Paul Gascoigne rose from the back streets of Newcastle to the most elevated football stages of the world and down into the despair of alchohol-induced misery. As his autobiography is published this week, Scott Wilson examines the Gazza story.

IN 1949, American playwright Arthur Miller produced an essay entitled "Tragedy and the Common Man" in which he challenged the assertion that only the wealthy or high of rank could suffer a tragic fall from grace.

Previous artistic convention had suggested that anyone born into the working classes was unable to evoke a tragic response as their suffering was neither deep nor noteworthy enough to merit serious attention.

Miller, raised in an America shaken by the depression, dismissed such notions as archaic and argued that anyone could possess a "tragic flaw" that would provide a constant thread through their mistakes, lost opportunites and, ultimately, their downfall.

This, to Miller, was the essence of tragedy - someone starting life with nothing, gradually attaining what they hoped and dreamed for through a combination of work and skill, but then going on to lose it all because of a weakness that repeatedly reared its head.

On Friday, Paul Gascoigne will release his long-awaited autobiography, in which he discusses his rise from the back streets of Dunston to the greatest footballing stages in the world, and his subsequent fall into alcohol-induced misery, self-doubt and suffering.

It is entitled "My Story" but, if it had been ghost-written by anyone with an appreciation of Miller, it would surely have been called "The Tragedy of a Common Man", for Gascoigne's is that tragedy.

Born in Dunston in 1967, Gascoigne's natural talent was evident from an early age and, by the time he signed for his hometown club Newcastle United at the age of 16, he was already being tipped for the very top.

Training with the likes of Kevin Keegan and Terry McDermott, his prodigious ability shone through and he was handed his first-team debut in 1985.

St James' Park was his breeding ground but, after 22 goals in 106 league games for the Magpies, it was time to move on.

The bright lights of London beckoned and, after turning down the chance to join Manchester United, Gascoigne made a record £2m move to Tottenham Hotspur in 1988.

Playing for one of England's leading sides threw him into the national spotlight, and international fame beckoned two years later when Gascoigne's experiences at 1990's World Cup ensured his place in the annals of the game.

A series of mesmeric performances helped to take England through to a semi-final showdown with Germany, and a game that still serves as a watershed moment in more ways than one.

Gascoigne's tears at realising he would play no part in the World Cup final elevated him to a level of national affection normally reserved for royalty, but they also played a major role in transforming football into the all-encompassing social force that it unquestionably is today.

He might once have joked that he made more money out of tears than Ken Dodd, but Gascoigne agrees that "everyone seemed to get into football then" and, for the casual observer, the tearful North-Easterner was the ultimate embodiment of the softer side of the game.

He was feted as a hero on his return to England, winning 1990's Sports Personality of the Year contest, but just as his career was at its highest point, so a tortuous descent began.

The trigger for Gascoigne's downward spiral came in 1991's FA Cup final when an ill-judged lunge at Nottingham Forest's Gary Charles damaged his knee ligaments so badly that he was forced out of the game for more than a year.

The ebullient Gascoigne had lived for football up to that point. With his one true love taken away from him, he struggled to fill the emotional void in his life.

His professional career continued with high-profile moves to Italian giants Lazio and Scottish champions Rangers but, off the pitch, his problems were beginning to overtake him.

A scintillating goal against Scotland in Euro 96 hinted at a return to the Gascoigne of old but, in truth, his moment of genius merely served to mock a talent that was slowly ebbing away.

Tales began to circulate of the player's descent into drinking, with injury after injury forcing him onto the sidelines and into the refuge of more alcohol.

"There were things I didn't bring on myself," Gascoigne once argued. "But all the little pulls and things? Yeah, definitely. I wasn't taking care of myself as much as I should have done."

His private life was also spiralling out of control, with his wife Sheryl appearing in public with a black eye and her arm in a sling just five months after the couple were married in June 1996.

On the pitch, Gascoigne returned to the North-East to play for Middlesbrough but, in 1998, he was forced to accept the crushing reality that his best days had passed.

England boss Glenn Hoddle left him out of his World Cup squad after questioning his fitness and dedication following a series of sightings in bars and late-night kebab shops.

"I was always the one that got followed," protested Gascoigne, but he had become the easiest of targets for a British press that likes nothing more than seeing its heroes fall flat on their face.

He was persuaded to check into celebrity detox clinic, the Priory, for a brief stay but, because of a blind belief that his drinking was not affecting his football or his general health, Gascoigne now concedes that was "too soon" in his recovery programme.

Instead of helping to turn over a new leaf, the experience made him dig his heels in even more as his need to be loved and admired drove him into more socialising and more messy nights on the town that rendered him unable to do the one thing that could have offered him an escape route - playing football.

Walter Smith, a man who once invited Gascoigne to eat Christmas dinner with his family because he had nowhere else to go, offered him a lifeline at Everton. But his ravaged body could not survive in the top-flight and, rather than accept his fate, the midfielder turned back to his favoured means of solace.

"If I wasn't playing I would drink Saturdays, then Sunday, then Monday," admitted Gascoigne in a recent Observer interview. "Then I would try to train and it was no good, then have another drink just to pass the day away. Then I couldn't train and I wasn't looking forward to days.

"I didn't know what the day was. I never felt suicidal, but it was a breakdown in a way."

After being released by Everton, Gascoigne refused to admit that his career was over, chasing ever-more ridiculous chances to prolong his playing days.

But now he is back in the North-East - brow-beaten, strapped for cash and, most poignantly of all, alone.

The greatest footballer of his generation was unable to cope without the praise and acclaim that served to legitimate his existence and bolster his troubled sense of self-worth.

One of Gascoigne's most recent public appearances came as part of a BBC3 documentary that followed him to China as he began a short-lived contract with Gansu Tianma.

In a deserted karaoke bar he sang "Against All Odds" and "I Don't Want To Talk About It" - ideal choices for his epic rise and fall. Two songs that encapsulate Gascoigne, and act as perfect bookends to the tragedy of a common man.

* My Story (Headline £18.99) is published on Friday. Paul Gascoigne will be signing copies at Waterstone's, Blackett Street, Newcastle, on Friday at noon, and Waterstone's in Middlesbrough, on Saturday, 5pm.