Having plugged - shamelessly, it must be said -
Hendo's Sporting Heroes here and elsewhere, I made another purchase from the world of sporting literature yesterday. You might consider
Searching for Heroes by Ian Wooldridge to be a direct competitor of Hendo's book. Not a bit of it. For, with due deference to the undoubted skills of the great Hendo, and in my humble opinion, Wooldridge bears comparison with no man.
There is of course no reason why one should not purchase and enjoy each book, as I have done. The fact is that the recounted tales of Woollers -
the loss of whom I lamented here some time ago - is simply the finest collection of anecdotes I've had the privilidge to read. I'm only half a chapter in and already I've hooted loudly on many occasions. The
Mail is publishing extracts all this week - fittingly in the sports pages - and I heartily recommend those unfamiliar with his style take a peek.
Here's a taster:
You meet all kinds of people and learn many recondite things along the sportswriting road.
You learn that jet propulsion, motorways, six-hour laundries, penicillin, plastic credit cards, secretaries who can actually write shorthand, and whisky are the seven real wonders of the world. The whisky is to brush your teeth with in India where some taps drip pure hemlock. You learn the truth of a phrase that Cliff Michelmore onced coined or quoted: take half the clothes and twice the money. You learn to cram suits, shirts and shoes into your hand-baggage to save hanging around at airports. You learn to eat only one meal in three on long-haul trips to Australia to prevent feeling like death when you get off.
and, speaking of his lack of desire to extend his education beyond two modest O levels:
There was a terrific world out there somewhere, I knew that from Hemingway, James Hadley Chase and Picture Post, and it was full of newspapers, adventure, bars, promiscuous women and men who lit cigarettes like Humphrey Bogart.
Read it.
No-no-no-no-no . . . Yesvember
