PAUL GASCOIGNE suffered a snub yesterday when an arts organisation said there was no point erecting a statue to the volatile footballer in central London because people would soon forget who he was.
Gascoigne, or Gazza as he is universally known, attracts huge media interest but failed to impress the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.
The society has been asked to put up statues to five prominent people on an empty plinth in Trafalgar Square. Suggestions so far include the South African President, Nelson Mandela, Queen Elizabeth and former prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.
"There were a lot of quite daft suggestions, like Gazza," the society's chairwoman, Ms Prue Leith said. "However wonderful you are, it is just dangerous to have a living hero. A lot of living heroes were put up around London but 50 years later people wondered `Who the hell are they?'"
Gascoigne, famed for bursting into tears after being booked in the 1990 World Cup, is somewhere in the Pacific Ocean on honeymoon after marrying Ms Sheryl Failes, the mother of his baby son, in an ostentatious ceremony.