It all looks a bit barmy from here, let me tell you, your country, your customs and national sport. I’m in America making a film and keep up to date in the following ways:
1. The internet, especially the Guardian and BBC websites, which as well as providing information act as a kind of spiritual sorbet cleansing my soul after the inevitable porn trawl that occurs whenever a laptop is flipped open.
2. Photocopied English newspapers from a company called Newspaper Direct which, while excellent, do not carry, for reasons incomprehensible to me, my column; meaning I cannot use it as a platform to attack or praise people that enter my life in the most trivial of ways.
3. An invention called ‘slingbox’ which enables you to access your TV at home through your laptop so you can record Sunday Supplement and watch it, as I have just done, on Thursday.
The aforementioned lunacy of your country, England, is further exacerbated by hindsight. In last Sunday’s show when discussing Wednesday’s Champions League fixtures the assembled journalists – Brian Woolnough, Patrick Barclay, Oliver Holt and Ian Ridley – were still reeling from Liverpool’s defeat to Barnsley in the previous day’s FA Cup tie and deduced that Internazionale would annihilate the Reds.
‘It’s been a macabre descent, his ever-juvenile mind racing to keep up with his peculiarly evolved sporting ability’
I watched safe in the knowledge that Liverpool would triumph 2–0 and, might I say, that in spite of the fact I was regarding their predictions retrospectively, I allowed a superior smirk to play upon my lips. ‘You poor naive fools – Liverpool will bounce back. Also you might like to avoid the Newcastle Malmaison, I sense Gazza might have a turn in there.’
This was one of the stories that led me to conclude that the Isles had gone wild in my absence: Gazza has been sectioned after ‘playing up’ in a hotel. I hope both he and the hotel are OK – Gazza I adore and I seem to remember that the hotel in question is quite pleasant an’ all.
His descent has been macabre, his ever-juvenile mind racing to keep up with his peculiarly evolved sporting ability. When he was the world’s best footballer all the tics and gurning and outbursts were an interesting complement. Now, with his gift departed, he has just become an annoying hotel guest. How unfair that his talent could not be reallocated across the narrative of his life so that in times of distress and despair he could whip out a ball and juggle his way through the lobby to freedom – assuming all his transgressions occur in hotels.
Nani looked, for a moment, in Manchester United’s Cup match against Arsenal, that he might retain possession, ignore gravity and dash off into the streets. This Gazza-like display of brilliance, far from earning him plaudits, led to chastisement from Arsène Wenger who thought he was showing off and his own manager who also thought it unnecessary.
Well I thought it was terrific, at least the pixellated version of it I witnessed through my laptop was. I don’t know why he was scolded for that. The charge appears to be that he was showboating – good. He didn’t do it in a ward for terminally ill children, which would be a cruel venue for feats of physical prowess, he did it on a football pitch during a football match, many would say the ideal situation for such an absorbing display. I also enjoyed his scissor-kick, somersault celebration although I’d be the first to condemn him if he did it in a refuge for battered women.
Perhaps one day Nani will have cause to rue the imbalance brought into his life by his talent. In 20 years’ time he may find himself alone and broken in a Holiday Inn and have no magical resource with which to hypnotise a disgruntled night manager but I doubt it.
Gascoigne was ever a unique case belonging to a time before footballers became superstar athletes. He had a natural affinity with fans and was so iconic because he seemed like a normal bloke in possession of an unearthly gift. Only in hindsight is it apparent that it was also an unbearable curse.