Most people have a small selection of reliably entertaining anecdotes they like to roll out on dates, or at parties, or when the mood feels right. For journalists, these might be the most bizarre stories they’ve worked on, or the funniest or, sometimes, the saddest. The elements of the story must all be just right – recognisable, significant, just other-worldly enough to be mildly shocking, while retaining a touch of relatability. For a long time, mine was this: I was there when Gazza turned up during the murderous Raoul Moat’s final few hours.
Back in the early 2010s I was a news reporter for a press agency based in Newcastle. I got the job aged 20 and started working, mostly for the tabloids, before I graduated university. Paul Gascoigne, the subject of a new BBC two-parter aiming to tell the troubled footballer’s story, was a sweetheart of the city, albeit a controversial one. He was a Geordie god, affable but often anxious. On my first day as a trainee, the newsroom received a call that he just arrived at the nearby train station and I pleaded with the news editor to let me go out on the story for a chance to prove myself.
I saw Gazza that day, but I didn’t get a line. I was too star-struck, maybe, or slightly taken aback at the level of commotion that surrounded him – photographers snapping, members of the public shouting their adoration for the star of 90s football. His friend, who I was told was known as Jimmy Five Bellies, frantically bundled him into the back of a cab. Over the next couple of years, I’d spend a lot more time in Gascoigne’s presence. He was often good fun, winking at reporters like me in court, and seemed to want to be liked. Regardless, for the London desks who dictated our days as northern correspondents, Gazza guaranteed sales.
Of course he did – there’s a divinity in the contrasts that Paul Gascoigne has come to be defined by: angelic on the field, devilish off it; blessed with talent but cursed with addiction. The working class Geordie boy who never forgot his roots, but climbed right to the top anyway. But it’s no secret that, in the world of tabloid media, the story isn’t the success, it’s the subsequent downfall. Those elevated to a higher plinth are, according to the devised narrative, more fascinating to watch as they tumble.
Gazza didn’t just fall. He was often pushed – every trip meticulously documented, constructed even. I saw this play out in a small way once, as we left Newcastle Magistrates’ Court the morning after a stony-faced Gascoigne made a first appearance for a new drink-driving offence. As I walked just behind him, the crowd of photographers pacing in front of him took hundreds of pictures. He was wearing a pinstripe suit, his head was stooped and he deftly ignored the onslaught of questions – “how do you feel, Paul? Are you still drinking, Paul? Any regrets, Paul?” The pack was dissatisfied. Their desks were greedy for one particular image: Gazza laughing his way out of court. They made joke after joke after joke until, eventually, just for a second, he broke a smile. The paps peeled away immediately, and the next day the papers displayed a scene that was a world away from the sombre man I’d observed.
There is no refuting Gazza’s significant role in his own descent – his deplorable record of domestic violence should not be diluted with sympathy; the responsibility he must take for decisions he made that have harmed both himself and others around him cannot be denied. Equally, the role others took – newspaper editors, paparazzi, reporters like me, even members of the public that sold snapshots of some of his worst moments for clout – is also significant.
Gazza’s early trust of the press (he famously rang up the News of the World to tell his own side of the story in the early 90s, something unheard of at the time and even now) was exploited, and so has his infinitely troubled life been. It was widely acknowledged by my former colleagues that one particular photographer, who positioned himself as one of Gazza’s only friends, would regularly buy him copious booze to set up a shot to sell. It was reportedly the same ‘friend’ who drove him to Rothbury, where Raoul Moat was engaged in an armed stand-off with police, that summer night back in 2010.
I left news reporting and Newcastle almost 11 years ago aged 23, just after the Leveson Inquiry, and, like many of my former colleagues, have often wrestled with the shameful ethics of the tabloid press, and my part in them, in the years since. If nothing else, the media caricature of Gazza – that almost empty nickname – is an exquisite example of just how shameful it can be. I used to think that my Moat-Gazza anecdote was certainly among the most bizarre stories from my news reporting days, sometimes one of the funniest. In truth, it’s one of the very saddest.
