Jonathan Wilson - Part 1

Our latest Jonathan is a renowned football journalist and author. Here, he talks about his formative days in Sunderland and the inevitability of leaving; teaching in an Indian monastery; reading MOST of Dickens; catching the back end of the "old-school atmosphere" of sports journalism at the News of the World; subbing Richie Benaud (!); his early trips to the Africa Cup of Nations; writing for the FT; his first book deal; and an unfortunate accidental disguise on a bus...

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Hello and welcome to the Amber Moment, a podcast that tells stories of remarkable careers. My name is Paul Howard. My guest today is the football journalist, historian, and broadcaster Jonathan Wilson. Jonathan has written 13 books about football history and one novel. He writes columns for The Guardian and Unheard. He's the founder and editor of The Blizzard, and is also a podcaster, broadcaster, and public speaker. Jonathan, welcome to the show. How are you today? I'm very well, thank you. Thanks for having me. Well, no, it's my pleasure, and thank you very much for your time. So what I'm trying to do here on the amber moment is basically to tell some great stories of people and their careers. And every story starts somewhere. Every leading character, that's you for the purposes of today, has his or her origin story. So I'd love it if you can start by telling us a bit about your background, your childhood, education, and any early influences.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Born in Sunderland in July 1976, on the on the very day that Terry Neal left Tottenham to join Arsenal's manager.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

So people can find out where my birthday is now. Probably not the most secure thing to have done first up. Lived in Sunderland until I was 18, went to India to teach in a monastery for six months. Came back, worked in the kitchen for a while washing dishes, went to Oxford, then went to Durham for my master's, and then having decided I hated academia and having failed to get funding, which those two things may be related. I stumbled into football journalism and I'm very glad that I did.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Very good. What was it like growing up in Sunderland?

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Uh heaven on earth. Um I mean, look, obviously Sunderland in the early 80s, with during the miners' strike and with the shipyards going to decline, was not a particularly wealthy place. Sutland did not have a good wall. It was in those days quite a bleak concrete place, which thankfully the last three or four years have been significant changes to. I mean, I I fear the Labour Council that has done all the good work will soon be ousted, but they have done an extraordinary job at regenerating Sunland. But the main thing is if you grow up there, you don't really realise it was fine. I you know, I I had a very happy, stable home life. Uh, I went to a lot of football, I watched a lot of football, I read a lot, and it's a place I still have great affection for.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

So to talk me through that sort of transition from all those things you said there and the going abroad to teach in a monastery, I'd like to hear about that, by the way. But how how did all of those sort of foundational uh experiences take you to football journalism in the end?

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Yeah, you'd like to hear about that. I mean, look, I don't know if people know this of this. We've known each other for a long time. Let's be clear. Whenever I brought this up in a pub, you have always shot me down straight away. My boring monastery stories. So don't think I'm not going to take advantage of this. Go to that. Um, well, it's something I actually I only realised quite recently. I was talking to my wife who uh is is from Essex, and we sort of both realized it from a very early age, and by early I mean sort of what 11, 12, 13, we both knew that we were leaving home. And I I think I mean I can't really speak for Essex, but uh, but if you grow up in the Northeast, a lot of people realise that if they want to get on in the way that in the profession they'd like to get on. I'm not saying you can't get on the Northeast, clearly you can. But the the there are significant drivers there, and I think I was pretty sure, without ever necessarily articulating it, that I was leaving. And look, I've got mates who who left, went to university, and went back and are very happy, and and you know, cost of living is a lot lower there than it is in London. And I very much enjoy visiting, but I think it does create a strange dynamic, a sort of a sort of internal exile right from the start. You you're distancing yourself from a pretty early age from a place where you grew up because you know that ultimately you you do have to move away for economic reasons.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

What did that feel like at age 11 or 12 to have that sort of certainty?

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Well, again, it's it's it's hard to articulate because I I guess at the time I didn't articulate it. I didn't know anything else. I just sort of thought that's what happens. You you you look beyond your horizons. I mean, I was fortunate that my parents were and again at the time I didn't realise this. My parents were fairly adventurous in their holiday choices. So we we went to Yugoslavia a lot. Oh wow. But yeah, see, my grandparents went to Yugoslavia as well, so it didn't really seem that you saw people go to Yugoslavia on holiday, of course they do. But my dad was on one of the very first package tours that went to Croatia when uh Tito opened the borders, right, which was at 63, I think, maybe 62. Right. And my mum went on the same package holiday the following year. Uh-huh. And so before they met each other, and they met each other um, I don't know, a couple of years later, 65 or 66. And that was one of the things that they sort of bonded over. Yeah. And my dad had done I mean my dad was a very um you never met my dad, did you?

SPEAKER_01 5:02

No, never, no.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

He was a very sort of by the time I come along, he was a very sort of conservative, introverted, slightly emotionally repressed man. I and yet he had this story that I mean his one story that he told over and over again. Right. That on this package, sir, him and his mates, yeah, him and I think three mates had gone and gone over, yeah. They'd they'd totally illegally and with you know, in Tito's Yugoslavia, potentially quite significant consequences. They'd gone out on a fishing boat overnight, uh, which you know you you weren't meant to leave the resort. And they've they'd yeah, they'd gone out with some local fishermen and helped bring the bring the catch in.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Sort of Freddie Flinthoff or Gaza type escapade, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Yeah, I mean, I presume Booz was involved, but but yeah, it seemed completely out of character with the man later in life, but anyway, fair play to him. So see, I think I'd I'd had from a very early age a sort of an awareness of and an interest in uh life beyond Western Europe, yeah. And Yugoslav obviously is you know the communist bloc, yeah, very watered down. It's it's yeah, communist bloc on an easy level, but then my school did uh I mean this seems weird as well, did it? My school did an exchange to Russia in 1992.

SPEAKER_03 6:10

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

So we were in Russia in November 92, which was I can't remember, I think we were a month, maybe it was October 19. We were a month before the coup attempt against Gorbachev.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

And so you remember sort of seeing the news reports and seeing Yeltsin sitting on the tank outside the White House, having been there a matter of weeks earlier. Wow. So I I think I I'd yeah, there's obviously two levels of of departure there. There's departure to go somewhere else in the UK to make your life, but there's also an awareness that I want to travel and want to experience the world, and your football journalism is a is a great job for doing that.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

I'm I'm conscious that you haven't yet told your um Indian monastery story, and I really want to give you the platform to do it.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

So um I'd said to my parents, I quite fancy taking a year out between school and university, and they'd said, Look, we can't afford it. I was like, Yeah, right, fair enough. Then I went to my Oxford interview and they said to me, Look, we've got eight places, there's ten of you we want to take. Uh, you are the youngest person of those ten. Would you mind deferring for a year? And I was sort of like, this is just win-win.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

I I get my place at Oxford and I get an end-forced year out. My parents can't really complain about it.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

So I said this to my parents, and they said, Well, why don't you go away for six months? Yeah, and then come back and work for six months, and and yeah, we can cope financially that way. Yeah. And actually, I think in many ways, that's the best possible preparation for university. I remember sort of the first few weeks of university seeing people being homesick and thinking, yeah, try having no electricity, no hot water, yeah, days before the internet, living in a small cell 5,000 feet up the Himalayas with um, you know, no, no British people about, and then compare that to your your comfortable room in in an Oxford College and see if you feel homesick. But the other thing was being in a monastery with like no TV, no internet, the two things I did was I listened to the World Service. Uh so that I listened to an awful lot of documentaries about Schubert. Um, it was just it was like this same documentary and Schubert was on every week. I must have heard it half dozen times.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

It's like every time I I happen upon the likely lads on the tell, it's always the one where they're trying to avoid the result of the England Bulgaria game.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

Oh, Bulgaria, sorry, yeah, right. Bulgaria, yeah, yeah. And and also I I just read a huge amount. So before before an English literature degree, to come back having read every Dickens bar one. And that was only because I didn't want to be somebody who'd read all of Dickens. I felt that would be quite a sad sad point in my life too.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Which one did you leave out and why?

SPEAKER_00 8:46

I mean, the the why is is simply because the second hand bookshop in the village didn't have it. Right. And it was Barnaby Rudge.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Have you read it since? No, not completed it deliberately.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Well, semi-deliberately, it's just I I think in 19 to have no Dickens left would be a sad, sad place to be. It's like it's like Bristol. I'd have no more else to conquer.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Well, I've re I've read no Dickens, so I'm deliberately going to start with Barnaby Rudge.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Okay, and then together we can we could be people who've read all of Dickens.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Back to the old pub quiz.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

Um, and yeah, I'd read most of Hardy and most of George Elliott, and you know, I I just read hundreds of pages of Victorian novels every day. Amazing. And again, because you don't really understand what's going on outside your own little world, getting to university and finding that other people had read sort of like half of Dickens, and I'd be like, Yeah, I've read 16. Yeah. And uh looking like a horrendous SWAT when actually it was just nothing else to do.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Yeah, yeah. Um and what was the work like over there?

SPEAKER_00 9:48

So I was I was teaching, I was meant to be teaching English to monks, uh, which I did, but I also very early on, I was in the um the the the Pemalama, the the head of the monastery, I was in his office, and there was a local an Indian carpet salesman. So there's a Tibetan monastery in India, right? Uh and there's a Tibetan carpet salesman, sorry, an Indian carpet salesman there, and he was he was so I can't remember the exact details, but it's like right, he rooms um yes 20 feet by 12 feet, so that's 380 square feet, and we're calling it 10 rupees a square foot, so that's uh 5600 rupees. Look, hang on, what go go through that again?

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

And so pointed out, hang on, this is this is not accurate. What you do what are you talking about? And it turned out the Tibetans had no idea how to calculate this, and they were like, Can you can you do this on every transaction? I was like, I mean, yes, it's really not difficult. Yeah, and they said, Can you teach our younger monks how to do this? Again, yes. Uh so I taught them maths as well, and I was I was I was absolutely despised among Indian tradesmen.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

You'd you'd blown the gap. Yeah, I had to do that. So you were basically training monks to be carpet salesmen now.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Well, no, not to be ripped off by car carpet salesmen, which I guess is the other end of the transaction.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Fascinating. So what so you ended up teaching both sort of maths and English to them?

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Yes, I did, yeah, yeah. And and I taught them a lot of football. So this was just after the 94 World Cup, so they were obsessed by that World Cup.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

To the extent that you you remember Jordan Lechkov, the great Bulgarian attacking midfielder who had a sort of bald head with a little tuft of hair at the front, and he scored a famous diving head against Germany uh in the uh quarterfinals. Quarterfinals, I think, yeah. Yeah, and and so a lot of the monks we call either Tenzen or Tashi, they were the sort of two really common names, right? So they all were given either a family name or a nickname to differentiate them. Yeah, and one of the Tashis had a bald head with a little tuft of hair, so he was known as Tashi Lechikov.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

So that that's how football it sort of permeated you know the the the world of Tibetan monasticism.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Very much a global phenomenon, reaching all of the corners of the of the globe. So thank you for that. I don't know why I would shut you down in a pub on stories like that, because that's fascinating stuff. So, what happened between then and um and then your career at Oxford and your early forays into journalism, I guess. How how did that all happen?

SPEAKER_00 12:17

So I I I think I'd always sort of uh imagined I'd be I'd write books. That was the thing I think I sort of dreamed of doing. And as a kid, I I sort of wrote books, uh yeah, detective fiction, yeah, stories about football, uh they were the two main things. Yep. And I sort of got towards the end of my third year, uh, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I sort of basically just wanted to keep having the same nice life I was having. Yeah. And so I applied to do a master's, uh only got two one, not the first that I needed, right? Um and so I then applied to Durham to do a master's back up near Sunderland. Yeah, partly because yeah, it it there's no sort of issue of accommodation because they were my parents, at least in the short term, and partly I think to prove a point that the the 2-1 wasn't actually a reflection of my academic capabilities. So I ended up moving into accommodation in Durham. Happily that was Sunland's 98-9 season, which you may remember when they got 105 points and uh were promoted to the Premier League. Yeah, went to every home game that season, which was a great season. Was that under Peter Reed? That was under Peter Reed, yeah. So they they'd lost in the playoff final in 98.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

The four-four draw against Charton lost on penalties, which which even though we lost one of the greatest games I've ever been to. So that was the Monday before my final start on the Thursday, uh, which may in some way explain the um I see what you're saying. I came back from Wembley and it was a really hot day. I mean, it'd been a really hot, humid day, and when the old Wembley, I don't know if you remember, but the the heat would really sit in the stadium. Yes. It was a it was an odd, it had this sort of microclimate. And so in during uh extra time when it was really tense, it was sort of late afternoon, the heat and the humidity had built up. There's people just fainting all over. It was a really weird place to be. Yeah, and I went back to back to my room and they they painted the windows the previous week. Oh so my room at Oxford, I flicked up the latch and just pushed the windows I normally did. My hand went straight through the pane because it stuck it. Oh jeez. So about three hours after Sundan had lost this incredibly dramatic playoff final. I was wandering around college on a bank holiday Monday with uh with my hand wrapped in a tea towel, blood dripping from my wrist. And people go, you um are you all yeah? Look, it was an accident with a window. I had knocked, I had not slipped my wrists because we failed to get promoted. But again, so turning up at my finals with sort of I mean, I still got the scars on my hand from it.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Did you not go to hospital?

SPEAKER_00 14:38

No, god, no, no, no. No, I didn't. I was looking for the nurse and then I decided the blood wasn't that bad. Um, but yeah, it is still scarred, so bloody hell.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Uh Ipswich lost to Jalton in the semi-final that year, by the way. So thanks for reminding me about that.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

Yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah, yeah. Uh so anyway, I went to Durham and yeah, happily got a significant distinction on the masters. So I proved my point to academia. Very good. Uh I got accepted to do a D-fill at York with local Jonathan Dolamore, who was absolutely the world expert in what I want to do, which was imperial constructions of masculinity in the work of Conrad McKipling. And I but I couldn't get funding. I think that's quite it was quite in those as quite standard that you wouldn't get funding for the first year of a humanities doctorate. Uh, and then you sort of proved that you were dedicated to it, and then you might get it second year.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

I was just gonna ask, how how do you go about even securing funding or trying to get funding?

SPEAKER_00 15:32

You apply to the arts and humanities research board, the AHRB. Or you did back then, I'm now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, having having failed to get the funding, that's sort of I guess, sort of made concrete an inclination I'd had that I was actually quite bored of academia, and I thought a lot of it was quite um bogus and fraudulent. And so I moved down to London. There was three friends who had a four-bedroom house who needed uh a fourth body. Um, and I thought, yeah, if I'm doing temping work, I may as well temp in London with my mates rather than temping in Sundland with my parents.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

I don't but I did some great temping jobs. I worked in a in a bottle factory, but much like Dickens, in fact. Um I was I guess I was about three times older than Dickens when I was when I had my bottle factory experience. Did yeah did night ships at the bottle factory.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Bloody hell.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Where was where was that? In in Southwick in Sund.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Oh, okay. All right, that's yeah, yeah. All right.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Uh and um I also uh I worked for Magna Cansaw as an offshoot of Nissan.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

Uh so that that was a great job. I think I must have told you this story, but I was um there might be other people who want to hear it though. Oh, I suppose so, yeah, yeah. I'd because I was just I was just signed up with a temping agency, I said can you can you get over to Nissan? It's two buses across town. All right, fine. And what they'd they'd ordered in a load of dashboards, and I think they come from Japan, and they made they'd been made to too high a specification, which meant that the mock walnut finish wouldn't stick. So my job was just to rough them up. So I had a like a full suit, goggles, mask, and an industrial sander. I've I'd never used an industrial sander before, I've never used one since. Yeah, just had to just make this like you know, this beautiful, you know, I guess plastic sort of unit look worse. Yes. Um and I Nissan were a they were I mean, well, Magna Cancer, but yeah, Nissan was a parent company. They were like they were great, great people to work for because you you worked 50 minutes and you got 10 minutes off. So the idea was in that 10 minutes you went to Valley, you had a drink. Uh but it's just a much more sort of humane way of working than the bottle factory. Again, as as Dickens, I I think himself discovered would testify. He was crying out for Japanese investment.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Um and uh not so forthcoming in the in the middle of the 19th century.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

And I think Japan's got to take a log hard look at itself about that, but anyway, um my my parents were were away, and my my granddad was uh I mean basically was dying of cancer and he was in a home. So my parents said, You can you make sure you visit him every day? Which of course fine. So I had to get another T buses. This is the first day I had to get another T buses across town. And what I hadn't realized was that there was all this sort of black plastic was sort of you know just flying up. So I take the suit off, I take the goggles off, I take the mask off. Don't realize that I'm effectively in blackface. Oh god, oh no, and so like I I get get two buses across town in blackface, and I mean I'm aware this could be clipped up and taken out of context, not actually in blackface, in accidental blackface. Go into the my my grand, and I was gonna see people were staring at me. I thought it was a bit odd. Get into my grandad's old people's home, and like this bloke comes up and goes, How son? Oh, I love the minstrels. Like, I wish they hadn't cancelled them. And I was like, hang on, what's going on? Oh no, and my granddays I go and have a look in the mirror, I was like, Oh god, and then like it just took so long to scrub off.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Yes, geez, oh man, that's brilliant, right? So you do you're doing these kind of temping jobs, you're enjoying living in London, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

Yeah, I mean basically was a continuation of university life, but with a little bit of cash. Uh so that was I moved down the autumn in '99, yeah, and started a journalism course in the January of 2000, which was a three-month course. I mean, not the world's greatest course, in all honesty, but it it's it was useful in that it taught me shorthand and the basics of media law. And then when I'd finished that, I went to the US for 10 days, went to New York and Boston to visit friends who were at university there. And about the the person I met in New York was the uh top podcaster Dominic Sandbrook. Ah, lovely. And came back and basically gave myself two weeks to find a job before I was going to go back into temping. So I was sending off emails to everybody. And then I think it must have been the Thursday of the second week. I was out for dinner with mates I've been at Doham with, and one of them brought along her new boyfriend, who is tiny little, he couldn't even be five foot tall, a tiny little guy. But he was an internet millionaire, which is a phrase you heard a lot around about 2000.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

And he said, Why don't you try these two websites who I've heard of recruiting?

SPEAKER_01 20:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

And one of them was onefootball.com. I emailed them and they said, Come in for an interview on Monday. I went in for an interview on the Monday and I started working on the Tuesday.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Pretty efficient.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they they lasted for two years before they went bankrupt. Right. It's I mean, it's really annoying. They were ahead of their time. There was sort of a global football website. Yeah. And I think if they'd launched, say five years later, they'd been they'd probably have been bought out by the Athletic or ESPN or somebody by now. But they would have been successful. And actually, they they were pretty much breaking even. Uh they we'd just done a deal to provide, I can't remember who is too, but providing content for some other media company's website, which would have taken us into a small profit. But unfortunately, we'd been taken over by a company called Sportio, who owned Umbro.com and various other websites, but they're also connected to Ref, R E D F, which was a company I don't know if he was the owner or he was definitely a director, uh Ray Ranson former Newcastle Manchester City fullback. Yeah, yeah. And they basically they loaned money to football clubs when banks would not loan them money. Interesting. And the collapse of Bradford City meant they lost a lot of money, and the most efficient way for them to deal with that was to offload it onto our website. And when you suddenly get, I think it was like I don't remember the exactly was that a five million pound debt on a half million pound turnover that company's not existing anymore not very sustainable yeah so that was just after the world cup in 2002 yeah and so I went into uh I started doing subbing at newspapers so I started subbing at the the news of the world but because we we knew sort of through the early months of 2002 that that finance were tight uh everybody was sort of looking for yeah other outlets and I've been very lucky I was in Mali for the African Cup of Nations working for one football and there's a journalist called Nick Harling who used to work for the FT uh he's a freelancer but he was he was the FT didn't have much sports coverage in those days and he didn't know how to use email right it was 2000 well 2002 with that he was an old bloke well I mean he's still alive no obviously wasn't that old but uh he was a old-fashioned bloke yeah so I I was doing his emailing for him right and he went home like 10 days before the end of the tournament so what I hadn't realized was he was intending to carry on filing as though he was still in Mali uh and so I yeah I completely knifed him without meaning to I emailed the FT and said oh now Nick's gone home do you want me to pick it up and do oh no oh Nick's gone home as he is oh no yeah so I did take over from him and did you eventually receive a stern email from him I've learned how to email he Nick Harling was a he was a man of many great anecdotes he was a great one of the great old fleet suite chancers there's no chance of him hearing this it's fine um it's very odd thing I was um I was I I told this story well I'll tell you the story first so he his first job in journalism was on the Bedford advertiser the Bedford examiner whatever the local paper Bedford is uh this is late 60s and he was a uh a massive England fan like he would go to every England game um trying to think which club he supports yeah can't remember which club he supports but anyway maybe Chelsea but anyways he he was more England than his club yeah and he'd been asked to do do some job on a like a Wednesday night when England had a game and he was just go to the game and then the next day he's like oh Christ I haven't done that job so he he panics rings on so I'm really sorry couldn't do it I I broke my leg playing five side and then he's like oh no I'm gonna have to go in the office and pretend I've got a broken leg. So happily he's got a friend who's a Harley Street surgeon who makes for him like a zip of plastic and he gets away with this for several weeks and he only gets caught because he drove into the office and got was seen by his editor putting the plastic on in a car park that's terrific bizarre I was I was telling my wife this story and like literally like we were having lunch and I told her this story and it was a Sunday and we went to a pub to watch whatever football was on that afternoon. When there's a pub and who's sitting there watching the football but Nick Harling I'd manifested Harling it was very strange but he's he's a man I also I shared um I shared a room with him in mopte in Mali during this tournament mopti the the the Venice of Africa as it describes itself on the billboard as you go in look it's got a lagoon it's where you get the boat from to go go up to Timbook too. But it's an amazing place the the stadium is on an island in the lagoon it's like a causeway goes across and George Wayer the great yeah Milan played for Chelsea as well didn't he uh center forward like goes on to become president of Liberia which is his last ever international and he'd he had to pay out of his own pocket for the for the team bus and everything so the team bus is like this ancient like 60s bus but it's got a sunroof so he drives over this this causeway and this bus has been painted in Liberian colours and he's out of the sunroof waving and down the side of the causeway they've got the local um boy scout and girl guides yeah troops waving Liberian flags for a very sort of touching moment. Beautiful but the thing I remember that game was the last five minutes there was only one nil to Nigeria I think and Nigeria really should be beaten Liberia quite easily but basically the last five minutes of the game just stopped because all the Nigerian players were trying to get close to Way so when the final whistle went they could be the one to get the shit up in the last seven international so he was like man mark about eight men by the end it was a complete farce but anyway they should have afforded the Liberians a bit of space on the pitch.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

I mean it really was George Waya plus 10 so yeah so you're you're cutting your teeth now in journalism what sort what sort of things were you learning in this period of your career would you say and how did it help you later on so I I think working as a sub editor the news of the world was incredibly valuable.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

I'm I'm very glad that I mean morally news of the world clearly many questions to be answered there and I'm not this is not in any sense a defense of news of the world but I I'm glad I got to experience the very tail end of the old school atmosphere at the moment when they turned the presses on down in whopping about four o'clock in the afternoon the whole building shook as I was being on a ferry or something. Wow and and sort of the smell of ink yeah and that old school working environment where you just you get there at noon uh on a double shift on a Saturday and you you do a little bit but it was basically pretty quiet till four o'clock when the halftime reports start to come in. And the the old fashioned way of doing it and it's it's still at night games you you sometimes have to do this is if you're doing the match what you file half of it half time yeah and a quarter of it midway through the second half and you top and tail it on the final whistle.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

Right.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Quite why that practice persists when print is essentially dead and everything's going out online if you waited 10 minutes you get a much better polished piece I don't know but that's an internal guardian let's not go into it. And so if you're sitting there subbing you've got to you know suddenly at at four o'clock you're getting all this copy landing and you're having to deal with it and you've got to be done by sort of 425ish when you get the stuff midway to the second half and you've got to be adding that on smoothing out make sure there's enough space for top and the tail trying to work out what's happened in the second half as to how long the intro or the outro is likely to be and then it you know it all comes in sort of 445 three to five and that rush of you've got to get it out you've got to get it done got to get a headline on it got to get a caption on your photo that's a really yeah the the the the the phrase that was used all the time was don't make it good make it done and as a journalist that's such a useful skill of way more important than whether you've chosen the right word is have you got it in on deadline. And then you'd the quotes come in from press conferences so you'd you know you'd amend everything you do the regional editions and then at eight o'clock you got an hour off and you'd work straight through from 12 and everybody went to the pub and everybody drank three pints and then at nine o'clock you went back and did the last edition. Wow and it's just a I mean it's not a healthy way of working but it's for a year it was a very fun way of working yeah but also things like how you what that really taught me was concision chopping down intros to sort of yeah three or four lines. I mean the the the most heartbreaking thing I had to do was Richie Benno had a column. Yeah and Richie Benno would regular six seven hundred words and I'd regular have to chop it down to 150 words. And you know it's Richie Benno like one of the gods of broadcasting doyen and you say I can't I who am I to sort of say to Richie Benno that word can't go in the newspaper. But then you if you haven't reduced sort of six seven hundred words to 150 you're rewriting the whole thing. You've got to try and somehow keep his voice and learning how to do that under pressure is an incredibly useful skill I think not just in journalism but in many walks of life to get get the length right to say what you're saying in the simplest possible way the most concise possible most succinct way that is a that is a great skill yeah I guess Richie and others would understand that that was the nature of the relationship they'd submit something and the newspaper would do whatever with it did you get did you ever get any feedback from him at all? I don't think Richie gave a shit as long as he got his check. Yeah okay fair enough so you shouldn't feel bad then no no it's just the first three or four weeks uh even when you've got big name church people like Martin Samuel it's like what how can I kind of yeah I I'm not worthy to amend Martin Samuel's copy.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

But Martin Samuel in Fed has made to several subs over the yeah yeah over the years and so how how did how did then all of those fantastic early experiences help you do you think to get to where you ultimately got gives a little potted synopsis so yeah so so after a year there and look it was good money but it's high pressure but fundamentally I'm I'm not a tabloid man I'm a broadsheet man.

SPEAKER_00 30:53

And that's not a sort of uh a quality of judgment it's just that's what I prefer and it's what I naturally write but I I think I don't think there's a single broadsheet writer who couldn't do with an injection of 10% tabloids just to sort of harden the copy up. Yep. So I I then got off the job of football correspondent at the FT when they launched their sports page uh which was 2003.

SPEAKER_01 31:17

Was that taken over from Nick Harling again?

SPEAKER_00 31:21

Well I mean Harling probably would have been in the running yeah so uh pretty well Nick was it 2002 yeah I must have finished if it news of the world the end of a 2002 three season and I I think I think my first contracted piece of the FT I went to Madrid and interviewed Ronaldo Brazilian Ronaldo on Easter Sunday 2003. Oh I'd like to hear about that yeah I mean it's it was it was great he was he was very friendly and I think had a had a very clear eye on a uh move to England and was being very very generous at his time to the British media and that was I I think I might insane was the Wednesday after that when he scored the famous hat trick at Old Trafford. Right. He'd been on a long baron run yeah and then yeah a couple of words with me and he sorted himself out and uh it was when he he he left the pitch to a standing ovation at Old Trafford yes from the United fans because he'd been so good that I and that of course the game supposedly where Robin Abrams decided I'm gonna buy a football club because he even though I mean it wasn't actually that exciting low I can't remember did he did United win it 4-3 or did Real Madrid win at 4-3 but it been 3-1 in the first leg. I think maybe United went at 4-3 but they were never really in the game it sort of was one of those yeah you fo exciting games where Madrid always had the away goals they always looked like they had enough as I mean I guess if you United still would have needed two to right to to win it on on away goals.

SPEAKER_01 32:51

Oh sorry on because they'd have lost it on way goals otherwise well I mean it's it's it's weird isn't it you look back on you see various clips emerging of R9 uh and and you just remember quite how unplayable he was at his peak.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

Yeah I mean that was to be honest that was after his peak I think his peak was before the Neo mission peak him was at Barcelona the you know in when was that 96-7 under Bobby Robson. Yeah and then that that first first season at at Intel I mean his performance in Moscow against Spartak on the dreadful pitch. Yeah um is yeah and that's when he really yeah he he was quicker than anybody else on the pitch he was stronger than anybody else on the pitch and he was better at football than anybody else on the pitch that's a pretty winning combination and yeah I I I mean I think the the thing that sums it up is that is that goal against oh god who was it against it was was it against Extra Madura you know the goal I mean the the the sort of dribble through and he sort of bundles through yeah sort of six or seven players just stronger than them and then scores with a low shot from the edge of the box. Yeah yeah and it's Bobby Ropson on the touchline just sort of yeah yeah Bobby Robson by that stage he'd been a manager for yeah 20 odd years had seen everything and just the sort of the disbelief on his face the combination of disbelief and joy yeah yeah yeah that how is this kid able to do this and even so despite all of that King Bob at the time still said that Kevin Beattie was the best player he'd ever coached come on anyway all right so do your listeners need that explaining or not are you confident your listeners know who Kevin Beattie was uh one of the most talented footballers ever if not the most talented footballer according to Bobby Robson never to have played the game centre half left back played nine times for England should have been 109 and would have been were it not for injury and uh yeah that'll be game body double there we are in the tremendous film Escape to Victory. Famously beat Sylvester Sloan in an arm wrestle that is another great story I was talking to Russell Osman about this recently actually and apparently the way it happened so I I think I'm out saying Kevin Beattie was left-handed oh he was left footed so that would make sense yeah so they did a left handed one and a right handed one and beattie won the left handed Sloan won the right handed and then they tossed a coin for who whether it was going to be left or right and beattie won the toss and so maybe you know I don't know how you I don't know how you even that out but yeah he he he definitely but but yeah the fact it was a left handed wrestle in the third third bout played to beat you strength well as ever you've added additional historical detail there that might just change people's opinion but you know say I've beaten Rocky in an arm wrestle is pretty cool. I I want you to to continue that your trot through your career really and and how those earlier experiences helped you to get to where you got if you wouldn't mind so yeah worked at the FT then they canned their sports page uh uh when would that have been uh oh six maybe and uh they they carried on having sort of a third of a page I kept on freelancing for them for another four years I think it was after the South Africa World Cup that stopped I'd started doing stuff for Guardian by then I was freelancing my first book came out in 2006 behind the curtain. Yep so there's a 20th anniversary edition coming out later this year so look out for that fantastic with a a new intro and nothing else has changed in it but the intro has changed but it's actually I mean this is it's a book about sort of football in Eastern Europe and and dealing with the um the end of communism and you know the the withdrawal of state funding to do a book on Eastern Europe now would seem crazy. There's like absolutely there's so little that connect say Azerbaijan with Poland with Bosnia whereas back then it seemed an entire you know everybody was linked by the by the fact that they'd have this system of government which has then disappeared so you couldn't it would be a very strange book to write you eastern europe is not really a concept anymore it's like a geographical concept it doesn't have that sort of that same sense of uh integrity that it had back then.

SPEAKER_01 36:50

So how how fair do you think that perceived homogeny was back then?

SPEAKER_00 36:55

Oh it's totally fair back then it made complete sense back then that's they they're all yeah I mean Yugoslavia obviously is broken away from the Warsaw pact but they're still a communist nation so so yeah that that was completely legitimate uh I just think if you you you would not write that book now it'd you you'd find a a different way of grouping those countries yeah it seems to me that this maybe not this may be stretching it to an extent but you can almost argue that being post-Austro-Hungarian is as significant as being post-communist now.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

Uh-huh uh another book then in the offing with that as well anybody wants to give me another contract that's a bit of a sticking point at the minute but anyway yeah well fortunately Jonathan did secure further contracts after that initial book deal join me next time on the Amber moment to hear about them and about the tremendous camaraderie he's experienced with fellow football journalists at major tournaments. Until then stay amber