IT WAS hard to know which was more tragic: the news of Paul Gascoigne's decision to section himself last week, or the gloomy realisation that this was simply the next, inevitable stage of his descent into oblivion.

The details of Gascoigne's condition are still sketchy, but can we be surprised at his mental disintegration? He long suffered from a split personality, even if the decision was hardly made for him: not content with Gascoigne, the achingly gifted footballer, we - his adoring public - had to create Gazza, the insufferable oaf that burped into TV microphones, set up the dentist's chair or played the flute at Celtic Park. Once his gammy knees had finally packed up, Gascoigne was never likely to be strong enough to resist the lure of his darker, more destructive alter ego: being Gazza, the apt title of his most recent autobiography, has consumed him.

I should declare a vested interest, here. Gascoigne, then in his Tottenham incarnation, was the first truly great player I saw in the flesh, his brilliance encapsulated one late summer afternoon at White Hart Lane in 1990.

A lazy first half was drifting towards its conclusion when Spurs were awarded a free-kick. Our goalkeeper, Nigel Martyn, was still in the process of lining up his wall when Gascoigne, shaking off his torpor, whipped a right-footed shot into the net before Palace even realised what was happening.

While the rest of the away section exploded in expletive-laden fury, I stood agape, dumbstruck at the sheer, naked impudence - not to mention skill - of this slightly tubby, spiky-haired Geordie celebrating with such idiotic gusto in front of us. The urge to applaud wildly was only tempered by an equally strong desire to throw something at him.

The capacity to infuriate and enthral at a stroke has always been one of Gascoigne's more endearing traits. It is one of the reasons he still occupies such a central place in the affections of England's sporting public and why his detention last Thursday was met with an unusually sympathetic response from the red tops, not known for their sensitivity in handling mental health issues. There were never likely to be "Bonkers Gazza" headlines glorying in his downfall, as there were with Frank Bruno a few years ago.

That's not to say we haven't been disgusted by his trespasses: the chronic boozing, the failure to realise even a fraction of his glorious potential and, most repulsively of all, the revelation that he beat his now estranged wife, Sheryl. That was the moment the harmless pranks suddenly turned horribly sour and a merely daft mind turned criminal.

But even then we forgave him because we were convinced that his bestial tendencies masked a tender, vulnerable soul. Beneath the bluster and bravado, the loutishness and boorish swagger, there was always the twinkly-eyed, chubby-faced kid from Gateshead who could make a football sing. In an era of English football which insisted on painting in various shades of grey, he was a splash of vibrant colour - the closest England, a hopelessly limited yeomen, came to producing a player of dreamy, South American flair.

The comparisons with George Best, another magician bedevilled by poor judgement, are inevitable but skewed. For all his flaws, you always had the impression Best could have snapped out of his self-induced tailspin had he so desired. Before the booze took hold completely in his final years, he retained an element of control.

But Gascoigne has never seemed entirely in control of his own fate. He has never been able to resist the urge to hurtle, head-first into catastrophe - whether it be a knee-high lunge at Nottingham Forest's Gary Charles, which ironically precipitated his own slide into the abyss, telling the good people of Norway to "f*** off" in a television interview or trashing a hotel room after being left out of England's squad for the 1998 World Cup. Like so many who play the clown, the compulsion to self-destruct was just as strong as that to entertain.

It seems almost a lifetime ago that Gascoigne was at his mercurial best but, then, perhaps he belongs in a different age. Modern Premier League footballers are anti-personalities: every statement, however bland, is filtered through a ruthless club press officer, their public image polished and purified by their own personalised PR team.

Gascoigne belonged to a less sanitised era where character was celebrated and flaws, while hardly encouraged, proved that even elite sportsmen were human. When he blubbed at Italia 90, even the iciest heart melted a little. To see such intense vulnerability on such an exalted stage was refreshing. Now, it seems it was just the first crack in the splintering of a tortured mind.

" In an era of English football which insisted on painting in various shades of grey, he was a splash of vibrant colour