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Thursday, April 08, 2004

Eats, Shoots & Leaves wins book of the year award - Lofty's Beckham book given special award for sales record

Altogether enchanting...it makes you love punctuation; you want to conserve what is left and perhaps even call for more. Arguably the most recognised sportsman in the world, ever, David Beckham, at 28, has weathered several lifetimes' worth of speculation, rumours, adoration and insults--and now he claims to be setting the record straight. Beckham has been at the heart of some of the biggest stories in British football for a decade or more, and it's all here including: kung-fu Cantona; scoring from the halfway line; that Champions League Final; 1998 World Cup disgrace; 2002 World Cup glory; feuding with Fergie and the boot in the face; right through to entering the pantheon at Real Madrid in 2003. My Side fairly roars along from one headline-grabbing incident to another. Of course Beckham's passion for his game, and the challenges of preparation and performance, is the driving force behind the narrative, but we are rarely allowed to lose sight of the celebrity bubble in which ol' Golden Balls exists, as one half of Britain's other Royal family. At which point a souring note of reality must be introduced into this tell-it-like-it-was memoir. The problem is that we know Beckham so well. He is well established as a charming, courteous interviewee, for whom an inevitable and growing PR savvy has tightened his tongue, though not dimmed a natural warmth and enthusiasm, but he's equally well known to be, (how to put it?), not great with words. The bald fact is that, in public at least, Beckham has never uttered a single sentence half as vivid or coherent as those in My Side the voice with which we are all so familiar is entirely absent. Good thing too perhaps--400-odd pages full of

The England football captain was honoured at the British Book Awards after his autobiography, My Side, became the fastest-selling of all time. Beckham was given a special award for the work, ghostwritten by the actor Tom Watt, who played Lofty in EastEnders. It sold 103,000 copies in its first week, and more than a million copies have been bought so far.

Aspiring author Katie Price cuts it short: As she presents a book award to best newcomer Monica Ali, and then gets undressed for the Loaded 10th anniversary party.

Related:
- The British Book Awards: The oscars of the book trade
- Winners Page
- Pictures

Posted by Nick @ 08:00 GMT
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Patrick Bateman is Harvard-educated and intelligent. He works by day on Wall Street, earning a fortune to complement the one he was born with. His nights he spends in ways we cannot begin to fathom - doing impermissible things to women. He is living his own American Dream.

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