This Christmas you could find yourself tearing at the wrapping paper of a book shaped present, be warned you might be in a position of being nice about ‘Russell Brand on Football’.
I know he’s got a column in the Guardian, but have you actually read it? No, me neither. It generally appears to be florid musings about how difficult it is to get into tight trousers and winkle pickers and be a West Ham fan. Frankly I could read Martin Samuel in the Times if I wanted that.
Since Brand’s awkward appearance in the Guardian, Harry Pearson, a regular weekend columnist, has been shuffled along to a midweek slot.
Pearson, for the uninitiated, is tall, gangling and a purveyor of a surreal turn of phrase, but that’s where the similarities with Brand end. I can’t think that he’s ever back combed his hair or worn winkle pickers and crucially he knows what he’s taking about.
Many years back now, he wrote a witty, insightful and rather charming book about football in the North East. The Far Corner survives in print and is as good a piece of football writing as you’ll find. He followed this with musings on Country fairs, Belgian beer and most recently ‘Achtung Schweinehund’, a book about growing up playing at war.
Dribble! Is basically the book of his Guardian column. Pearson takes a story from the back pages, imagines the most ridiculous outcome and then goes a few steps further into a surreal world where Johnny Cash assumes the role of ‘the Man in Black’ because of his admiration for top referee and It’s a Knockout imparter of rules, Arthur Ellis. ‘I Walk the Line’, it turns out is a homage to the unknown linesman!
The format, alphabetical, is as conventional as this book gets. He explains terms that define the world of football we know and love, Banter, Bung, Diving and Losing the Dressing Room. All vital pieces of knowledge to add to your pub chat armoury.
In amongst all this essential knowledge there are some cracking bits of info that you may have missed in more conventional columns. ‘Razor’ Ruddock’s missus has the nickname ‘Ladyshave’, Arsene Wenger is taller than Sam Allardyce, but never known as ‘big Arsene’, and why managers can’t really lose dressing rooms.
Not all of the above is true and not all of it is nonsense either and therein lies the beauty of this book and Pearson’s writing in general. In between the funny highways and surreal byways he delivers real insight and one or two uncomfortable truths. Under F for Fans he divides terrace dwellers into types and I defy you to not to recognise yourself amongst the ‘social realists, walkman relay stations and the penitent’ he describes.
This time of year we are awash with new books hoping to cash in on the general public’s near insatiable desire to spend as much as they can in the approach to Christmas. Each title is aiming to get their little slice of this market, very few are books that will stand the test of time and become classics of their genre and neither will this.
This is what we call in the trade a ‘dipper’, a toilet read if you will, one to have by the bedside or perhaps a little something extra you can have alongside your Bobby Charlton or god-forbid, Russell Brand.
Dribble is published by Little, Brown this month.
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