FORMER England soccer star Paul Gascoigne has been fined 1,000 pounds (US$1,305) and ordered to pay 1,000 pounds in compensation by a court Monday for making a racist comment to a black security guard at his “An Evening With Gazza Show” last year.

    Dudley Magistrates Court was told Gascoigne, 49, had humiliated Errol Rowe, who had been given the job of protecting him during his performance in the nearby English West Midlands town of Wolverhampton on Nov. 30 last year, by asking him: “Can you smile please, because I can’t see you.”

    District Judge Graham Wilkinson, fining Gascoigne, told the retired playmaker: “You sought to get a laugh from an audience of over 1,000 people because of the color of Mr. Rowe’s skin.”

    Wilkinson added: “Mr. Rowe was clearly humiliated on stage, as part of an act.

    “As a society it is important that we challenge racially aggravated behavior in all its forms.

    “It is the creeping ‘low-level’ racism that society still needs to challenge. A message needs to be sent that in the 21st century society that we live in, such action, such words will not be tolerated.

    “It is not acceptable to laugh words like this off as some form of joke.”

    It had appeared Gascoigne, who made his name at northeast club Newcastle United before enjoying spells at Tottenham Hotspur, Rome club Lazio and Glasgow Rangers, would contest a charge of using “threatening, abusive or insulting” words or behavior to cause racially-aggravated harassment, alarm or distress, but he changed his plea before the first witness was called to give evidence Monday.

    Gascoigne, a member of the England side that reached the semifinals of the 1990 World Cup in Italy, was spoken to by police about his comments Dec. 22 last year.

    He said he “hadn’t gone out to offend anybody” but also told officers: “Looking back now, obviously I have said the wrong thing. I apologize from the bottom of my heart and it will never happen again.”

    (SD-Agencies)