From the publisher:
Sing it loud:there's only one Hunter Davies, one Hunter Davies. And he's still, in all fairness Brian, bang on top form, doing well, the lad.
The Second Half is another collection of his personal pieces from the New Statesman covering the past three domestic seasons: the Euro Championship of 2004 and the 2006 World Cup when he unexpectedly became Wayne Rooney's top buddy.
"When a player gets sent off shouldn't we fans get some of our money back?" ponders Davies in one piece. "I just wish he'd shave his stupid face," he berates Jose Mourhino in another. And goooaaal!, Hunter rumbles Sven early doors:"He's a spare swede at a veggie gathering. What is the point of him?" he writes two years before England's World Cup debacle.
As ever, his outlook is fierecely that of the fan - disgruntled, bewildered and passionate - wondering what the players do with all that money, all those girls, and why match programmes are "full of adverts or arselicks for sponsors."
He comically portrays his on-off relationship with young Rooney, from cheerily declaring that he "likes his ugliness" to becoming his official biographer after coming first in a beauty contest (just like in Monopoly).
The author:
HUNTER DAVIES is the author of the only ever authorised biography of The Beatles, still in print in almost every country in the world. In 2012 he edited The Lennon Letters, published in 20 different foreign countries, and in 2014 The Beatles Lyrics. He wrote the first book about the Quarrymen. Plus forty other non-Beatly books, including novels, biographies, travel and children's books. As a journalist, he has a column in The Sunday Times about money and in the New Statesman about football.
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