Having been born in 1990, I have very little, if any, solid memories of Paul Gascoigne on a football field. Sadly for me I seem to know more about his off the field problems that I did of his actual football career.
This documentary is narrated by Paul Gascoigne himself, he talks us through his club career, England career and some of his personal off the field moments. I would have liked to have heard more about his personal life but sadly he didn't really delve into that in much depth, however when he did he seemed to get very upset – making it quite uncomfortable and upsetting to view. I wouldn't give it a lesser rating based on the fact that he didn't talk about his private life as it quite clear he wanted to focus on his football career (England in particular). Seeing Paul talk about England with such fondness and joy was refreshing to see, he saw it as the greatest honour to represent his country and you get the impression that those memories mean more to him than anything else.
The documentary has appearances from a few other faces in football, Gary Lineker offering the majority of the support with Wayne Rooney and even Jose Mourinho (for some unknown reason?) giving their input on Pauls story. The editing starts to get quite irritating the more the film goes on, the use of slow motion shots are a little BT Sport esc and are cringey to see the least. Slow motion scenes of Gary Lineker laughing hysterically, while staring past the camera into the distance and then running his hands through his quiff start to get tiresome when they use it for the 10th time in less than an hour.
Overall this documentary isn't without its negatives but I did find it to be very entertaining, I hadn't really seen an recap of Paul Gascoignes football career and with me having very few memories of his playing days, I found myself quite hooked while watching this. He is clearly a very troubled man and the joy you could see he got from reliving this football days were quite special to see. He came across quite a humble man who seems to have been battling his demons since he was a very young boy, it is such a shame.
8/10