Janet Street-Porter: Gazza's slide into despair shames us all

Two well-known men, both addicts, make headlines. George Michael is picked up by the police yet again for allegedly cruising in a public toilet near his north London home. George, who was reportedly caught with crack cocaine, was let off with a caution. Some might (justifiably) see this as an example of the two sets of drug laws in this country – one for millionaire pop stars and models and another for the working classes.

Once again George asks his fans to forgive him. Why? Frankly, if he wants to spend his time hanging around in toilets and the bushes of Hampstead Heath smoking crack, as far as I am concerned he can go right ahead. The police should be spending their time dealing with young people carrying knives, rather than raiding public conveniences frequented by gay men.

Ultimately, George is an addict who chooses to spend his time like this rather than perform or write songs and, although we might find his decision repugnant or baffling, he causes no harm to anyone but himself. After all, none of us expect him to be a role model, quite the reverse.

George has fled the country in a private jet, but the decline of Paul Gascoigne won't be so easily dealt with. He was back in the news last weekend following another 48-hour bender in which he was arrested for brawling with a photographer. Gazza has been in and out of rehab countless times. Today, if he is not been sectioned again, he will be slumped in a room, drinking himself to death like that other football superstar George Best did.

For all Gordon Brown waffles on about Britishness and celebrating it with a special day, Gazza's plight brings home to us that being lauded as a sporting hero one year doesn't mean you won't be seen as a laughing stock the next. If Gazza kills himself, I will feel responsible. Yes, I know you can't make addicts clean up unless they want to. I know Gazza's mental problems are such that without football, he cannot see life is worth living. Since he had a hip replacement last year and was told his football days were over, he has plunged into a spiral of depression. Quite simply, he doesn't know how to do anything else.

Right up to the end of Best's life, complete strangers were buying him drinks because great football brings people such joy. Everyone thought, "If George wants to drink, why stop him?" They were thrilled to meet him, even in his dying days. They wanted to be photographed with him and swank to friends that they had shaken his hand. We can't allow the same horrible end to befall Gazza. This humble bloke is a national treasure, and his current existence of stumbling from pub to pub, photographed in torment, has to be brought to an end. Right now, he exemplifies what happens when you are under-educated and over-rewarded for physical activity.

Our national sport treats its stars apallingly once they are past their sell-by dates. Gazza must be taken a long way away, to one of the hard-core Hazelden rehab units in the US, where other inmates won't have a clue who he is. He must spend at least a year there, learning to live without drink and football. On his return, he must be supported and found a decent job. And the Football Association should pay for all this. Paul Gascoigne's decline should be on all our consciences, unlike that of George Michael.

There are hungry people over here too you know, Heather

Heather Mills might have been dropped from Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice series before

filming even started, but the girl has bounced right back. Now she's helping to feed the poor! Heather has donated £500,000 worth of veggie burgers, hot dogs and chicken cutlets – all made from soya – to children in one of the most deprived districts of New York, even helping to dish out the food at alocal community party.

Astonishingly, nobody present seemed to know that this Lady Bountiful was the former Mrs McCartney. But we can rest assured that her new US publicists will be hard at work at re-branding the former model, who enlivened her divorce proceedings by going on UK breakfast television and ranting about how ill-treated she was, before emptying a jug of water over the head of her ex-husband's lawyer. In the event she was awarded £23.5m, rather less than she'd hoped.

The food donation comes – coincidentally – just before Heather launches a range of meat-free food products in the US, where her daughter attends school. Meanwhile, she's said to be starring in a tv documentary presented by Louis Theroux in which she will show her "softer, more caring" side. Curious that Heather made her generous donation of food to the Yanks when there are plenty of deprived communities in her native land who wouldn't turn their noses up at three years' worth of free protein, especially as the cost of basic foods has soared a whopping 43 per cent in the last year.

Dating sites, Jan? Must take years off you...

Jan Leeming did herself no favours on I'm a Celebrity and now the former newsreader is hoping that the internet will be more successful in finding her new pals.

Lopping six years off her age, Jan has placed an ad – under the sexy pseudonym of Cheetahgirl – on a dating website. Describing herself as "very attractive, fun-loving and adventurous", she's interested in men with athletic bodies. Not the Ed Balls type, then. The Schools Secretary is a hypocrite who tells school kids to exercise and eat healthily but isn't ashamed of carrying round a revolting fat stomach himself. Pot and kettle?

* Further proof that the police have their priorities muddled. A black farmer in Leicestershire had officers turn up three times in one week to question him on suspicion of stealing the crops he was growing for Sainsbury's. They asked him for ID and checked on his car. Next day they did the same. And two days later four squad cars turned up.

The police say they have a duty to respond to calls. Weird that they went to exactly the same field to talk to the same black person? Just efficient, but not racist then?