Concerns Over Paul Gascoigne's Health
22 August 2014, 06:19 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50
The daughter of troubled ex Newcastle United football star Paul Gascoigne has thanked well-wishers after he was pictured being put into an ambulance
The ex-England player, born in Gateshead, has a long history of problems with alcohol, and the 47-year-old is said to have been taken away by emergency services from his home in Dorset.
Twitter users sent messages of sympathy and support to his model and reality star daughter Bianca, which she retweeted.
The 27-year-old wrote: "Thank you for your kind words.''
Pictures published show Gascoigne looking gaunt and almost unrecognisable from his footballing glory days.
Gascoigne's agent declined to comment.
In a TV documentary shown last September, the star described the pain of fearing he might start drinking again, despite knowing it could kill him.
The ITV show Being Paul Gascoigne revealed he was addicted to sweets and spent £1,000 a year on anti-wrinkle jabs to counteract the ravages of drinking.
The star of the Italia 90 World Cup, whose teams also included Tottenham Hotspur, Lazio, Rangers, and Everton, spoke about overhearing doctors say he might die when he was being treated in the US.
Friends from sport and showbusiness clubbed together last year to pay for his treatment.
He said:
"I just remember one bit after the third day of being in hospital when he (the doctor) said 'I don't think this guy is going to make it' and I sort of put my head up a little bit and I was like, tubes in my arms and an oxygen tank injecting round my heart and lungs and that.
I just come forward and I went 'I don't want to die, I need to water the plants' and that was it and then I woke up two weeks later.
With me now, if I did have a drink and relapse, it's like becoming tipsy and merry is OK for a couple of days but like the next mouthful I'm so down, I'm so depressed, I cry. I do all that because I know inside I'm hurting myself again. I know where I'm heading - a wooden box. Or I'm back in treatment or hospital. Or getting sectioned.''
Gascoigne said he had been "lucky twice'' after almost dying from drink, saying: "I hope I don't die through it.
Many football-lovers consider Gascoigne to be one of England's most talented players.
Just hours before his latest health scare, it emerged that Gascoigne was to make a return to football playing for a Sunday League side.
Now living in Bournemouth, where he has been treated for alcoholism, he was recruited to sign up for Abbey FC in the Hayward Sunday League Division Four by taxi driver and manager Chris Foster.
