Perils of being Gazza

I expect there were lots of gags cracked about the title of last night's documentary about the greatest English footballer in living memory.

In fact, the truth proved to be something altogether different, and infinitely darker. There is a cliche, one of the most frequently used and therefore most highly polished, which is invariably applied to anyone who performs extraordinary feats in the public eye, and then follows that with the most inelegant pratfalls.

The cliche runs as follows: the special talent that this person possessed was a blessing, but it was also a curse. This programme was scarcely five minutes old before some sporting psychologist had delivered the well-worn gem. Gascoigne was doomed by his special talent. The response from any normal person is a snort of derision. It is not true that exceptional gifts are the result of some Faustian pact.

Just look at Gary Lineker, who waited until he was comfortably retired before making a deal with the devil. Bobby Charlton was also gifted beyond the ordinary, and he never even signed up with a hair product company in order to assuage the demons of vanity which might have been raging beneath the surface of that noble dome.

Except, in this case, cliche seemed to have come alive again. Gascoigne was revealed to have had an idyllic Geordie childhood playing football with strangers' heads in his beloved backstreets, according to the local custom. The idyll, however-was interrupted by family illness and the untimely deaths of two of his best pals.

From that point on, the young Gascoigne was plagued by nameless fears. The fact that he is demonstrably not on the Mensa waiting list does not alter the fact that the young boy was sharing his mental lodgings with some terrible demons.

The testimony of his fellow players was also, for once, illuminating. This was a fellow who, when on tour with various teams, wandered the hotel corridors trying to find someone to play with, or just talk to, or even sit with in what passed for silence in his teeming brain.

Footballers, as a race, are not given to introspection. In a culture that reveres card games over a good book as a way to pass the endless hours of travelling, this is hardly a surprise.

Somehow, the makers of this excellent documentary had managed the impossible and got footballers to talk about something intangible. They all remarked that Gascoigne was different. His manic practical joking, his inability to go to bed, his constant need for attention, his utter disregard for moderation. Terry Butcher, the most phlegmatic England international of recent years, put it rather well: "If he liked something, he would eat it. Lots of it."

And for once, reinforced by the story of the amateurs, the voices of the experts had the ring of truth. It was extremely likely that Gascoigne suffered - is suffering - from Attention Deficit Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Tourette's Syndrome.

Any one of these is miserable. The full set adds up to inner torment. Suddenly, the inside of Paul Gascoigne's mind doesn't seem so empty at all. Let alone funny.