As a general rule, swigging brandy before playing in a football match is not to be recommended – but I did it on many occasions during my professional career.
Fifteen minutes before kick-off, I’d grab my hip flask, gulp it down and then put it to one side.
It was my secret weapon. I loved the sensation of it hitting the back of my throat, then warming my empty stomach. It took the edge off my nerves but also stoked the fire in my belly.
I got into the habit after joining Glasgow Rangers from the Italian side Lazio in July 1995.
None of the staff said anything, as they could see it wasn’t harming my performances. In fact, on one occasion it was actively encouraged.
In November 1996, we played Hearts in the Scottish League Cup final at Celtic’s stadium in Glasgow and I didn’t have the best first half.
I had made myself too nervous, with it being a cup final, and at half-time I was too busy rowing with my teammate Ally McCoist to listen to the manager Walter Smith when he told me to be quiet.
The next thing I know Walter had me pinned to the wall. I quietened down then and his assistant Archie Knox asked if I’d had a brandy.
‘No, I haven’t,’ I replied.
‘Well, f*****g go and get one!’ he said.
I apologised to Coisty, then walked into the director’s box, still wearing my kit and sweating profusely, and asked the barman for a triple brandy. I downed it in front of all the guests, went back to the dressing room, and said: ‘Thanks Archie.’
‘Get out there and do the business,’ he said.
Paul Gascoigne celebrates after England’s match against Scotland in the 1996 European Championships at Wembley Stadium on June 15
Gascoigne and then-England manager Glenn Hoddle in 1997. Paul says that he was ‘warned’ about Hoddle as ‘he’ll want to make a name for himself’
I then scored two cracking goals to win us the cup, with the match ending 4-3. The lads didn’t come too close to me when I was celebrating, mind. I guess the alcohol fumes must have been too much for them.
By the time I left Rangers in March 1998, I was drinking five nights a week. It was the only way I could escape from the pressures and problems plaguing my personal life.
I was in the process of getting divorced and, despite everything my wife Sheryl and I had been through, I was devastated.
Besides being the mother of our then two-year-old son Regan, she remains the great love of my life and the only woman I’ve ever had a long-term relationship with. As a result of all this, I was not in the best of form, and when Walter Smith stepped down, he warned me that I probably wouldn’t figure in the plans of the new manager Dick Advocaat so I joined Middlesbrough FC for a fee of £3.45 million.
My priority was to help them win promotion from the First Division – which they did, returning to the Premier League for the 1998-99 season – and to regain my fitness ahead of the 1998 World Cup.
I got myself into peak physical shape but both Spurs’ manager Terry Venables and Rangers’ Walter Smith had told me to be careful of Glenn Hoddle, who’d taken over as England manager from Terry in 1996.
‘He’ll want to make a name for himself,’ they warned.
Sure enough, I didn’t get on too well with Hoddle, mainly because he treated us players like kids a lot of the time.
He got this French dietician to come and tell us how to chew our food properly. We were in stitches as we yelled his catchphrase, ‘Chew to Win’.
Hoddle also tried to tell us how to stretch, which was ridiculous considering he was dealing with some experienced players who knew their bodies better than anyone. The maddest thing he did was send us all to see his spiritualist healer, Eileen Drewery.
Hoddle thought she would be able to cure me of my compulsion to drink and smoke.
I was with her almost an hour, while she gently laid her hands on my head and body.
‘You’ve got demons inside you,’ she told me. ‘I’m going to try to set them free.’ When she opened the window to let them out, I got the giggles.
Eileen didn’t look impressed and shortly afterwards she asked me to leave, telling me not to have a cigarette or beer that night.
‘OK,’ I said. But once I’d gone, I glanced back at the house and I caught sight of her through a window, puffing away on a fag.
‘What a load of rubbish,’ I thought. ‘I’m not listening to her.’
Hoddle sent the squad to see his spiritualist healer, Eileen Drewery. Hoddle thought she would be able to cure Paul of his compulsion to drink and smoke
A few incidents in the lead-up to 1998’s World Cup didn’t reflect too well on Paul – including an appearance on Chris Evans’ show TFI Friday. The pair are pictured in 1997 with DJ Danny Baker
Despite my misgivings about Hoddle, I was doing well on the pitch. I’d played in every qualification game for France 98 and helped England get into the group stage, so I was confident I would be on the plane for that year’s World Cup.
Unfortunately, there were a few incidents in the lead-up that didn’t reflect well on me.
During an appearance on my mate Chris Evans’ show TFI Friday that May, the audience were cheering me on and handing me cigarettes, so I opened a pack and put three tabs in my mouth.
Afterwards, we went out for a few beers, as you do. It was nothing wild, just a couple of drinks with a pal. Then, on my way back to Chris’s house, at around 1.30am, I decided to get a kebab.
Someone managed to get a picture of me scoffing it and, even though it was a chicken kebab, full of protein, which is exactly what’s needed when you’re training hard, I was all over the tabloids next morning alongside a load of commentary about how I wasn’t taking my fitness seriously enough and should be dropped from the squad.
It wasn’t a particularly good look and I’d been spotted out with Chris and Rod Stewart, also a mate, on another occasion as well. Neither did it help that the day we flew to the England training camp in La Manga, Spain, was my birthday.
I’m afraid I’d had a few drinks, and I was ten minutes late for the bus, which was taking us to the airport. We still made the flight but Hoddle was absolutely seething and everyone knew it.
Two days later we took on Belgium in a friendly but, unfortunately, I got a dead leg after 50 minutes and I had to come off. We lost that game on penalties after a 0-0 draw.
Hoddle looked gutted as I limped towards him and he told me: ‘I need you fit for France. We won’t be able to do this without you. Please, will you just be careful. You need to look after yourself.’
The guy was practically begging me to recover in time and, as a result I naturally believed I’d be in the squad. I had no reason to doubt it but, two days after the Belgium game, I noticed a line of players in the corridor outside Hoddle’s room.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked. ‘Standing in a queue, like kids?’
‘We’ve been asked to go to see him, one after another, to find out if we’re in,’ one said.
After a night out, Paul was pictured buying a kebab. The tabloids then ran stories on how he wasn’t taking fitness seriously enough – and should be dropped from the squad
After being dropped from the squad by Hoddle, ‘I smashed up his TV, threw his lamps on the floor, hellbent on trashing his room. I stopped short of launching a punch at him,’ writes Paul
‘How dare he,’ I spat. ‘He’s treating us like children. Why doesn’t he just tell us? There’s no way I am waiting around like this.’
I barged into another room, where Glenn Roeder, my old mate from Newcastle United, who was now an England coach, was sitting with assistant manager John Gorman.
‘Go on, then,’ I demanded. ‘Am I in or not?’ Just one glance at Glenn’s face told me with sickening certainty that I hadn’t made the England squad and I wouldn’t be going to France with the rest of the lads.
I don’t know if I have ever felt rage and sorrow like it as I struggled to process the enormity of what was happening. I was 31 years old, which meant the chances of me playing in a World Cup again were virtually nil.
‘That absolute b*****d,’ I thought to myself.
It wasn’t the fact I’d been dropped, though there was that as well, it was the way Hoddle had gone about it. He’d led me to believe I was going to be in the squad, and then he had us all standing there like kids, waiting our turn to see him. I wasn’t having it. I stormed into his room and started yelling at him.
‘Calm down,’ he told me. ‘Let’s just talk.’
‘No!’ I shouted.
In a blind rage, I smashed up his TV, threw his lamps on the floor, hellbent on trashing his room. I stopped short of launching a punch at him, but that’s not to say I wasn’t sorely tempted.
In the end, David Seaman and Paul Ince burst in and restrained me, otherwise God knows how much more damage I would have caused.
I was given some Valium to calm me down and sent to my room, but now I knew I hadn’t made the squad, all I wanted to do was go home.
On the plane home, I was in tears. I kept thinking about what Walter Smith and Terry Venables had said to me: ‘Watch Hoddle. He is trying to make a name for himself.’
Those words had definitely come back to haunt me.
Despite the divorce proceedings, it was Sheryl’s house in Hertfordshire I returned to in an absolute state. I wanted to be with my family, even though things were just as much a mess on that front as they were on the pitch. It was mayhem outside the house, with dozens of TV crews and photographers camped out on the road.
We tried to shield Regan but the camera bulbs flashed right in his eyes, and he started screaming his head off.
I remember standing in the garage, bawling my eyes out. I was in pieces.
Meanwhile, the country was gripped by World Cup fever and I couldn’t stand it so I took the whole family and some mates to Miami in Florida, to get away from everything.
I knew the Americans weren’t going to be watching the World Cup and, I won’t lie, it was also an excuse to hit the drink, to try to forget my worries. By the time I got home, it was all over and done with.
A month later, I had some terrible news. David Cheek, the cousin of my best mate Jimmy ‘Five Bellies’ Gardner and a close friend of mine, had died in his sleep of acute alcohol poisoning after the three of us had been on a night out in Newcastle.
Losing Davey in that way was too much for me to handle, and it led me to a dark place.
I started drinking heavily, to the point of blacking out, using sleeping pills and booze to get me through the days.
By October of that year, when all the Premier League clubs had a week off ahead of the Euro 2000 qualifier against Bulgaria, I was a mess. Hoddle hadn’t picked me for that game, so I ended up going to Dublin for a four-day break with the Middlesbrough team. Having time on my hands was probably the worst thing that could have happened at that point and that break turned into a four-day bender.
On the plane home, I carried on drinking to calm my nerves because of my fear of flying, and that’s when I started knocking back hot toddies – 36 of them.
When I got to Newcastle, I somehow managed to get myself on a train to Stevenage, in Hertfordshire, as I was due to see Regan the following day, though I have no memory of any of this. All I can recall is standing on the platform at Stevenage railway station, staring at the tracks in front of me, crying my eyes out, hellbent on jumping in front of the next train.
Paul carrying the coffin of his friend David Cheek, who died after drinking on a night out with Gascoigne and another friend. ‘Losing Davey was too much for me to handle,’ he writes
‘I’m a total mess, a loser, Sheryl and Regan will be much better off without me in their lives,’ I told myself, over and over.
As fate would have it, a worker at the station spotted me and walked across.
‘Are you OK, mate? What are you doing?’ he asked, gently.
‘I’m waiting for the next train,’ I sobbed. ‘I’m going to jump in front of it.’
‘The last train has already left the station,’ he replied.
‘For f***’s sake,’ I thought to myself. ‘I even get it wrong when I am trying to kill myself.’
I phoned Sheryl, beside myself, saying: ‘Please, please, help me, I don’t know what to do. I just want to end it all.’
She picked me up and took me to Hanbury Manor, where we’d got married in 1996, and I checked into a hotel room there.
The next morning there was a knock at the door. I opened it and Bryan Robson, manager of Middlesbrough, was standing there.
‘What the f*** are you doing here?’ I asked.
POSH NEVER LIKED MY ANTICS – BUT I’M SO PROUD OF BECKS
Victoria Beckham thinks I am a bad influence on her clean-cut hubby, says Paul
Among the many people I have p****d off over the years is Victoria Beckham.
For some reason she thinks I am a bad influence on her clean-cut hubby. She’s probably right, to be fair.
Me and my dad went to stay with them once in Spain, when David played for Real Madrid, and I thought we had a lovely time. I’ve heard it said that Victoria, however, wasn’t too keen on my antics.
I’ll never forget David playing for England for the first time. It was 1996 and he was sitting at the front of the bus that was taking us to Moldova’s national stadium for a World Cup qualifier.
I could tell he was really nervous and so I got hold of the mic next to the driver. I looked at David and I said: ‘Well, tell me what you want? What you really, really want?’
He just started laughing his head off and he played well in that game, which we won 3-0, so I credit myself with helping him to calm down.
I really admire David for the way he’s conducted himself, both as a player and as a businessman. He’s done extremely well for himself and I am proud of him.
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‘Sheryl phoned me,’ he said.
Looking back, it was probably the best thing that could have happened, and I am grateful to Sheryl for letting him know what state I was in.
He drove me to the Marchwood Priory Hospital in Southampton, where I entered rehab for the first time. Groggily opening my eyes four days later, I had absolutely no idea where I was or why.
‘You’re being treated for alcoholism and depression,’ a therapist told me. I’d been given pills to knock me out and placed on 24/7 suicide watch.
After I’d been in there for about a week, the guy came back. One of the medics told me: ‘Paul, there is someone outside your room wanting to talk to you.’
‘I don’t want to see anyone, I just want to be alone,’ I replied. ‘Tell them to f*** off, would you?’
I assumed it was a fan, desperate for an autograph, or to talk about football, the very last thing I wanted to do – but the therapist was insistent and, eventually, I relented.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I looked up to see one of the biggest music legends of all time standing at the end of my bed – it was Eric Clapton.
‘Oh f***, hiya Eric,’ I managed to say. ‘I am sorry, mate.’
Eric, who was facing his own battle with alcoholism, was great and did his best to encourage me to stay, and keep me entertained.
He showed me his guitar and said: ‘You can have this, Gazza, if you do 28 days in here.’
‘OK, then,’ I replied. ‘I’ll try.’
In the end, I only managed to stay at the Priory for 20 days – just eight more and I would have got that guitar. I still think about it now, sometimes, but I was begging to be let out after three weeks, and I was unable to admit that I was an alcoholic.
All I wanted to do was get back to playing for Middlesbrough.
I went to a few AA meetings after my stay at the Priory, but I didn’t manage to keep it up and I was unable to stay sober for long.
When I transferred to Everton in July 2000, I was also struggling with injuries.
Depression set in when I was unable to play, which in turn led to me drinking more frequently.
It was a vicious cycle and I felt everything was spiralling out of control but, as I will describe in tomorrow’s Daily Mail, the worst was still to come.
CHAOS AT 40,000FT! ENGLAND TRIP STARTED BADLY… THEN GOT WORSE
Ahead of Euro 96, we went on a tour of the Far East. From the start, things didn’t go to plan.
On the plane journey over, I poked a steward in the back to ask him for a drink, only for it to turn into a skirmish.
The pilot sent a message out, warning us he would stop the plane in Russia and leave us there, and it also led to an official complaint being made about my behaviour to the FA.
The flight back was even worse. Having had a few drinks, I fell into a deep sleep, only to be woken by somebody giving me a massive slap across the face. I was enraged, demanding to know which b*****d had done it. Nobody owned up, so I took vengeance on the whole cabin, throwing cushions around, punching TV screens, kicking seats.
We were on the top deck of the Cathay Pacific plane, and before too long an FA official came from the cabin below asking us to keep the noise down.
‘F*** off,’ I told him. ‘Don’t you dare tell an England player what to do.’
When we landed, there was a bill of £5,000 to pay for two broken TV monitors, and the FA were demanding the culprit be excluded from the squad.
Our captain, Tony Adams, pulled us all together and made it clear if one of us was being forced out of the squad, we would all go.
Not only that, the whole squad would share the bill for the smashed-up TVs.
‘Collective responsibility’ was the phrase used, and I was massively grateful to Tony and all the other players for agreeing to it – even Alan Shearer, the b*****d who slapped me in the first place.
Adapted from Eight by Paul Gascoigne with Victoria Williams, to be published by Reach Sport at £22 on October 23. © Paul Gascoigne 2025. To order a copy for £19.80 (offer valid until October 25, 2025; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.