Gary Neville's choice of wedding venue, the use of underpants in goal celebrations, whether Lee Sharpe has it in him to go all the way on Celebrity Love Island – Giles Smith has never fought shy of hitting the big issues head on. Now, in this compilation of his most fearless and forthright public declarations, the award-winning Times sports columnist invites you to chew with him on football’s biggest bullets. Meet the WAG who claims to have ‘heard of’ Kent. Calculate the number of loft conversions you could buy with the money saved from a lifetime of following football. Get a tutorial from Craig Bellamy on how to hit someone with a golf club so that they stay hit. Contemplate Peter Crouch’s future with the Harlem Globetrotters. And ask yourself where David Beckham is these days – how he’s getting on, and why do we never hear about him?
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About the Author
Giles Smith was born in Colchester in 1962. He was the keyboard player in a pop group called The Cleaners From Venus but reluctantly resigned himself to working as a journalist when The Cleaners didn’t go global. His failure to make it as a musician was the topic of his first book, Lost in Music (1995), and has been the subtext of anything he has said or done since.
In the Nineties, he worked as a feature writer for The Independent. He now writes for The Times. He was named Sports Columnist of the Year in 1998. A collection of his sports writing, Midnight in the Garden of Evel Knieval, was published in November 2000.
His writing has appeared in many British publications and in The New Yorker. He contributed a monologue to the Nick Hornby-edited short story collection Speaking with the Angel. He lives in south London with his partner, the writer Sabine Durrant, and their children.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By John Symes
Format:Paperback
I think Giles Smith is one of the funniest - if not the funniest - journalist writing on a national daily UK newspaper today. His columns in The Times are uniformly insightful, quirky and often laugh-out-loud funny. His take on "Sport on TV' - where he reviews not just sports events on TV, but sportsmen/women appearing on such peripherals as Dancing on Ice, Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and Strictly Come Dancing et al - is must reading. You don't have to have watched the programme to know what went on: indeed, you don't want to watch the programme, in case it destroys the illusion which Giles conjures up.
This book is made up of selectively-edited Times columns (confusingly the publishers' page says they "first appeared in the Sunday Times" - no, I don't think so). They all generally drip with quotable quotes (as Reader's Digest has, or had, it), the sort of opinion you want to pass off as your own to impress your mates down the pub, or get a WAG-gish type bird into bed, or something.
I am a Kiwi, and my understanding of English football is rudimentary, to say the least (Smith doesn't look at rugger), but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I just didn't like Appendix B "The Soul of Chelsea in 50 Moments".
I have no problem with Chelsea, AS A TEAM, but I live in south London, and I do have a problem with Chelsea supporters. And here Giles Smith comes out of the closet as a Blue of the sort you don't want in your local when Chelsea are playing on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon - or any other day. Boorish, boastful...and it's totally out of character with the rest of the book. In two words: Not Funny.
My advice: a definite buy...but rip out Appendix B, because it leaves an unnecessarily nasty taste in the mouth.
This book is made up of selectively-edited Times columns (confusingly the publishers' page says they "first appeared in the Sunday Times" - no, I don't think so). They all generally drip with quotable quotes (as Reader's Digest has, or had, it), the sort of opinion you want to pass off as your own to impress your mates down the pub, or get a WAG-gish type bird into bed, or something.
I am a Kiwi, and my understanding of English football is rudimentary, to say the least (Smith doesn't look at rugger), but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I just didn't like Appendix B "The Soul of Chelsea in 50 Moments".
I have no problem with Chelsea, AS A TEAM, but I live in south London, and I do have a problem with Chelsea supporters. And here Giles Smith comes out of the closet as a Blue of the sort you don't want in your local when Chelsea are playing on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon - or any other day. Boorish, boastful...and it's totally out of character with the rest of the book. In two words: Not Funny.
My advice: a definite buy...but rip out Appendix B, because it leaves an unnecessarily nasty taste in the mouth.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I picked this up as a holiday read, in the hope of it being similar to the Clarkson series of newspaper column entries, but was left feeling a bit disappointed.
There is no doubting that Smith is a respected journalist who knows what he's talking about, but at times the blatant favoritism towards some of the clubs he talks about is nothing but annoying (WARNING: severe amounts of pro-Chelsea content).
That being said, the book starts really well with some terrific laughs and excellent points made throughout, but I found myself skipping through large sections (especially the spoof sections, and particularly the World Cup 2006 entries).
One for those who don't mind reading about football past, but not relevant beyond that. A week is a long time in football, so this book becomes less relevant every day.
There is no doubting that Smith is a respected journalist who knows what he's talking about, but at times the blatant favoritism towards some of the clubs he talks about is nothing but annoying (WARNING: severe amounts of pro-Chelsea content).
That being said, the book starts really well with some terrific laughs and excellent points made throughout, but I found myself skipping through large sections (especially the spoof sections, and particularly the World Cup 2006 entries).
One for those who don't mind reading about football past, but not relevant beyond that. A week is a long time in football, so this book becomes less relevant every day.
By A. Brown
Format:Paperback
This is not one of those books that is 'not put-downable' but is 'very pick-upable'. You can either join it where you left off or just plunge in somewhere else and yet still be rewarded with short, entertaining football writing that goes off on a tangent, sometimes never to return. Buy it.
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