“F**king hell, I feel like a frog!”
There’s a broad grin across the face of Paul Gascoigne, as he’s asked if he might be willing to lean forward in his chair, while he poses for a photoshoot with FourFourTwo.
It’s not something we’d considered beforehand, but the body shape is a little bit frog-like, now that he points it out.
His grin is followed by laughter – our photoshoot started mere seconds ago, but already the banter has begun flying. Gazza, ranked no.2 in FourFourTwo’s list of the best English midfielders ever, is in a very good mood and he’s having fun.
Gazza: The FourFourTwo Reunion
“Give us your best frog impression, Paul” (Image credit: Future/James Cheadle)
Just hours before England book their place at the 2026 World Cup with a 5-0 win in Latvia, FFT have travelled down to Bournemouth to meet with one of the Three Lions’ greatest ever players – arguably, the most popular of them all.
We’ve been offered a rare opportunity to spend a couple of weeks getting to know Gazza, as he is now – it’s been over a decade since we last spoke to him and we’ve been keen to catch up for some time.
Gazza’s new book addresses eight emotions he’s experienced during his life (Image credit: Unknown)
The publication of his new book Eight offers the chance that we’ve been waiting for – for a long time, it seemed like this moment might forever prove elusive, but here he is sat in front of us, laughing, posing for photos and taking the mickey out of us, like only Gazza could.
Never meet your heroes, people say – when Gazza is in a mood as jovial as this, they couldn’t be more wrong. Yesterday, he’d been happy to bump into his old Rangers pal Ally McCoist on a visit to TalkSPORT as part of his book promo tour.
Earlier that day, he’d also made a rare television appearance on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, although only after a dental emergency. “The night before, I was at home thinking about what I’d say on the TV, I bit into some liquorice, and my tooth came out – I thought, ‘Oh my God!’” he recalls.
“We had to get the dentist to open for me.” Some footballers say very little while posing for photos, focused only on the camera, but Gazza is chatting with us constantly, keen to build a rapport and make us laugh, clearly enjoying himself thoroughly.
Put him in any setting, and he’s a stream of consciousness, telling anecdotes at every opportunity, often jumping from one story to another so quickly we’re not quite sure how we got on to the subject in the first place.
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Gazza playing for Newcastle vs Nottingham Forest in the 80s (Image credit: Alamy Stock Photo)
It’s a thoroughly entertaining chaos. All while remembering to look down the lens at the appropriate moments, one minute he’s talking about a screamer he scored for Newcastle against Crystal Palace back in 1988 (“I was told I wasn’t shooting enough, then I scored that and said, ‘How about that, you c**t!’”), and the next he’s answering a call from his mother (“Mam, I’ll call you back, I’m just doing a photoshoot”), before going on to tell us a story about a Channel 4 reality TV show he did where celebrities had to live in the pitch black.
“Mam, I’ll call you back, I’m just doing a photoshoot”
“That was called Scared of the Dark, and it really was scary – they turned the lights off and I walked into a f**king fence. Chris McCausland was on it too, the blind guy – he was walking around like he was in here…” he says with a smile, looking up at the bright lights of the photo studio.
“At one point, he said, ‘Gazza, that’s the wrong door.’ I asked, ‘How the f**k do you know?!’ It took me three days to get used to all that. I was dropped from a plank, I got electrocuted – I won it, though. F**k knows how!”
Gazza’s generous side is on show, too. No sooner had he walked through the door and shook everyone by the hand than he spotted an old England shirt and two footballs perched on a table. We’d brought them along with us in case we needed them as props for the photos.
“Do you want me to sign those?” he immediately offers, so used to being asked to sign things by the people he meets. It wasn’t our expectation, but he’s quickly signing them anyway, eager to be helpful.
The representative accompanying him has also brought a few retro shirts along – Rangers, Lazio and several of the famous grey England shirts from Euro 96 – for him to sign while she’s seeing him, for use elsewhere.
One for the wall back at FFT’s office (Image credit: Unknown)
We help Gazza lay them all out neatly, before he scribbles his autograph on each of them.
How many shirts does he think he’s signed throughout the years? “Oh, thousands,” he says, and that may well be an underestimate. For a long time, it’s just been a part of his life.
So too has the south coast, where he was advised to move in an attempt to get himself back on the straight and narrow, having battled with alcohol and drug problems. “I’ve been here 14 years – I used to live round here for my rehab,” he says, explaining how the venue for our meet-up, a now-converted former cinema not too far from Bournemouth’s Vitality Stadium, has brought back some memories.
Since then, he’s moved a few miles west to a modest rented home on a pleasant housing estate in Poole – his agent Katie Davies also lives in the area. “I’ve only been to watch Bournemouth a couple of times, with Katie and her kids,” he says.
“At one point, I went to get four hot dogs, then I couldn’t f**king get back in – the only way was to walk to the corner flag, then all the way along in front of everyone, carrying these four f**king hot dogs…
The Gazza charm offensive in full swing (Image credit: Future/James Cheadle)
“It’s nice here when the weather’s good, although I always think that nobody f**king works – when it’s raining, you don’t see anybody, then when it’s sunny they’re all out on the beach! I don’t go to the beach though, I sit in the back garden.”
That’s probably understandable, as even now, at 58 years old, more than two decades after his retirement as a player, it’s difficult for him to be out and about without being stopped constantly, albeit nearly always by fans who want to say nice things to him.
He says one person even dropped to the ground in worship not long ago at a supermarket. “Some guy walked up behind me with his two kids, got on his knees and started crying,” he explains.
“I thought, ‘Get up mate, your kids will think I f**king hit you!’ He was crying his eyes out. I get that a lot with fans.”
He first met Davies at a coffee shop, a few years after moving to the area – they became good friends, before he asked her to become his agent in 2019, shocked to learn that his representative at the time, Shane Whitfield, had been charged with drug dealing.
Angel of the North: Gazza goes back to his Gateshead roots during FourFourTwo’s photoshoot, October 2025 (Image credit: Future/James Cheadle)
“Some guy walked up behind me at the supermarket with his two kids, got down on his knees and cried”
Surprised to be asked initially, with no previous experience in the media and still in her mid-20s, she agreed to do it and has worked closely with him ever since. Gazza has even taught her fly fishing, another of his passions – though forever competitive at everything he does, he jokes that she catches more fish than him a little too often for his liking.
“She’s been brilliant,” he says of the key role she plays in his life. “She took it on and has got other footballers now, too.”
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It was via Davies we arranged to chat to Gazza, with a meet-up in Bournemouth always pencilled in for mid-October. Just under a fortnight beforehand however, she messages us to say that he’ll also be available to chat the next day during a car journey, if we’d like to begin creating our feature early.
Obviously, we say yes.
Gazza still travels around the country sometimes, including for regular events such as An Evening with Paul Gascoigne, which remain hugely popular, such is his innate storytelling ability.
Suit measured: Gazza at the peak of his powers, having just sent Tottenham through to the FA Cup final after scoring an outrageous freekick vs Arsenal at Wembley (Image credit: Hulton Archive)
We decide to start our chat with the beginning of his life. When was the first moment he realised he had a special talent as a footballer?
“Seven years of age,” he says, without hesitation. Did he always know that he’d make it to the top? “Yeah,” he explains.
“I came from a rough background, but when I was 14, I did my autograph during a geography lesson. The teacher asked what I was doing and I told him, ‘I’m signing my autograph, I want to be a professional footballer.’
He said, ‘There’s only one in a million who make it.’ I said, ‘I’m going to f**king make it’ and got kicked out of the class.
After the 1990 World Cup, I went back to the school and said, ‘Do you remember me, you f**king bastard!’”
The iconic shot of Gazza’s tears after the heartbreak of Italia ’90 which turned out to be the tournament that made him (Image credit: Getty)
Throughout his progression into adulthood, there was never any doubt where he was at his happiest. “When I put the boots on,” he says.
“It didn’t matter when it was – I enjoyed playing whether it was in front of 5,000 or f**king 95,000. I liked making people happy.”
As the stages he played on got bigger and bigger, he never felt the pressure that should have come along with it. “No, I don’t know why,” he admits. “I’m a genius, probably… and a pain in the arse! I just knew I was good.
“I’m a genius, probably… and a pain in the arse! I just knew I was good”
“I used to tell opposition players, ‘Good luck, I’ll be your worst f**king nightmare today.’” That said, there were still a couple of midfield combatants he had particular respect for.
“Bryan Robson was f**king frightening, I used to call him ‘Dogs**t’ because when I played against him, he was everywhere,” Gazza chuckles – it’s possibly the only time that particular word has been used as a compliment.
As a young Newcastle player, he also didn’t get an easy ride from Vinnie Jones – the Wimbledon hard man was once famously photographed with a handful of Gazza’s testicles during a fixture at Plough Lane, in an attempt to put him off his game.
Jones would nevertheless become a friend. In his new book, Gazza explains that at the end of that game, he sent a single red rose into the home dressing room, having been given it by a member of the crowd.
“Vinnie gave me a toilet brush in return!” he laughs now, as he talks to FFT. “He’s a good lad. Me and Vinnie get on well.”
“When I was 17 at Newcastle, I got hold of the groundsman’s tractor and was driving it towards the training ground, but didn’t know how to put the brakes on… I drove through the training ground wall – it went through the f**king building. I only got fined £25 for that one – that’s all I was on in wages at the time!”
Gazza on tractors
(Image credit: Getty Images)
“When I was 17 at Newcastle, I got hold of the groundsman’s tractor and was driving it towards the training ground, but didn’t know how to put the brakes on… I drove through the training ground wall – it went through the f**king building. I only got fined £25 for that one – that’s all I was on in wages at the time!”
Gazza left Newcastle for Tottenham in 1988 – reneging on an agreement to join Manchester United, something that Alex Ferguson remains irked about. “He said, ‘I’m going on holiday and when I come back, are you signing for United?’” Gazza remembers.
“I said yes. But Irving Scholar [chairman] at Spurs offered my family £120,000 for a house, so I went there, then I got a letter from Ferguson saying, ‘You stupid c**t.’
Well, he called me ‘stupid bastard’. After that, I beat United and scored against them.”
What was Ferguson’s reaction to that? “Not very nice!” he laughs. “The last time I saw him was with Katie in the players’ lounge at Manchester United, about three years ago.
He said to me, ‘Office!’ – he called me into his office to give me a bollocking! I was over f**king 50 years of age, by the way… He said, ‘You should have signed for me,’ and I replied, ‘I’m sorry.’ He’s the only manager, even now, that I s**t myself when I see him!”
S**t scared of Fergie, still. After all these years (Image credit: Alamy Stock Photo)
Moving away from his Newcastle home presented challenges back then, just as it did when he moved to Bournemouth. Are there times, even today, when he misses the North East?
“Have you ever met the f**king Gascoignes?!” he quips.
It was at Italia 90 where Gazza went stratospheric, performing superbly to take the Three Lions to a first semi-final since 1966, becoming a national hero in the process, a status he’s retained ever since.
It seems surprising, then, that in his book, he explains that before the tournament, he feared he might not play at all. “That’s why I got No.19 for that World Cup – I was the 19th player,” he says now.
“Before the tournament, we’d played Tunisia away, I tried to play a passback and they scored. I thought, ‘I’m not going to play now.’”
Gazza covered in chocolate cake by the pool during Italia ’90 (Image credit: Alamy Stock Photo)
Bobby Robson put his arm around Gazza though and made it clear he still had faith. England’s opening game of Italia 90 was only his sixth start for his country, but he was in no danger of relinquishing his spot from there.
Why did tournament football always get the best out of him? “Because we didn’t invite the wives!” he laughs. “At some World Cups, the wives have had more publicity than the players, and that’s not right.
“The players should just solely concentrate for one month or five weeks on the World Cup, that’s it. Bobby Robson wouldn’t even let us watch the TV, no newspapers, nothing.
“We were lucky to make a phone call back home to find out what was going on. We were only concentrating on the football.”
Did that lack of distractions help? “Yeah, because the players bonded,” he says. “I remember all of us together around the pool, relaxing. It was my birthday during the World Cup and I got a cake whacked in my face! The squad was f**king unbelievable, from Peter Shilton all the way up to Gary Lineker.”
The blip against Tunisia forgotten about, he was quickly more confident than ever – even offering a preview of his future talent as an after-dinner speaker, despite only being 23 at the time. A trial he’d had at Robson’s Ipswich as a youngster, when he ultimately wasn’t offered a deal, got a mention.
“We had a dinner one night, it was packed full with Bobby Robson’s friends and people from the FA – I don’t know why but I decided to stand up and do a speech, just about myself,” he laughs. “It was funny.
I said, ‘I first met Bobby Robson when I was 12, and he offered us 10 grand a week, but I wouldn’t take a job for no one!’” An anxious flyer, he was sometimes invited into the cockpit during flights to calm his nerves.
In his book, he explains that on the journey to the quarter-final with Cameroon in Naples, he was briefly allowed to take over the controls, which inevitably led to him turning the England team’s plane off course. “I took over the aeroplane and told the pilot where to f**king go – it went about three miles to the right!” he laughs now.
By the time the semi-final clash with West Germany in Turin arrived, Gazza’s displays were being widely lauded. “The best bit about the entire tournament was that I knew I was the best player in the world,” he looks back.
“In the tunnel before the semi-final, someone from Juventus said they wanted to sign me after the World Cup – so I had that going through my head as I was walking out onto the pitch.”
Gazza on fire extinguishers
(Image credit: Alamy)
“I was in a restaurant and about to go home, and a guy said, ‘Liam Gallagher’s over there.’ I’d never met him – I said, ‘F**k me’ and stopped the taxi. I went up to him – he was sitting on his own, having a steak. He said, ‘F**king hell, sit down mate, how are you doing? Do you want something to eat?’ I said, ‘No, I’m not hungry, I’ll have a drink though.’ He said, ‘OK, I’ll go and get you one,’ so he went for the drink and I ate his f**king steak. He went f**king off at me, going, ‘Where’s my f**king steak, man?’ [Gazza attempts a Mancunian accent that somehow makes Liam sound American] I went, ‘I’ve ate the c**t.’ He said, ‘You c**t… I’ll go and get another.’ But he didn’t, he came back around the corner with a fire extinguisher, set it off and absolutely slaughtered us with it!”
What could have been the greatest night of his career turned into one of the saddest, with the yellow card that ensured he’d miss the final if England got there, and the tears that followed.
He says his emotions were brought on by the realisation that, whatever the result of that semi-final, the greatest few weeks of his career would come to an end in just a few minutes’ time. “I thought it was the end of my life, I thought that was my career over with,” he explains of the emotions.
The booking also ended any prospect of a box-office duel between Gazza and Diego Maradona in the World Cup final. “Yeah, that would have been good,” he admits.
“I knew that I had the better of Lothar Matthaus for Germany, but playing against Maradona, f**king hell… I did it a few times in Soccer Aid and in Seville, and he was still unbelievable. We could have done f**king rehab together!
“I’ve had a couple of drinks with him.” The fixture against Maradona’s Sevilla side was a charity game during Gazza’s days playing for Lazio in Serie A. “Lazio dropped me from playing on the Sunday because they wanted me to play against Maradona on the Tuesday, and I wasn’t happy about that, so I f**ked off to Euro Disney,” he explains, of his impromptu trip to the Paris theme park.
“They found out where I was, and I was drunk, but I told them, ‘I’ll meet the players in Seville and I’ll play against Maradona, OK.’ I got on the plane and got pissed. In the tunnel, I said, ‘Diego, I’m pissed.’ He said, ‘It’s OK, Gazza, so am I…’ I just started laughing!
“I scored in that game – I beat about five players, an unbelievable goal. If I didn’t know what the f**k I was doing, the defence had no chance.
I looked at Maradona and said, ‘F**king beat that then, will you?’ And he f**king did! What a goal – I went, ‘Oh, f**k me!’
“Afterwards I went back to Lazio and they said, ‘We’re fining you £40,000,’ so I f**ked off back to Euro Disney again. After that they said, ‘OK, we’ll call it quits, just get back here.’”
Much to our relief, Gazza didn’t pull out any wildlife in the middle of our photoshoot (Image credit: Unknown)
His move to Lazio had been due to happen in 1991, but was delayed by a year when he damaged his ACL with a wild challenge on Nottingham Forest’s Gary Charles in the FA Cup final.
“Two days later I was supposed to be signing for Lazio for f**king £2 million…” he says, referencing his signing-on fee for the deal – the transfer fee was £5.5m.
“I asked the doctor how long I’d be out, if it would be a month, and he said no. I said, ‘Three months?’ He said it was nine and I went, ‘Oh f**k.’ I just had to knuckle down, but it was hard, on your own in the gym, looking out the window and seeing the lads training.
“Then when I was ready to play again, I f**king went out clubbing, got punched and broke my kneecap in half, so I had another eight months out. I got fit from all that and eventually made the move to Lazio, then f**king three months in, in training I kicked Alessandro Nesta by the back of the calf, and did my fibula and tibia.
Another year-and-a-bit out. I missed maybe four years of international football, but I still managed to get fit again and back to my best.”
Gazza had a special present for his new team-mates on his Lazio arrival – giving each a Teach Yourself English book as a joke. “Yeah, that was because I couldn’t be bothered speaking Italian; you speak English!” he laughs.
“But I spoke Italian quite quickly, to be fair. The first words I learned were, ‘Show me the money…’”
Everyone wanted to talk to him in Rome. “I got a phone call once, and our manager Dino Zoff said, ‘I think you’d better take it,’” Gazza says. “I went, ‘I’m f**king training, tell them to call back, who the f**k is it?’
“And it was the Pope. I answered the phone and said, ‘Hi Pope, you all right?’ My dad was a Catholic, so we went to the Vatican to meet the Pope – we shook hands with him.” Gazza also tells a story about the novel way he eased the tension before a derby clash with Roma.
“We were all s**tting ourselves about the match, so I went to a pet shop, bought a little mouse and put it in the top pocket of my Lazio jacket,” he says. “Dino Zoff was doing a team talk, and this f**king mouse kept on coming out onto my shoulder.
I was like, ‘F**k off’ and kept on putting it back down again. Then the president came in and went, ‘Right guys, I want to give you five grand if you win today.’ I said, ‘Make it 10 grand, because I have to pay the mouse five grand.’
I scored that game, then afterwards I found the mouse in the dressing room, said ‘Cheers’ and pushed it back in my pocket.”
Gazza was renowned for pulling pranks during his career. Why did he love them so much? “I’d get bored,” he says matter-of-factly.
Which one was his favourite? “I caught this snake, put it in a plastic bag and put it in Roberto Di Matteo’s pocket after training. Then I asked if he could lend me some money, so he’d put his hand in his pocket…
“At Rangers, Coisty didn’t turn up for a drink, so I got a rabbit, two budgies and two goldfish, and left them outside his house, when his kids had just finished school. He rang us up saying, ‘You c**t! What the f**k have you got my family?’
“He had to keep them – they said, ‘Thanks for the animals, dad, we love them!’”
Among the many he did throughout his career, is there a prank that stands out for not going entirely as planned? “I had to buy a new car for Gordon Durie,” he says, wincing at how much it set him back.
“I’d put two trout in his car after training, and the smell was so bad that the chairman made me buy him a new car. Seventeen grand that cost me! It was still cheaper than the other f**king trout I f**king divorced…”
Gazza on ostriches
(Image credit: Alamy)
“At Spurs, the lads said I wasn’t funny, so I went, ‘I’ll show you.’ I went past this f**king zoo and thought, ‘Oh, that’s a good idea.’ The next morning I went in and asked to borrow an ostrich. I waited until the lads were warming up and sent it on the pitch, it was f**king funny. The funniest thing was we finished training at 12.30pm, then I tried to catch the ostrich – f**k, it took me about three hours, I was f**ked! But we got it and took it back. There were feathers all over the place!”
Gazza joined Rangers from Lazio in 1995. “I loved it at Lazio, but they got a new manager and it was time to move on,” he says. “When I went to Rangers, the fans were f**king unbelievable.
“They were like Newcastle fans, they worked all week just to get a ticket for the match – they weren’t interested in anything else, just football. I f**king loved it there.” He was a Rangers player when he hit his iconic Euro 96 goal against Scotland, flicking the ball over Colin Hendry’s head and volleying home, followed up with his dentist’s chair celebration.
For the pure significance, he admits it’s still his favourite goal. “Because I was playing for my country,” he says. “I was playing against my own players from Rangers, they’d been giving me grief before the tournament and I said, ‘Just wait until we get to Wembley, tell me then…’”
Naturally, he made the most of the moment when he got back to Glasgow for the start of pre-season. “Oh yeah, I hammered them!” he laughs. “I got the photograph of the goal and put it all around the dressing room.”
Iconic goal, iconic celebration, iconic moment in time for English football (Image credit: Getty)
A few years ago, he unexpectedly bumped into Hendry again. “I met him in London,” Gazza says. “He said, ‘What are you doing in London?’ And I asked him, ‘What are you doing in London? I thought I left you at f**king Wembley!’”
Like at Italia 90, the semi-final against Germany is a more painful memory. At the Euros, he came so close to scoring the golden goal, inches from tapping in Alan Shearer’s cross-shot at the far post.
“If it was Shearer or Lineker, they would have scored that,” he admits. “But I thought the keeper was going to get a touch, so I paused for a second.”
Like his dentist’s chair moment, a special celebration had been planned, too – it would have been the first ever golden goal at a major tournament. “We were going to run round the pitch and down the tunnel,” he says.
The golden chance: If Gazza had’ve scored this chance England would’ve made the Euro ’96 final at Wembley vs Czech Republic (Image credit: Future)
Brilliant at both Italia 90 and Euro 96, it’s forever remained a frustration that Gazza only played at two international tournaments. The knee injury suffered in the 1991 FA Cup Final ruled him out of Euro 92, England failed to qualify for USA 94, then he infamously didn’t make the cut when Glenn Hoddle announced his squad for France 98.
Widely expected to be picked, he’d been in the tabloid headlines shortly beforehand, photographed on a night out with pal Chris Evans in London.
At the end of the Three Lions’ subsequent training camp in La Manga, he sensed he was about to be told he hadn’t made the final squad – angrily storming in to confront Hoddle and trashing the room.
“It took me a year to get over it,” he admits. “I was going through a divorce, my head wasn’t right and Glenn Hoddle is a prick.
He said it was because of my drinking, but the night when I had the drink with Chris Evans, six other players were at a nightclub until 6am. Terry Venables had warned me, ‘Be careful, Hoddle’s going to try to make a name for himself.’ He probably did.”
A kebab after a night out with Chris Evans triggered his failure to make the plane for France ’98 (Image credit: PA)
How did he sense he’d been dropped before Hoddle even delivered the news? “We had to line up like kids outside the room, so I knew,” he recalls.
“Hoddle’s a prick anyway – he’s a f**king dick.” We’ve clearly touched a nerve that’s still raw even now, 27 years on, and he’s becoming angry talking about Hoddle, so we feel it’s better to move to something more positive.
So, which manager did he most enjoy playing for? “Terry Venables,” Gazza says, having worked with El Tel for both Spurs and England.
Which was his happiest moment under him? “Every day,” he adds. “When he died, I was sat in the car with Katie and cried my eyes out. Terry was a f**king diamond. He had to be, to put up with me.”
Colin Hendry looks on in disbelief (Image credit: Colorsport/Shutterstock)
Venables knew how to lift Gazza – today, whenever the former midfielder meets fans at speaking events, they do, too. “They give me a little boost,” he says. Photo requests can be unusual, though – one even involved a glass eye.
“A guy went, ‘If I give you something, can I have a selfie with it?’” Gazza says. “He pulled his f**king eye out and said ‘Can you hold that?’”
Odd things don’t just happen when he’s at events, either. “The other day I went to the bank for something, and the guy asked for my f**king identity, then asked for a f**king selfie!” he says.
He spends a lot of time watching TV at home, but admits he doesn’t watch too many matches. “I miss football, so I don’t watch it,” he says.
“I don’t like the commentary as well, they talk too much, especially Ally McCoist, he talks f**king too much… Steve McManaman and Coisty, f**k me, they could talk a f**king glass eye to sleep – I should have given them that f**king eye I had that picture taken with!”
He’s said previously that going out and about for events can sometimes pose a potential issue of fans offering to buy him a drink – not ideal, given his history with alcohol. “If I want a drink, I buy it myself. I don’t go out to pubs, I drink indoors,” he insists. Is he doing OK at the moment, in his battle against it?
Gazza recreates the time he met the Pope (Image credit: Future/James Cheadle)
“I was…” he initially responds, somewhat cryptically. “Yeah, of course I am. I went to an AA meeting last night. If I want a f**king drink, then I’ll drink – if I don’t want a drink, I won’t drink.”
We sense he’s getting a little defensive on this – he’s had a tiring day travelling and we’ve already had a long and very enjoyable chat, so it’s maybe not the right moment to ask about the more serious subjects. We’ll return to those when we meet up in Bournemouth.
Before then, we ask him to pick one current England player who reminds him of himself the most, and we’ll talk more about them next time. “Jack Grealish,” he says with an audible smile.
‘You’ve got a chance’ Gazza and Grealish, a pair of English entertainers (Image credit: Getty Images)
We’ve arranged to meet Gazza at 11am in Bournemouth for our photoshoot – footballers are often late, but bang on time, he arrives and greets everyone with a smile, after a quick cigarette outside. The studio where we meet is on a reasonably busy road, so the past 60 seconds must have prompted at least five passing motorists to double take and ask themselves, ‘Is that Gazza?!’
He’s full of energy, proving superb company as he reels off anecdote after anecdote during the photos. “Someone asked me recently if I fancied a game of walking football, and I said, ‘F**k off, I’m not that old!’” he laughs.
Photoshoot over, we sit down for the resumption of our chat. Why did he choose Grealish when we spoke last time? “Because it doesn’t matter if he loses the ball, he always wants it again,” he explains.
“He’s handsome as well! It amazes me when managers put him sub, because he’s always dangerous.” Grealish was born in 1995, but has often said that Gazza is his hero.
After joining Everton on loan this summer, the winger chose the No.18 shirt, partly because Gazza wore it during his own time with the Toffees. “Yeah I saw that, I think Wayne Rooney had that number as well,” Gazza says.
“I heard one of the commentators say it and thought, ‘Oh, that’s nice of him.’ Everton’s a good club, I enjoyed it when I was there.” Would he like to see Grealish back in the England squad for the World Cup? “Definitely, and I think he’ll make it,” he says. “I can’t see him not going, because he’s always going to be a threat.”
Like Gazza, Grealish has delivered at major tournaments before, most notably at Euro 2020. “It’s funny, because I met him in the corridor after an England game and said, ‘Are you going home to rest now?’”
Gazza remembers, having bumped into Grealish following a match against North Macedonia in June 2023. “He said, ‘No, I’m going to Las Vegas on the drink,’ and I started laughing. I said, ‘You’ve got potential, mate!’
And he just laughed. I like it when players have a little laugh and a joke, but still perform.” Gazza has already told us he doesn’t watch much football now, but will he tune in to the tournament next summer? “I’ll probably watch the World Cup, but not every game,” he says.
England came so close to silverware under his former team-mate Gareth Southgate. Can they win this World Cup? “We’ve been saying that since 1966 – we got close when Chris Waddle hit the post in extra-time in 1990,” he says.
“But you’ve got France, Portugal, Germany, Brazil and Argentina. It’s going to be a hard task for England to win the World Cup – we have a chance like everyone else, but every player has got to be on it, you can’t afford to carry anybody.
“It was a shame for Gareth, he’s a great guy.” Which current manager does Gazza think he’d most enjoy playing for? “Pep Guardiola,” he says. “I’ve seen interviews and a documentary he was in; he seems like a nice guy. The way he talks with his players, he’s either angry with him or so nice to them. A bit like Terry Venables.”
Gazza on Top of The Pops with Lindisfarne, September 1990 (Image credit: Alamy Stock Photo)
Like Venables, who released a single that reached the UK top 40, Gazza was once an unlikely music sensation, adding vocals to a new rendition of Lindisfarne track Fog on the Tyne, helping it climb to as high as number two in the singles charts shortly after Italia 90.
How did he rate his singing? “F**king terrible… it did all right though, to be fair!” he laughs. “I enjoyed it – Fog on the Tyne, f**k me!”
The opportunity came as a by-product of his fame – he’s been in the public eye for nearly 40 years now. “It has its good points,” he says. “I get some nice perks for free.
“Once, I said I liked dickie bows, then all of a sudden outside my door were a f**king load of dickie bows. I thought, ‘F**king hell, OK…’ So I mentioned I liked guitars, and the next thing I knew there were three or four at the front door!”
Such fame is far from straightforward, though. “It’s dealing with everything,” he says. “Sometimes it’s difficult, and sometimes I snap. It’s great to become famous, but in England, once you’re a celebrity, that’s it, they try to knock you down. I’ve had to deal with constant lies being written about me.”
The attention he gets when he goes out and about also means he’ll often retreat back home, preferring the peace and quiet of his own company. “I get pestered every two minutes when I go outside in public,” he admits.
“I spend a lot of time on my own, maybe too much, just in the house. It’s a shame because the trout lake is about 45 minutes away, and by the time I pay £95 for that – I always go for four trout – I catch them within 10 f**king minutes, they’re like, ‘Wow’, then I get the taxi home again. But I enjoy fly fishing – it takes my mind away from everything else.”
Former team-mates do check in with him to see how he is. “It’s nice of them to do that, they’re always there for me,” he says. “I hate answering the phone nowadays because it’s f**king non-stop, but I’ll say, ‘Hi, I’m all right.’ It’s normally texts – Alan Shearer will text me, Gary Lineker, Peter Beardsley.”
He’s still friends with Vinnie Jones, too. “I’ve texted him a few times, and been to see him at his place,” he says. “We’ve been fishing a couple of times, although his rods were dodgy as f**k – he must have paid £5 for them, not like mine!”
“At Middlesbrough, I drove the team bus out of the garage, but that lasted about 100 yards. Bryan Robson was like, ‘Gazza, where’s the bus?’ I said. ‘It’s in the f**king trees, gaffer, it’s f**ked.’ He said, ‘Gazza, that’s a £400,000 bus…’
I ended up driving a London bus once, too – I drove it down the road, singing, ‘We’re all going on a summer holiday.’ I’d told my dad I’d go to London and behave myself – I got to my hotel room and thought, ‘Thank God my dad didn’t see that.’
But then I turned Sky News on and they said, ‘Apparently, 20 minutes ago, Paul Gascoigne was seen…’ That was it, my phone went and it was my dad going, ‘F**king hell, you stupid bastard, you’re never going to learn, are you?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t think so!’”
Gazza chatting to FourFourTwo (Image credit: Unknown)
As for the person he still regards as his best friend from football, he doesn’t take long to answer. “Chris Waddle, I’ve always been close with him,” he says of his fellow Geordie.
“I roomed with him at Spurs and with England. I’ve always had a laugh with him, especially during the World Cup in 1990.
I always used to wind everyone up, because me and him were up early, and we used to blast the f**king radio. People would shout at us, ‘Get that f**king radio off!’
“Me and Chris were mad. We were all given a bar of chocolate every night, so I used to steal them from other people’s rooms. I went into the wrong room one night, it was dark, opened the fridge and got the chocolate.
It was the worst two players I could have picked, f**king Chris Woods and Terry Butcher. I ran along the corridor, but Chris whacked me on the back of the head. I went flying, then said, ‘There’s your chocolate back…’”
Even when we’re talking about a more serious subject, the mere mention of a particular name is enough to trigger a funny anecdote, like a comedian who uses little jumping-off points to launch into segments of their stand-up routine.
Very few could play football as well as Gazza, and very few can tell funny stories like him either. Could he have been a stand-up comedian if he hadn’t been a footballer? “Aye, probably, or in jail, one of the f**king two!” he quips.
Another friend was boxing legend Ricky Hatton – a similarly larger-than-life character adored by the public. “I did a venue with Ricky, Phil Taylor and Jimmy White in Bristol,” Gazza begins.
“Ricky was funny as f**k. We had a few drinks, then in the morning I woke him out of bed and asked him, ‘What are you doing today?’ He said, ‘I’m having a shower, then I’m going to do Celebrity Bullseye.’
He went into the shower, I was sat in his room and his shoes were there, they were black. I’ve seen a gold marker and f**king signed ‘Paul Gascoigne’ on one.
He went, ‘You f**king idiot!’ – I watched him on the show, he was throwing darts with only one shoe on, f**king brilliant!”
The boxer’s passing, aged 46, shocked the country, even if his mental health struggles were no secret. The opening of the inquest into his death tragically indicated the cause as hanging.
“I did a couple of venues with him – what a shame, a great guy, a great character,” Gazza says. “He was like myself, he gave his time up for anybody, and he’d give his last penny away. It was heartbreaking.”
[left] Gazza poses at the premiere of ROBBO: The Bryan Robson Story. [right] Ricky Hatton and Gazza pictured during a Boxing Media Work Out at Kings Gym in Leicester on March 2019 (Image credit: Future)
Did hearing the news make Gazza determined to enjoy his own life even more? “Yeah, I’m enjoying my own life,” he stresses, reassuring us, and sounding very much like he means it.
“If anything bad happened to me, it would be my fault, it wouldn’t be anybody else’s.” We ask sensitively whether there’s ever been a point when he thought he might not still be here himself.
“No, I’ve never been that bad,” he says. “I have been down and that, I’ve been psychotic, but I’ve never wanted to kill myself.”
In his book though, he admits that with hindsight he risked his life in 2010 when he travelled to Rothbury, an old Northumberland fishing haunt, in an attempt to talk to Raoul Moat during a police siege.
Moat had murdered his ex-girlfriend’s partner, was armed and in a stand-off with police that dominated rolling news when Gazza unexpectedly turned up, wanting to give him a fishing rod, some chicken and a can of lager. “A copper stopped me,” he tells FFT. “I was cocained up. The next morning, I looked at my phone, I had 300 f**king missed calls and thought, ‘What the f**k have I done?’ I put Sky News on and just thought, ‘Oh f**k.’
My dad sectioned me after that. I was 11 days in a nuthouse, then I was OK. I got a f**king bollocking.” He soon moved to Bournemouth to spend time at the Providence Project rehab facility, and has remained down south ever since.
His new book is titled Eight not just because it’s the number he wore for much of his career, but also because he addresses the emotions he’s experienced during his life. “It’s about my eight demons, everything I’ve had to face up to,” he explains of the book. “I’ve conquered most of them. The rest are hard to conquer, but I just try to deal with them the best I can.”
“I have been down and that, I’ve been psychotic, but I’ve never wanted to kill myself”
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and alcoholism remain challenges. “I’m always going to be an alcoholic,” he admits.
“It’s not like tomorrow I can drink normally – once you have the first one, you’re f**ked. I’ve had my ups and downs in the last couple of years. I’ve had four months off it, then a two-day bender.
It used to be weeks of benders, but it’s only about two days now, and I’ll stop – I’ll think, ‘Waste of f**king time.’ I only drink indoors anyway; it’s not as if I go out and drink, partying. I can’t remember the last time I went out to a nightclub or a pub.”
In July, reports surfaced that Gazza had been taken into intensive care – he’s since explained that he suffers from a hernia condition, and that an alcohol relapse led to a friend finding him semi-conscious in his bathroom, though he insists the situation wasn’t as grave as the newspapers made out.
He tells FFT that he had another brief rocky period with alcohol 10 or so days ago, which might explain why he was more defensive on the subject when we spoke to him before. Today he’s clearly fine, and has been far more willing to talk about more serious subjects.
Gazza has achieved so much during his life, and we ask if there’s one thing he’s most proud of. “Just playing for England,” he says. “I always wanted to represent my country. And at every club I went to, I never let them down. I always performed to my best, and I won loads of individual medals.”
He’s never forgotten his working-class roots, either. “My dad told me, ‘Always remember where you come from and never change,’” he explains. “All my life, I’ve never turned down a request for an autograph or a photo.”
When he thinks back to the young Gazza with a dream, practising his own autograph in the classroom, could he ever have imagined quite the greatness it would lead to? “Not really,” he admits. “I just knew I wanted to be a footballer when I was seven, and I achieved all the goals I wanted to achieve – I don’t think there’s anything I didn’t achieve. I just miss it still, that’s all.”
It’s time to wrap up our chat – we do so by thanking him for all of his time, and telling him that he’s always been a hero of ours. “Cheers mate, God bless you,” he smiles. No matter how many thousands of people tell him the same thing, it’s obvious that the adulation still means something to him.
He’s been happily chatting away for so long the representative accompanying him today needs to head off in another direction. She’s brought some cartons of orange juice and groceries to take home with him, and asks if Gazza would like a taxi ordered.
FFT offers to give him a lift home and he gladly accepts. Soon we’re dropping him off at his front door – he thanks us for the ride and says he’s enjoyed spending time with us.
We didn’t quite know which Gazza we were going to get when we embarked upon this interview – over our fortnight with him though, we feel like we got to know many different sides of him.
At times his unconventional nature meant it felt a bit like we were in an episode of Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends, but it was a heart-warming experience, an encounter with a great of the game and an English football idol that we’ll forever be able to remember fondly.
In the end, what we got was a happy Gazza. And if he’s happy, we’re happy.
