KEY POINTS:
Genius, as has been proven many times, is often just a hair's breadth from madness. English football genius-turned-wreck, Paul Gascoigne, has demonstrated the traumatic, depressive plunge of a star whose talent wanes and whose life has no acceptable substitute.
'Gazza' has just been the subject of a television documentary in Britain called Saving Gazza, though there is room to wonder whether that was the motivation or whether it was a simple piece of media opportunism.
Gascoigne was the star of English football in the 1990s, his exquisite ability enough to drag England high on the world stage. He is now battling alcoholism, mental illness and the tragedy of a sportsman with an empty basin of a life once the talent had drained away.
Gascoigne was seen little in the documentary. He agreed to it but then opted out. So the unwavering eye of the doco camera was turned on his long-suffering wife Sheryl and their 12-year-old son Regan, whose remarks were used as a teaser. His son, his only son, said: "If I could wish, I would wish that he would go away from us. He's probably going to die soon. I don't think there's any point in helping him."
Imagine turning on your TV to hear that your son thought you might as well die.
Sheryl was also filmed crying as she watched her wedding video - doubtless good TV and evocative of the hole Gascoigne has fallen into but you can't help but wonder at the artificial 'reality TV' of it all; even after the makers pointed out that the family had approved such scenes.
Regan was also filmed recalling time with his dad when a drunken Gascoigne was munching on a bag of chips, vomited into the bag, and then searched inside the bag again for a chip to eat.
Gascoigne angrily hit out at the documentary makers at such use of a 12-year-old boy, conveniently forgetting that he'd allowed the doco entry to his life in the first place, calling it his "last chance".
He left the family home - where the main part of the doco was to be filmed - after being refused entry to his ex-wife's bed; he then said he "didn't fancy her"; a sad, self-deceiving episode which ended, as it nearly always does, with Gascoigne 'going down the pub'.
In fact, he scarpered to his friends in the heavy metal band, Iron Maiden, joining their European tour until a band official telephoned his mum about his erratic behaviour, according to British newspapers.
The irony of Iron Maiden calling your mum to complain is so heavy, it hurts.
There are three points to make here: Gascoigne has responsibility for his own actions and will not be helped until he really decides to help himself; the media have not helped arrest his descent - self- destructive he might be but every centimetre of his fall has been cruelly and sometimes even gleefully charted; and that New Zealanders can thank their lucky stars that our rather more phlegmatic nature works for us in such instances.
Look, for instance, at the All Blacks treatment of Jimmy Cowan after his drinking problems. He was kept within the fold and responded by making the halfback spot his own. The All Black management are to be congratulated for their stance and they and Cowan for the result. Cricketer Jesse Ryder is going through the same process.
But Gascoigne is different. As Jamie Redknapp, himself an England and Spurs midfielder and a team-mate, said in the Daily Mail recently: "Gazza... craved being the star; the showman. He was a great entertainer and he was different class to everyone else in the England team. We all knew it.
"That was when the king was on his throne but he couldn't stand to be alone. Being the centre of attention was his goal. It was when the attention faded, when he could no longer call on the support of the dressing room, that he realised how much he missed the game. Like Beckham, he thrived on the attention that brings."
Denied that attention by the inevitable decline in his skills, Gascoigne kept making the media by indulging the other side of his persona - the drinking yobbo, a spot of wife-beating and a slide into mental illness - pulling himself back from the precipice only to slip back to its lip yet again.
"When he was the best player in the country, when he was everyone's hero, he was so generous to everyone around him," said Redknapp. "I just wonder who is being generous to him now?"
Redknapp meant that football should be helping Gascoigne though the generosity most needed now is from Gascoigne to himself. Without that, all other forms of help are useless.
Yet the British media also have a role to play - and not just using the perfectly defensible rationalisation that he who earns fame and fortune being a public figure can hardly complain if the downside of his life is also captured.
Gascoigne has gone well past that point in his slide towards the void and it is time the media stopped
feeding Gascoigne's attention-seeking side and feeding on his fall. He isn't news any more and his illness and descent is just plain sad and ugly and full of schadenfreude.
Football and the media could work together to force Gascoigne, with the assent of his family, into a
rehab that he can't check himself out of and chronicle his comeback - even accepting that Gascoigne may, as he has always done, defeat such efforts by running off or by slipping back into the darkness.
There is an ugly side to the British media as well, even accepting that some good can come from the sort of focus Saving Gazza provided.
Most reporters endure what is known in the trade as a "death knock" - where they seek perspective from the family and/or friends of the deceased in an accident or tragedy. It's news but not all families want to speak.
Sometimes, however, it is therapeutic; some are helped to deal with their loss by talking about the person or the circumstances of their death - strange but true.
I once went to the home of a young pilot who had died in an accident at a UK air show. While we were interviewing his mother, who was plainly helped in her grief by talking about her son, a reporter from a rival publication asked for a copy of the picture of the pilot on the family mantelpiece.
When refused, the reporter developed a coughing fit and asked for a glass of water. While the mother was away fetching it, he slipped the photograph out of its frame and disappeared.
The British media and British football - the same system offering Kaka half a million pounds a week
to play - need to help Gascoigne before there is a funeral and his picture is also, figuratively speaking, cynically slipped from its frame.
