Paul 'Gazza' Gascoigne in Wolverhampton - a flawed genius

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, the tone was set.

Not the words of self-confessed wife-beater Gazza, you'll be pleased to know.

But one of his two scouse warm-up acts, beamed in straight from 1974.

Things had not started well.

So if you are shocked by that level of 'gag' it's probably best if you turn the page now.

Still here? Ok. But strap yourselves in, because this was a strange old evening, with as many ups and downs as a football career.

Everyone loves the Clown Prince, daft-as-a-brush Gazza of Italia 90 – me included.

But he's a complex character, to put it mildly, and the years have added a bitterness that rarely lies far beneath the surface.

This Evening With... show laid bare his many contradictions as he veered from comedy to condemnation, probably without even realising it.

See also: Read Craig Birch's review of the Civic Hall show here

After a painful 90 minutes of Liverpudlian 'wit' (Bin Laden, Princess Diana, err, Tipton) and hard-sell – raffle tickets, silent auction, signed shirts, signed pictures, come-and-meet-Gazza-backstage etc – Paul John Gascoigne finally arrived on stage.

He's 48, but looks much older; trim enough, hair slicked back, wearing a t-shirt and jeans beneath a 90's suit jacket, both sleeves rolled up.

This is Gazza clean and sober as he points out within the first 60 seconds.

"Nine months without a drink," he declares to cheers from a largely well-oiled Civic crowd.

Everyone is pleased and relieved, given some of his well-documented issues in recent years.

Three Lions filled the air as we remembered that tackle by Moore and when Lineker scored.

Gazza, sadly, doesn't.

Settling into a chair with his agent alongside, he comes clean from the kick-off.

"I'm not ganna bore you with too many f*****g football stories – because I can't f*****g remember them," he admits.

(I'll stop using the 'f's and the asterisks there. You get the picture.)

What he does recall is a series of fantastical anecdotes that stretch credibility to the limit.

The day a zoo lent him an ostrich to take to training, the time he commandeered a London bus, or smashed up the team coach, or chased Mickey Mouse round Euro Disney, or drove a tractor through a wall.

On and on it goes, netting laughs galore as he works himself up from one madcap tale to another with little prompting required.

I don't know if these stories are true or not, but Gazza is convinced they are. Through the mists of time, drink and drugs he can't remember much of his football career, but these off-the-field stories are crystal clear.

Unlike Gazza's accent, which takes some adjusting to, especially as he gets more and more exciteable as the show moves on.

At one point, he's crying with laughter at his own stories and asking for a tissue from the wings to wipe away the tears.

Paul Gascoigne at his best in 1991:

The audience is in fits too, but as is often the case, just when it's all going so well, Gazza goes too far.

Spotting a black security chap in a darkened corner of the stage he says he can't tell if he's smiling or not.

The Civic took an audible gasp as the laughter instantly dropped from raucous to nervous.

There were other uncomfortable – nay, appalling – moments; a slur on the gay footballer Justin Fashanu, for instance, that can't be repeated in print.

Fashanu committed suicide in 1998.

A dig at Carlos Tevez for being ugly. Tevez was scalded with boiling water as a child and is heavily scarred.

Why do it Paul? You have them eating out of your hand, but suddenly it's crossed the line.

As ever, he needs some good advice or a strong hand. But as he's egged on from one outrageous tale to the next, it's clear he's not going to get either.

Not on stage anyway, and probably not in life.

And even if someone did steer him on the right path, would the man who turned down Manchester United because Spurs offered to buy his sister a sunbed be wise enough to stay on it?

The last time I saw a sporting legend at the Civic, it was a fat, shambolic Mike Tyson, mumbling his way incoherently through a disastrous stage 'show' that left me sad to the core.

Tyson, the most fearsome fighter the world has ever seen, had reached rock bottom.

Today, he is a figure transformed; clean and sober (those key words again), Iron Mike's latest shows in collaboration with Spike Lee are essential viewing.

For the fighter, they look cathartic.

For the viewer, they are uplifting; a troubled man seeking redemption.

Gazza's show isn't like that.

Perhaps it's too early in his recovery for him to go so deep. Perhaps he doesn't want to show so much. Or he thinks the audience don't want to see that. Maybe he's right.

So for now it's slating Glenn Hoddle ("I only went to see that Eileen Drewery cos I thought he said brewery."), modern footballers ("Big-headed b******) and his former pal Jimmy Fivebellies (one-syllable description).

And it all builds up to the night he freely admits he was high on cocaine and decided to take killer Raoul Moat a chicken and some cans as police hunted him at one of Gazza's old fishing spots.

As funny as he tells it – and the laughs ring out – it's just another example of the dangerously self-destructive poor judgement that has pushed him to the brink.

But, for all that's been said, the signs of recovery are good at the moment, all things being relative, of course.

And there's an affection for Gazza that endures through the rights and wrongs of his soap opera story, for many reasons - from adulation over his God-given football ability to sympathy for his tortured soul.

("All my life, I've just wanted to entertain. That's why I find it so difficult now.")

Whatever your standpoint, everyone wants Paul Gascoigne to be a Jimmy Greaves or Tony Adams, not a lost legend like Best or Higgins.

Glimpses beneath the trademark Gazza facade are few and far between, but as he rises to leave after less than an hour, amid a standing ovation he calls out to the crowd: "You're keeping me alive!"

Despite all the faults and flaws, let's hope so, Paul. Let's hope so.