11 Aug 2005(Thu)

AUGUST 9 -- It's strange, and quite sad, how Paul Gascoigne still makes the news.

The other day I was reading a short article with a headline "Gazza says he never loved his wife."

No prizes for guessing the content of this!

In the article he claimed he only married Sheryl so he could continue seeing their two children.

None of this surprises me, as I met Sheryl in Rome in 1992, and was not impressed.

I had been reporting on the Olympic Games in Barcelona for my newspaper in Hong Kong, and my return journey enabled me to stop off at any major European city on my way back from Spain.

I looked at the airline's list and chose Rome, because Gascoigne had just signed for Lazio.

I had known him quite well in England, when reporting on Newcastle United, and have more stories than I have room for here in two months of articles!

But anyway, he was a brilliant tennis player, too, and a keen fisherman, and I can claim to have eaten a salmon for dinner caught by Gazza when he took me fishing one day in deepest Northumberland. But that's another story.

So there I was, outside Lazio's training ground one sunny morning, waiting for Gazza to arrive.

He was still recovering from his terrible knee injury, suffered a year before playing for Spurs in the FA Cup final against Forest, and had his own fitness schedule, separate from the other players.

A couple of hours later he drove up in a red BMW, maybe a Mercedes (it was 13 years ago!), and looked surprised to see me.

"What yee deein' 'ere?" he asked, in his strong North-east accent (for English, read, "What are you doing here, kind sir?").

"I've come to see you, why do you think I'm here?" I replied.

"Where are you staying toneet (tonight)?"

I told him I had booked a hotel down town, very near the Coliseum.

"It's a pity," he repiled. "Me mates all went home last night and I'm on me own in me big villa, but....."

I waited for the let-down.

"But I'm just going to the aiport to pick up Sheryl. I don't think she'd like it."

Gazza, usually so carefree and funny, was a different person.

Before he left, he took me into the training ground, and I watched the likes of Doll, Riedle and Winter, and Beppe Signori, at close quarters.

When he came back, Sheryl was in the passenger seat.

Paul tried to introduce me as a friendly reporter from his Newcastle United days -- not a tabloid gossip columnist-- but Sheryl did not want to know. She turned away, very snobbily, and Paul looked embarrassed.

I felt sorry for him at the time and thought..."Paul, what have you let yourself in for here, mate?"

Blonde hair, super-model outfit, hard, looking every step of the way that her goal in life was to become a footballer's wife, and now she had hit the jackpot.

Well, if Paul says he never loved her, I am sure she never loved him, either.

I thought that then, and I think it now.

She knew what she was doing all right.

ends