Paul Gascoigne vows to win Italian I’m A Celebrity for late nephew

Paul Gascoigne’s sister has credited him for saving her life after her son Jay passed away aged 22 from an accidental self-medicated drug overdose in April 2016.

In a new interview, Anna, 54, revealed the football legend, 53, vows to win Italy‘s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! in honour of his late nephew and will donate the show’s £50,000 prize money to his mental health charity.

The charity worker said: ‘I was calm and methodical – I wrote my will and put in a letter what I wanted for my funeral. Paul has spoken of his own battles and I was suicidal after Jay died. Paul and our mum pulled me back from the brink.’

Gazza’s older sibling recalled how she wanted to ‘look after’ Jay and insisted on ensuring her 25-year-old daughter ‘would be fine’.

However, Anna said she was ‘stopped’ from taking her life after the ex-sports manager pointed out that Harley ‘wouldn’t be far behind her’, following the loss of her brother, as well as her grandfather John – who died from cancer two years later. 

The mental health campaigner told The Sun on Sunday: ‘When Jay died, my life had become like a nuclear winter. The loss you feel when a child dies needlessly cannot be put into words. [Then] losing dad, after everything else, was the cruellest blow.’

Anna also shared how Paul called her in tears as he discussed his hopes of becoming the King of The Jungle for the Jay Gascoigne Foundation. 

Jay, a talented musician, was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), anorexia and depression from the age of 12 and became the youngest person in the UK to be put on Prozac – a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI).  

She added: ‘He was the kindest, gentlest boy… he just wanted peace. He was afraid to blink in case it caused me or Harley to die. Sometimes he’d be afraid to leave his room and couldn’t drink water as voices told him something terrible would happen.’ 

The grieving mother admits that while she’s ‘battle-scarred’, she is ‘stronger’ than she was before for the sake of Harley. 

Anna is campaigning for addiction to be put back into the Mental Health Act and has been in touch with fellow parents who have suffered similar tragedies.

She is on a mission to help fund a centre for vulnerable young people to receive counselling, after her son was left ‘begging for help’. 

In a statement at his inquest, Anna previously revealed how Jay was ‘bullied at school because of his uncle’s celebrity status’. 

She said: ‘It is really difficult to sort and pinpoint when I thought Jay had mental health issues until he was admitted into hospital. He was around 12 years old. He had anorexia, and then the constant crying, depression and the OCD. 

‘While he was in hospital when he was first allowed out of bed to go to the toilet on his own he would take two steps then one step back. 

‘We thought it was odd but did not identify it as OCD. He got a psychiatrist as the depression was more obvious than the OCD.

‘He was constantly tidying, dismantling things and putting them in order. Everything in his bedroom that he could dismantle he would. 

‘He would shout at me to come up with a tape measure to measure how far his dressing table was from the wall.

‘He used to break down and cry and curl up in a ball and did not want to do it but could not stop doing it. It caused him massive distress.’ 

Gazza, who spent three years at Rome’s club Lazio and battled alcoholism in the past, made a dramatic debut on the reality show this month as he arrived via a helicopter and had to jump into the ocean from a height and swim to the island. 

The attacking midfielder was joined for the first day by his L’Isola dei Famosi, the Island of the Famous, co-stars including actors Gilles Rocca, Simone Paciello, Vera Gemma, Akshay Kumar, Roberto Ciufoli, Angela Melillo and Francesca Lodo. 

Also pictured were DJ Daniela Martani, business owner Ferdinando Guglielmotti, model Drusilla Gucci and presenter Elisa Isoardi. 

Other stars involved in the series are actor Brando Giorgi, actress Valentina Persia and presenter Beppe Braida. 

The sportsman, who passed a series of mental and physical tests for the show, recently claimed he was banned from joining the cast of the original I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Here! after failing a psychological test back in 2009. 

If you have been affected by this story, you can call the Samaritans on 116 123 or visit www.samaritans.org.