Gazza - A tragic fall for the game's lost soul

He drank nothing stronger than orange juice at the dinner table that evening and charmed us all with his silly jokes and witty impersonations.

'Daft as a brush,' Sir Bobby Robson famously called him. 'Stupid as a fox,' says Terry Venables. There is affection as well as truth in both those descriptions. Just as there is a warmth, deep in that troubled psyche, for everyone he meets.

Even as his world collapses in a haze around him, Gazza is incapable of holding a grudge. The Guzzler was the nickname I gave him, partly in the vague hope it might help shock him into sobriety. To which he said: 'Aye, I know you criticised me because you love me.'

And love him we do. Love him as one of the most magically gifted English footballers of all time. Love him for being as authentic as Newcastle Brown Ale yet as vulnerable as a butterfly in a hailstorm.

That is all he has ever wanted. To be loved. Now only the hardest of hearts will refuse to go out to him. The descent of Gazza is as harrowing as watching a tormented bear in a baiting pit.

When he lashes out, as apparently he did in the desperate hours of a dark night in Gateshead this week, it is a scream for help.

The greatest danger is to himself, as it always is in those moments of drunkenness and despair when he feels he can cope no longer with the unreal world he inhabits.

Gazza is no more a menace to society than the village simpleton, that lost soul whom mothers cross the street to avoid but who would hang himself rather than harm a child. It is he, alone with his confused self, who walks the fine line between genius and insanity.

When he danced along that circus tightrope, he was the darling of the crowd. Never more so than at Wembley, where he scored for England the supreme goal of Euro 96 to put the Scots to flight, where his phenomenal free-kick struck a dazzling blow for Spurs in an FA Cup semi-final against Arsenal.

How poignant that he should be locked up on the eve of Tottenham's return to Wembley for Sunday's Carling Cup Final against Chelsea.

How wistfully appropriate, too, that his incarceration should be partly for his own protection, since he crippled himself with a crazy tackle in the Wembley final which followed that victory over Arsenal.

Since then, a decade of boozy escapades bordering on the comical, and more serious drunken outrages, have challenged forgiveness. From falling out of an aeroplane luggage rack when travelling with England to belching into a microphone during his turbulent odyssey through Italian football with Lazio, the offences are known to us all.

Yes, he is a scamp, but Gazza is more victim than villain. Not only of his own capacity for implosion but of those who ransacked his career.

His tragedy is as profound as any to have befallen the exploited prizefighters of years gone by. Punch-drunk or just drunk, the outcome is equally distressing.

We build 'em up and if we don't knock 'em down they do it to themselves. We know it is their own fault because other footballers, other sportsmen, play the social game more cleverly, holding on to just enough of their self-control and most of their money.

A comparison with the most conspicuous of football's fallen idols is only partially valid. George Best's mind, albeit not his liver, survived the ravages of the hard stuff. Gascoigne is not only down to the bones physically, by the most recent sighting, but crumbling mentally.

But he is also that precious rarity, a genuine innocent. The essence of his problem is that his intelligence was focused almost exclusively on his extraordinary talent as footballer — that and a desire to please so powerful that he felt compelled to play the entertainer.

When he left us laughing at that London supper table, a society lady confided she could hardly believe he would have butted his wife.

Now, while the striking of a woman by a man is beyond civilised tolerance, what we do know for certain is that Gazza was consumed by remorse. We had also sensed all along that Shezza the Barbie Doll may not have been the ideal spouse for the brush-daft Gazza.

As he grapples with his demons, this is the hour to remind people of the beauty he brought to their game. This is not the time for me to say I told him so. Rather, it is such immense sadness to be proved right.