Living here in America there's a reason for the misuse of English, which is why I felt compelled to correct this one from a Great British newspaper, above, as there's really no excuse. Actually, that's not true - the fact is, I just wanted to prove to you that I can use Photoshop. I hope you're impressed. As Elton John once said, I guess that's why they call it th - 'ang on a minute...'ow much?!?!?
Andy Nicholls, the Everton Scally, recently replied to an email of mine and he said he liked my buke Perry Boys. He said he actually managed to finish the tome in a couple of sittings by his holiday swimming pool, despite being charged with the task of watching over his pre-swimming age kiddies. This chuffed me no end, as I'm a big admirer of the man, a proven grand wizard of the football hooliology genre and attendant details from the blue half of Merseyside. I figure that if Perry Boys was able to engross such a chap, it mustn't be all bad. After all, he's written one of the best books in the entire catalogue when it comes to good clean reportage from the eye of the storm. I remember reading Scally; I'd just come home from the dentist, having had surgery on my gums, and, with (appropriately) a mouth full of stitches, I stood in the kitchen, reading about the County Road Cutters, Manchester United, and, my favourite, the "A+B=C" equation, with which Andy defined and dismissed the history of the so-called casual movement like an eagle with a mouse.
While perusing his website today, I came across this newspaper cutting, which says he's made a quarter million from his endeavours with quill and parchment, and worth every penny, if my personal enjoyment of his tale was owt to go by. Andy's written other stuff as well, but I would suggest he starts teaching college courses in how people can turn their life experiences into gold, as he certainly has with his.
Everton were always thought of as being "game as fuck", to quote one young man who furnished the crowd with his opinion, after a particularly energetic melee on the Old Trafford forecourt sometime in 1981, after they'd broke out of their police escort and "had it" momentarily with us, before entering the Theatre of Dreams for the match. Initially, I wondered if this wasn't simply another version of the ridiculous "proper Mancs support City" hypothesis, merely transferred to Liverpool, in the hope that that city's "other" team could somehow project an enigmatic facsimile of themselves via a mysterious blue cloud. But no, EFC were the real deal, and as a teen I certainly had a couple of kicks up the arse which left me in no doubt of that fact. Everton really were game as fuck, and the enigma and mystery was ramped up by their proclivity for slicing flesh with Stanley knives and mobbing up in serious numbers.
But a quarter million pounds....that's almost as much as I made from Perry Boys. Unbelievable.