WARNING: THIS COLUMN contains puns. The gaiety of the nation has this week been much enlivened by the literary jamboree that is the London Book Fair. Apparently it was a whopping success, with much champagne sluiced, myriad canapés troughed and a raft of important booky announcements made.
Even the National Football Museum got in on the act, conducting a survey of the favoured reading of some of the game’s biggest managerial names. The poll itself only cemented the stuff we already knew; former shipyard worker Sir Alex Ferguson (who chose Treasure Island) is very Scottish and deeply interested in boats. Martin Jol (who chose Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea) is very masculine and deeply interested in long-term struggle. And José Mourinho (who chose the Bible) is very religious and deeply interested in matters Messianic.
But for football folk, the really big news came when the publishing juggernaut of HarperCollins trumpeted that it had signed up Wayne Rooney.
In return for five million of your English pounds, the puggy striker will, over the next 12 years, deliver no fewer than five books. I may be underestimating the penly powers of the Manchester United forward, but I doubt that any of these will be psychological thrillers, historical novels or fiery challenges to the musings of Professor Stephen Hawking. I presume they are all going to be autobiographies. Five autobiographies in 12 years . . .
That, of course, is no real problem. George Best’s bestselling memoir, Blessed, was his sixth or seventh scoot around the biographical block. My own bookshelves groan beneath Jimmy Greaves’s repeated efforts to explain his mythic career and wretched alcoholism (truthfully, he’s never bettered the bit in 1979’s This One’s on Me where he describes the day he rescued the empty vodka bottles from the bin and held them out in the rain in the hope of producing another half-mouthful of precious grog). And a quick search of Amazon will reveal that David Beckham is the the author, or subject, of some 91 printed works.
No, the real issues with a glut of Rooney biogs are twofold. One, obviously, is this: will enough happen to young Mr R to keep us riveted? So far, for instance, the sum total of what we know about him is . . . he is the best British footballer since Gazza and, when he was “young and foolish”, he liked to pay ladies 30 years his senior to give him a pretty thorough massage. This behavioural quirk caused his fiancée, Coleen, to throw her engagement ring away . . . into a squirrel sanctuary.
There are surely, though, only so many times you can rehash the whole Sleazy-Vice-Den/Cowboy-Booted-Mother-Of-Six/Signing-Autographs-While-Parting-With-The-Readies/18Carat-Solitaire/Save-The-Squirrels routine.
The other real cause for concern is the titles of all these tomes. Nowadays, soccer life-stories are all brevity and profundity: Addicted; My Story; My Side. Not so long ago, by contrast, they were a wonderland of creativity as our great publishing powerhouses sought to outdo one another and produce the most unforgettable pun of a name.
The life of Frank Worthington, the former England centre forward and notorious horizontal entertainer, was, for instance, called One Hump Or Two? And the most valiant effort of all was reserved for one of George Best’s many personal narratives . . . The Good, The Bad and the Bubbly. One fervently hopes that HarperCollins doesn’t settle for the newfangled My Tale nonsense. Instead it should allow its new cash cow’s surname to lead the way as it seeks titles for the series. This is how it should work.
Let’s say that, in the next couple of years, it all goes the way of the Williams and the Conference for young Wayne. They should not hide, the book covering this period should be called Rooney: Loony. Then, as he finds solace and ultimate redemption with a religious cult, they can follow up with Rooney: Moonie. As he returns to the game by signing for Newcastle, the book will be labelled Rooney: Toony. And, when we all look back on a talent wasted, a destiny unfulfilled, they can pack the shops with Rooney: Too Much, Too Soony.
Others will follow suit. The psychiatrist who sees Wayne through his blackest hours will publish Dark Side of the Roon. His dietician, blaming everything on the player’s weight problems, will write The Roon’s a Balloon.
Meanwhile, someone else will corral all his thoughts and quotes into a compendium called A Roon with a View. Finally, Coleen will be photographed tearfully outside the home of Nutkin, Tufty and Secret (I don’t know any more old squirrels); the picture will be the dustjacket of The Wayne We Were.
Footnote: The first of the HarperCollins books is due on July 24 this year. It is called Wayne Rooney: World Cup Diary. For this to avoid being a hubris-fuelled PR disaster, his tournament had better go more fortunately than the last one in Portugal. Otherwise punters might find themselves investing in a hardback that starts like this: “June 10: Tweaked hamstring after three minutes against Paraguay. Out for six weeks. July 11: Met two jolly blokes in hotel foyer. They say they write for The Times. July 12: Spent all day drinking lager with new chums from The Times. Both called Danny, which certainly helps to avoid any confusion . . .”
DAD WAS SUCH A GOOD SPORT, BUT WHAT A LEGACY
ANOTHER WARNING: WHAT FOLLOWS IS very personal, but don’t flinch or reel away, it is really a happy story. To cut to the chase, last week also saw the death of my much-loved dad, Andy Kelly. It is sad, but not a tragedy; he was a lovely, gentle, funny man who had a long, sometimes hard but always very happy life. His last 15 years, spent back in the wilds of his native Ireland, were particularly blissful.
My reason for mentioning him here is that his is the wellspring of my love of sport. Indeed, my earliest sporting memory is lying on his bed, me 7 years of age, the pair of us glued to his old red radio and to the BBC’s coverage of the 1964 Olympics, live from Tokyo. That was exciting enough, but I can still remember the almost infinite patience with which, after Abebe Bikila’s astonishing triumph, he explained to a small boy what the marathon was, where Ethiopia was and how great it was for an African to win the gold medal.
Two years later he spent a whole day of his precious holiday hauling me back from our telly-less seaside caravan to make sure I didn’t miss the 1966 World Cup final. He worked on the trains up and down to Plymouth and would occasionally, against all the rules, smuggle me aboard. He took me to Home Park to see Plymouth Argyle; it was the most exotic thing of my young life. I owe him a great deal.
In one way, though, he really let me down. He could, if he had wished, have saved me from a lifetime of misery supporting Tottenham Hotspur. Such one-horse partisanship is not a trap into which he allowed himself to fall. As long as I’ve known him, he always reacted the same way when someone said, “So, Andy, who do you support?” He would then begin an elaborate performance of demanding that he be brought that day’s newspaper. He would spread the paper out on the table, turn to the sports section, peer at the top division league table and, in answer to the original question, firmly reply with the name of whichever club was top.
Over the years, therefore, he mostly supported “Leeds!”, “Manchester United!”, “Liverpool!”, “Brian Clough!” and “Arsenal!” It is a matter of some pain to me that he is right now up in heaven, meeting his sporting heroes — Bikila, Danny Blanchflower, Floyd Patterson, Muhammad Ali, George Best — wearing a blinking Chelsea shirt.
E-MAIL: dannyanddanny@hotmail.com
