The best book about sports broadcasting I have ever read

Posted on 31st July 2013

is “A Great Face for Radio” by my good friend John Anderson, and it has been updated and is being re-published this Autumn.

Ando’s tale of a young man working his way around the world as a sports reporter was a big hit when it was published a few years ago. I asked my daughter to buy it for my Christmas present and I read it a few days later on a train journey. Well, I started to read it, but had to stop as it was making me laugh out loud too much, to the annoyance of several passengers.

I have known Ando for many years, he had just joined Independent Radio News in London when I became sports editor of Mercia Sound in Coventry in 1987. Years later we shared many a gantry together, me working for Match of the Day and he for Football First for Sky. In fact I think we were the commentators on duty for the famous Tottenham 9 Wigan 1 match at White Hart Lane a few years ago.

A Great Face for Radio has been updated for it’s re-issue; with new chapters detailing Ando’s adventures at the World Cup in 2010 and at Euro 2012, where he and I were colleagues once more when we were both working for talkSPORT.

Ando has a terrific style of writing (which I greatly envy) and it’s also fun to try and spot the more obscure music references within the prose. If you’d like to know a bit more about the mad job that he and I do, get hold of a copy of this book. Just don’t read it on a train.

 

 

Ando- cheque to usual address please, thanks mate!

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