Gazza: My Story (2 page)

I haven’t had a drink now for, let’s see, three months. Yes, I’ve been on the wagon before. For even longer periods. But I knew then it wouldn’t last. I hope it will this time. Sheryl says I can stay here with her, if I stay sober and sensible. But I don’t think I’ll get another chance if I fuck this one up.

I’ve had no panic attacks recently, so that’s good.
Jimmy hasn’t been to see me, and I haven’t been up to the north-east. Shel isn’t keen on all that. She says it’s where my problems always begin.

So I’m just taking things easy. Playing with the kids, going to the garden centre, having a quiet meal out. When we have friends or Shel’s relations over for a barbecue, they are all very good. They don’t drink while they’re here.

I’m on various tablets, to keep me calm or cheer me up, stop me getting depressed. I did take more than I should the other day – four instead of one – wanting a quick buzz, to feel better immediately, which, of course, was stupid. And I got in a bit of a state last night watching TV. There was a programme showing some lads getting drunk round a bar, falling about, as I used to do, and I couldn’t face it. It really upset me. So I went out into the garden. I told my doctor all this, and he says it’s a good sign. I wasn’t envying them, or wanting to be like them, so it wasn’t that I was being tempted back into my old ways. I suppose I was horrified by the sight of other people behaving as I used to behave.

I honestly don’t know whether I’ll keep this up. I haven’t done in the past, so everyone thinks it won’t last this time. Shel and I still have arguments over silly
things, who said what, who didn’t say what. But I’d never hit her again. I’ve hit nobody since that episode and I won’t ever do it again.

She has got a bit tougher with me. All her friends were surprised when they found out I had hit her. They always thought she was a strong person. She thought that herself.

She now realises, she says, that she did fit into the classic pattern of women in this situation – keeping it secret, feeling guilty and ashamed, as if it was her fault, and of course telling herself it was a one-off. She did everything she could to please me. She says.

Now she’s got the whip hand. She’s mentally tougher than she was; she stands her own ground more. She’s pushing me, in a way, just to test me, to see if I’ll fail again. I think the children are testing me as well. They are sure it won’t last, that I’ll get into a rage and be off, as has happened before. I’m not as aggressive and full of anger as I used to be, so that’s good. But Shel says if it doesn’t work this time, that’s it. No way will she put up with any more of what I put her through in the past. I’ll be out on my ear.

She wrote all that down, just to remind herself of what things were like. Every time, over the years, I’ve
rung up and pleaded with her to let me come back or help me. She’s often read her notes to keep things fresh in her mind. She’s not read them lately, which is something. It shows she thinks we might have a chance. I know she loves me. I think. I hope.

Life was easier for her when I wasn’t around, but she was lonely and she did miss me. She gets upset when people or newspapers say she’s only after me for my money. She does love me – except when I’m being horrible. She has put up with so much from me over all these years that she doesn’t want to miss out on the benefits now that I am sober and living sensibly. She has invested a lot, endured a lot, and she doesn’t want someone else to enjoy the good Gazza when she’s had to suffer the bad Gazza.

It’s a lovely day in early summer and the kids are playing in the swimming pool. There’s also a tennis court, sauna, lots of stuff. We’re going to have a barbecue this evening, when Sheryl’s dad comes round.

The garden’s looking lovely, Shel is being nice to me, I’m being nice to her – everything is going great. Doing my chart has cleared my head a bit, brought the main events and dramas of my life into focus. So it’s the perfect time now to tell you all about my brilliant career. And it has been. No question. Despite everything.

When I was born, on 27 May 1967, we were living at 29 Pitt Street, Gateshead. We had an upstairs room and a shared bathroom in a council-owned house. My nan lived next door. I remember the house as always being full of relations and friends. My great-grandad, Bobby Gascoigne, was still alive at the time, probably aged about ninety, and one day he came home from the pub and announced that this young lass there fancied him. After that, every time he’d been to the pub he went on about it, maintaining that this lass was always staring at him. In the end my dad went to the pub with him to see who she was, find out what her game was. Grandad Bobby took him to the corner where he always sat. And
sure enough, there
was
this lass, staring at him – from a Babycham poster.

Some say our surname is French, and several of my relatives are supposed to have traced it back, but I’ve got no idea about its origin. All I know is that my dad, John Gascoigne, was a hod-carrier. And a good fighter. Over the years, I’ve seen him hit quite a few people.

My mam, Carol, was born Carol Harold. She hated her name when she was young as kids in her class at school would shout at her, ‘Carol Harold, fat as a barrel.’ Which she wasn’t, so she says. She was one of eight sisters. Her father was a bricklayer, and my dad worked for him at one time. In her family, they think they might be related to George Stephenson, the railway man, because her dad had a watch with his name on it. It’s possible, of course, but there are lots of George Stephensons on Tyneside.

When my mam left school, she worked in a hairdressing salon, sweeping the floor for £1.50 a week. Then she got a job in a clothes factory. She met my dad at a local dance. She heard these four girls in the toilets talking about whose turn it was to go home with this lad. She couldn’t believe four lasses would be fighting over the same lad, and wondered who it could be. It
turned out to be John Gascoigne. Eeh, he was handsome, and funny, so me mam still says.

They got married in 1966 and that room in the council house was all they could find. It was in a part of Gateshead called Teams, down near the River Tyne, which is said to be a tough area, not far from the Dunston Staithes, where the coal barges used to be loaded. They already had one baby, my sister Anna Maria, when they moved in. My nan chose her name, after she’d been to see
The Sound of Music
.

When I came along a year later, my mam picked my name. She was a mad keen Beatles fan. All the way to the register office she was thinking, should it be John Paul, or Paul John? When she opened the office door, she was still going John Paul, Paul John – but then she stopped at Paul John and that was how I was registered. So I am named after Paul McCartney. I was born quickly, in an hour, so my mam says, at Pitt Street, whereas Anna took four hours, and was delivered in Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead. I arrived with long, black hair, which soon turned blond. My first memory is of being in my pram and being pushed along Pitt Street eating a fishcake. Exciting memory, eh. About a year after me came my brother, Carl, and then, about seven years later, our baby
sister, Lindsay. All of us as kids had very blond hair.

My dad was a Roman Catholic, but he never went to church. My mam is Church of England, but her mam was Catholic. We were sent to Sunday school, so I suppose you could say I was brought up Church of England, but religion didn’t play much of a part in our lives.

We moved houses quite a few times when I was young, trying to get more space. When we found a two-bedroomed flat I slept with Anna in one bedroom, and used to amuse myself by pulling the plaster off the walls and throwing it at her. We were eventually given a whole council house in Edison Gardens in Dunston, nearer the middle of Gateshead, beside Saltwell Park. It was a brilliant park, with a lake, tennis courts and a bowling green. We lived in Edison Gardens for about eight years, so that’s the house I remember most from my childhood. For the first time we had a front and back garden and Carl and I had our own bedroom. We had bunk beds and used to fight all the time about who slept on top.

Anna was the talented one, great at singing and dancing, and we used to put on little shows for the neighbours, entrance 2p. She would sing and dance and I would rush in and do a striptease, which infuriated her because she took it all very seriously.

My mam remembers a gypsy coming to the door one day. She never turned gypsies away, but she had no money as my dad was out of work at the time. The gypsy asked if she had any toast. My mam went and made two slices of toast, and the gypsy said she would read her palm. Mam held out her hand and the gypsy said: ‘It’s full of feet. I can’t see your palm for feet coming out of it.’ Me mam asked what this all meant and the gypsy told her that one of her children would be famous for their feet. Naturally, Mam thought it would be Anna. It wasn’t till I was about six or seven that she thought it might be me.

When my dad did have a job we felt quite well off. We never went on holiday – a day trip to Whitley Bay was the nearest we came to that – but he got himself a little car and there would be good presents for us at Christmas. I got my first football when I was about seven, and Carl and I were given a Tomahawk bike each when I was eight. Carl proved himself better than I was at doing wheelies. When money was tight there would be trouble paying the clothes club. At Christmas I did a lot of carol-singing to get money to buy sweets or cigarettes for my mam and dad. They both smoked, but I never did, not even as a teenager.

My mam was the one who mainly tried to discipline
us. She’d use a slipper on us when we’d done something really bad. Fighting with Carl once, my dad tried to stop us, but I was sent flying over the TV and smashed it. I ran out of the house, knowing I’d get a real bollocking this time. Eventually I came home and apologised.

Both the TV and our electricity supply ran on meters. You had to put 50p in the slot to get them working, and a man used to come from time to time to unlock the meters and take the money away. Carl and I watched him carefully to see how it was done, but we couldn’t figure out how to get the meters open so in the end we just forced the lock on one of them. We got the slipper for that.

I remember my mam bringing home a goldfish each for me, Anna and Carl, which she’d won at the Town Moor fair. We decided to race them. We took them out of their bowl, put them on the edge of the table and each banged our own goldfish on its tail to make it move, trying to be the first to get our fish across the table. None of them made it, because of course they all died. When Mam came in and discovered what we were up to, out came the slipper again. She used to hold it in her hand like John Wayne held his pistol.

My dad never hit me, though I did see him and
Mam have violent rows. I think it was just frustration. I’m not trying to excuse him, but I can understand it. It was hard for him being out of work. He wanted to work; he was trying to be a winner.

In the summertime, Mam would send Carl and me to bed when it was still daylight. Sometimes we would climb out of the window and go off to play in the park. The first time she discovered we were missing from our bedroom she was frantic, thinking we’d been abducted or something. We’d throw the mattress out of the window and jump down on to it. Often we hurt ourselves as we fell. Every summer either Carl or I had a broken arm or leg. Usually it was me. My sisters didn’t seem so injury-prone, but I was from an early age.

My first visit to the hospital was when I was about three, but I don’t remember it. My mam says I was hit on the head with a brick. It wasn’t my fault. She saw this kid holding a brick and told him to put it down, but he threw it at me. I had to have stitches.

Then, when I was around six, there was some sort of open day at Anna’s school, with a demonstration in the school gym. After they’d done their bit, I decided to have a go as well. I ran across and climbed on to this piece of equipment before anyone could stop me – and
fell off and broke my arm. That was the first trip to Casualty at the Queen Elizabeth, but certainly not the last. I ended up with a season ticket. Oh not you again, the nurses would say.