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It's The Great Football365 Book Club

Bill Hicks once said 'I guess I read so I don't become a f**king waffle waitress'. To help you avoid that in the run up to Christmas, we've put together some lovely literary reviews. First up, Russell Brand...

Last Updated: 06/11/08 at 13:29

The UK used around 14million tonnes of paper last year, but we don't know what proportion went into football books for the Christmas market. No wonder Al Gore has his work cut out.

If the world could hear the creaking joints of the 365 side-table it might act as a wake-up siren to human complacency, like those ice shelves the size of Portugal that periodically break off the Antarctic.

Anxious to tidy up a bit, we will work our way through the detritus over the next eight weeks. The most noteworthy will make an appearance here with the remainder providing the 365 yuletide log (it is a firm belief that the Nazi Ministry for Public Enlightenment would not be quite so damned by history if they'd focused their ire on Tim Lovejoy on Football).

There seems no more appropriate starting point than Articles of Faith by Russell Brand and not because of the current, quite insane, public witch-hunt of the libidinous comedian. Indeed it would be a real shame if the publishers consider the Satanic Sluts imbroglio to have discouraged a single sale because their complacency is itself scandalous.

As the title hints, this is a collection of Brand's articles on the 2007/8 season in The Guardian newspaper - the very same Guardian newspaper that archives all of its content online, free to read. So there are precisely 40 pieces on himself and West Ham, every one not only previously published but available for nothing right now.

To justify the print run these are filled out to 222 pages with a couple of thousand words of original material - an introduction plus true-to-form 'interviews' with celebrity chums David Baddiel, James Corden and Noel Gallagher - as well as some Guardian artwork and around a dozen large studio shots of the man himself, sometimes caressing his chest but other times not.

There is no need for us to pass judgement on Brand's merits as a football writer here. If you do not have an opinion but would like to get one, go to the Guardian website. Images of him staring lovingly into the camera lens are similarly available online for no charge.

After the success of My Booky Wook this will no doubt be a Christmas bestseller. But each purchase will be observed from behind a two-way mirror, a PR agent noting calmly: 'Conclusion: They will now buy anything'.

By contrast, Paul Canoville's Black and Blue: How Racism, Drugs and Cancer Almost Destroyed Me is a product of blood, sweat, tears and other bodily fluids.

As the first black first-teamer at Chelsea in the early '80s, Canoville endured some of the worst racism of any footballer in England - and that from his own fans. This still-recent, long-forgotten history is not available from Richard Keys or Peter Kenyon.

It is an unusually thorough autobiography: over 100 pages have passed before Canoville turns professional at 20 by which time his CV includes drugs, unplanned fatherhood and a spell in Borstal. And when injury ends his career five years later there is a rapid, miserable downward spiral before belated salvation.

The comparison with Premiership-era 'authors', and in particular another literary left-sided Chelsea player, is inescapable. Ashley Cole's salary hardships really take the piss against the burdens of 11 children by 10 different mothers, homelessness, crack addiction and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

At nearly 400 pages there are forgettable passages but its best bits vividly tell of public humiliation and private desperation with brutal honesty. You definitely won't have read this lot somewhere else beforehand.


*Articles of Faith by Russell Brand is £15.99 (Harper Collins).

* Black and Blue by Paul Canoville is £7.99 (Headline).

Peter May

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