Gazza is back

Paul "Gazza" Gascoigne has spoken of his battle with alcohol and revealed that he nearly died last year after his heart stopped three times while he was in rehab. In an interview broadcast today on Sky News, Gazza admitted that last year's sudden rumours that he had died were a lot closer to the truth than the public realised.
"My heart failed on us a few times," he said, adding that his illness had caused his father, John, to collapse. Gazza also describes the day he tried to kill himself.
"I had just had enough," he said. "I had had enough of everything, you know." "I rang my sister just to say, I am going to run a bath. I think she might have had a clue, I don't know if it was a plea for help."
"And I just said, look, I am in the bath and I will always love you, or something like that, and put the phone down. I laid in the bath and just felt myself dropping off and I remember just getting ready, like dozing off, and then the police burst in. About six police dragged us out of the bath."
The footballer, whose former clubs include Newcastle United, Tottenham, Lazio and Glasgow Rangers, said only four months ago he was drinking 30 cans of Special Brew every day, but had been helped through his problem by his belief in God.
"I just thank Him for today you know, if I don't drink I just say thanks, thanks for not letting me have a drink today."
Gascoigne said he had learned to control himself around alcohol. "I can be around it now because all I have got to do is remember my last 'drunk'," he says. "If I remember my last drunk, which I can't — well I sort of can, getting fed with a spoon because I had the shakes that bad." Gascoigne, a gifted footballer whose career was marred by alcohol and violence towards his ex-wife Sheryl, has endured a love-hate relationship with the British public.
Speaking of his attack on Sheryl, he said: "If you are sitting in a restaurant and somebody calls your mum a whore, which she did, and for no reason, I don't like that – and yes, I got hold of her arms and I did put my head against her head, I didn't headbutt her but I threw her to the floor, and I was disgusted with myself for what I did.
"I went to therapy; I sat with 15 to 20 women and told them exactly what I did. I got punched by a few women for doing what I did, but I took the punches and I accepted it. It is the one thing I ever did in my life, and I get hammered for it."
The interview, in the company of his father, sister Lindsay and two young nephews, showed the former player having a kickabout on the beach. At one point, he says proudly: "No one is ever going to be as good as I was."