit it off as friends – there was never anything more between us, we just got on.
As our friendship deepened, Katie began to take on a more serious role in my life. One night, drunk and engulfed by an overwhelming misery, I rang her up and said: ‘Katie, I don’t want to do this any more. I don’t want to live.’
She dragged herself out of bed and drove round to my flat, cleared up the mess and put me to bed.
Katie could see I was in a dark place, struggling badly with the drink, and she helped me out a lot. I’d be sitting there, at 1am, needing a friend, and I’d ring her up. Bless her, she’d always come straight round in the middle of the night to check I was OK.
She got me out of the house, introduced me to the guy she was married to at the time, Matt, who also became a good friend, as well as her little boy Mason, just a toddler then.
Over the months and years which followed, they became like family to me and I even got tattoos of their names.
Katie has since become my manager, organising, among other things, the ‘Evening With Paul Gascoigne’ show which sees me telling all sorts of stories to theatre audiences, mainly about my personal life and my drunken escapades. She was also a tremendous support to me when I had a horrifying brush with the law in 2018.
This followed an incident on a train when two women asked if they could have a selfie with me. A bloke in the same carriage pointed to a large lass sitting nearby and said: ‘You don’t want a photo with her Gazza. She’s f****** fat and ugly.’
Now, I’ve had my fair share of fat jibes throughout the years, from the fans as well as managers, and I know how horrible it can be. When I feel as though someone is being bullied, my instinct is to stick up for them, protect them.
I will admit I perhaps didn’t go about this in the right way, but I sat next to this woman and gave her a peck on the mouth. ‘You’re not fat and ugly, darlin’,’ I said. ‘You’re beautiful, inside and out.’
That ended up with me being charged with sexual assault, leading to a terrifying 14 months of waiting before the case was brought to trial and I was found innocent. I don’t know what I would have done without Katie, who walked into court with me every day.
I have my own place near hers but I’ll often stay in her spare room. She later had another child, Nancie, a little girl I love like she’s my own daughter, and I enjoy nothing better than being surrounded by them all.
Katie’s family has become my family and I’m very settled in Poole where everyone knows who I am and understands I can go off the rails from time to time.
I feel welcome, and as though I belong, although it can be difficult when people want to talk to me about football because I have barely any desire to do so these days.
It’s too painful. The end of my career is one of the great sorrows of my life and I don’t even watch the big games on the telly, as it makes me mad with jealousy.
I consider myself one of the best football players to have walked this Earth, and I will always be so proud of that. But the end of my career was the start of a downward spiral and a sadness that has remained with me to this day.
The intensity of my sadness is perhaps why I feel this emotion so keenly in others, and always try my best to alleviate it. Walking the streets of Poole in the middle of the night, I am on the lookout for anyone who appears down on their luck – homeless lads draped in dirty blankets, drug addicts, drunks. They startle when they realise who I am, as I hand them as much cash as I can spare and say: ‘If you tell anyone, I want this money back.’
I didn’t ask to be an alcoholic but, quite simply, I am one. That will never change. While these days I am on the wagon more than off, I don’t trust myself never to have another drink. All I can do is try to limit the damage when I do.
This summer, I had a few relapses and a mate found me in bed in a bad way. I’m not sure what would have happened if he hadn’t arrived. I ended up in intensive care but I’m feeling better now, living a quiet life and spending a lot of time at home.
I’m not proud of myself for drinking this summer, as it’s caused me to lash out at the people I love the most and came right in the middle of writing these memoirs, which I really wanted to finish.
I’m glad I managed to do that in the end, and to share this most open and honest account of my life so far. I’m far from perfect, but then who is?
their luck – homeless lads draped in dirty blankets, drug addicts, drunks.
They startle when they realise who I am, as I hand them as much cash as I can spare and say: ‘If you tell anyone, I want this money back.’
I didn’t ask to be an alcoholic but, quite simply, I am one. That will never change.
While these days I am on the wagon more than off, I don’t trust myself never to have another drink. All I can do is try to limit the damage when I do.
This summer, I had a few relapses and a mate found me in bed in a bad way. I’m not sure what would have happened if he hadn’t arrived.
I ended up in intensive care but I’m
feeling better now, living a quiet life and spending a lot of time at home. I’m not proud of myself for drinking this summer, as it’s caused me to lash out at the people I love the most and came right in the middle of writing these memoirs, which I really wanted to finish.
I’m glad I managed to do that in the end, and to share this most open and honest account of my life so far.
I’m far from perfect, but then who is?
I nicked Liam’s steak so he soaked me with a fire extinguisher
For some reason, I seem to attract the company of rock stars. It’s like they can sniff me out a mile away. Although, to be fair, it was me who brought about my crazy encounter with Liam Gallagher.
I was being driven past London’s Groucho Club in a cab one day in the 1990s when the driver told me he’d seen Liam going in there. ‘Stop the taxi,’ I said.
‘Do you know him?’ the driver asked.
‘Nah, I’ve never met him,’ I replied. ‘I just have a feeling we’ll get on.’
I walked into the restaurant, quickly found Liam and said: ‘Hiya, nice to meet you.’
‘Hiya, Gazza,’ he replied. ‘Are you all right? Do you want something to eat?’
‘No, mate,’ I replied. ‘I’m not hungry, but I’ll have a drink.’
He went off to get me one, but while he was gone, I started eyeing up his steak. I couldn’t resist it. I genuinely wasn’t hungry, but I thought it would be the biggest laugh to gobble up his meal.
Gazza with Patsy Kensit, Liam Gallagher and Eizabeth Hurley
When he returned to the table, he said: ‘Where’s my steak?’
I looked him straight in the eye and replied: ‘I ate it.’
‘You f*****g b*****d,’ he spat.
‘Two seconds,’ he said, and he went away again. I assumed he’d gone to get another steak but he came back brandishing a fire extinguisher. He absolutely mullered me with foam and I just sat there and took it – I knew I deserved everything I got.
When he’d finished I said: ‘See you later, mate.’ Then I scarpered.
I next saw him at a hotel in Scotland. He was sitting at the bar as I walked in and he greeted me like we were old friends.
‘We’re playing a gig at Balloch Castle Country Park,’ he said. ‘Are you coming?
‘I don’t know,’ I replied.
‘Come on, please, man. You’ll love it,’ he told me.
‘I tell you what, Liam, I’ll do it, I will come and watch, but you have to put on a f*****g display for me,’ I said.
‘No problemo,’ he replied.
Liam got me a limo to the venue, a beautiful castle with 200 acres of parkland on the edge of Lake Lomond. I was in the middle of the audience and halfway through the set they shone a flash light on me. I was lit up for everyone to see, my face beamed on to huge screens next to the stage. ‘Look who’s watching us tonight,’ said Liam, ‘Someone who can drink more than f*****g me.’
Then, he said: ‘Gazza, do you want Roll With It?
‘Yes, mate!’ I roared before he started belting out the tune.
Rod Stewart was another rocker who became a mate. I bumped into him once in London and he invited me to a pub he said was brilliant.
‘I’m desperate for a drink, Rod,’ I told him on the way. He pulled out a bottle of vodka from his pocket and handed it to me.
‘I don’t really drink vodka,’ I said, but took a large swig of it anyway. When we got to the pub it was absolutely packed and I offered to go to the bar while he went to the toilet.
I got the drinks in and was waiting for him to come back when all of a sudden I heard his voice. I looked around, and there he was, singing The First Cut Is The Deepest on the karaoke.
There was also the time in New York when I got absolutely off my face and fell down the stairs of the hotel I was staying in. I must have tumbled down about 15 flights.
Lying on the floor, unable to stand, someone picked me up. I opened my eyes, and to my shock and surprise, Phil Collins was standing there.
‘You’ll be all right, Gazza,’ he told me, and bought us some drinks. We got on brilliantly, and he even gave me a pair of drumsticks as a gift. Phil and I kept in touch and sometimes I’d ring him up in Switzerland, where he lived with his wife Jill Tavelman.
One morning, I was a bit tipsy and decided to give him a call. Jill answered and I said: ‘Hiya, darlin’, is Phil there?’ But she went absolutely off on me.
‘No, he’s not!’ she yelled. ‘Have you seen the papers?’
I was too out of it to have known, but the story of the day was all about how Phil was having an affair with Orianne Cevey, who would become his third wife. I didn’t call him again after that, I was too embarrassed.
I’m keeping an eye on you from afar, Wills told Gazza
One of the good things about being famous is not having to introduce yourself or tell everybody your story over and over again. Everyone I meet already knows who I am, senior royalty included.
At the England v Denmark game during the Euro 2020 tournament, held in 2021 due to the pandemic, I sat close to Prince William after almost not making it to the game because I had fallen over drunk and cut my head open on a lamppost.
My friend Katie managed to patch me up and we made our way to Wembley where she was sitting next to David Beckham, while I was behind Prince William and his two bodyguards.
I got an urge to say hello, so I clambered over some chairs, sat down in the seat next to him and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
‘Gazza,’ he said. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I don’t know,’ I replied.
I was pretty drunk at the time, but I don’t think he minded.
Paul Gascoigne gave Prince WIlliam a kiss on the cheek
The next time I saw Prince William, I was sober and he seemed much happier to chat. It was two years later, and he was in Bournemouth, which is where I now live, opening a new branch of Pret A Manger.
‘Gazza,’ he exclaimed when he saw me. ‘Is it actually you? What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve come to see you,’ I told him, shaking his hand.
‘How are you, are you OK?’ he asked. ‘I’m keeping an eye on you from afar.’
‘I’m behaving myself now,’ I told him.
‘Cheers, Prince.’
It was good to see him, and I was touched that he seemed genuinely concerned about me and interested in how I was.
- Adapted from Eight by Paul Gascoigne with Victoria Williams, to be published by Reach Sport at £22 on October 23. © Paul Gascoigne 2025. To order a copy for £19.80 (offer valid to 25/10/2025; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.
