I kissed woman to boost her confidence, Paul Gascoigne tells assault trial

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/oct/15/i-kissed-woman-to-boost-her-confidence-paul-gascoigne-tells-assault-trial

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The former England footballer Paul Gascoigne wept as he denied sexually assaulting a woman on a train, claiming he wanted to boost her confidence after she was called “fat and ugly”.

The 52-year-old denied he was drunk or that he “forcibly and sloppily” kissed the passenger on a packed train on 20 August last year. The ex-Newcastle United star said he told the woman “You’re not fat and ugly – you’re beautiful inside and out”, then gave her a “peck on the lips”.

“I was not drunk, I was not forceful, I was not sexual. I was just reacting to the lady getting called fat and ugly,” he told jurors at Teesside crown court.

Gascoigne became tearful as he gave evidence in just over an hour of occasionally colourful testimony on Tuesday. At one point he removed his dentures to demonstrate how his speech may have been slurred on the day of the alleged assault, later leading jurors through a four-page montage of him kissing and being kissed by celebrities including Princess Diana, Wayne Rooney and Ian Wright.

Gascoigne is accused of drunkenly forcing himself on the woman and kissing her on the lips for up to five seconds after “cornering” her on a train from Birmingham to Edinburgh. He told the court he was asked for a selfie which the complainant took of him with two other women, and claimed someone shouted: “You don’t want a photo with her, she’s fat and ugly.”

Asked by his defence barrister, Michelle Heeley QC, how that made him feel, he told the jury he had suffered from bulimia and would train wearing a black bin liner to help him lose weight. “I was called a fat bastard every time I played,” he said.

Giving evidence about what he was thinking at the time of the kiss, he also mentioned losing his nephew Jay two years before. Gascoigne said he sat next to the woman, telling her “take no notice of what they say” and “listen, you’re not fat and ugly, you are beautiful inside and out”. At that point, he became emotional and an usher in the court handed him a paper tissue.

He told the court there was no sexual intention to the kiss and that the woman appeared to be fine with it, but another female passenger “who was shouting and screaming at me” was telling her to report it to police.

The woman, who cannot be named, tearfully told jurors on Monday that she had “never been so upset and scared” when Gascoigne grabbed her face and kissed her on the mouth.

William Mousley QC, prosecuting, asked Gascoigne whether he had invented elements of his account to portray his innocence, which the defendant denied. Gascoigne told the court he boarded the train at Birmingham with his two teenage nephews, taking with him a “few cans” of Stella Artois. Some of the lager was dispensed into an empty milk carton to drink from, he said.

He said he was being loud and enthusiastic but denied he was intoxicated, saying he had recently had pellets injected into his stomach that made him “spew” if he consumed too much alcohol.

Wearing a light blue suit and a patterned tie, Gascoigne told jurors that before the alleged assault he was posing for selfies with passengers and messing about with his nephews, who at one point slapped cake on his forehead.

Asked by Heeley whether his speech would have been slurred because of his dentures, Gascoigne removed his bottom row of teeth and said he was not wearing them on the train that day.

Following his evidence, the court heard character references from the former boxer Ricky Hatton and Gascoigne’s former agent Mel Stein.