We Ate All the Pies?: How Football Swallowed Britain Whole - Softcover

Two words guaranteed to make any piece of writing worth reading: John and Nicholson.....even when you don't agree with him you sort of wish you did. In fact, you wonder if you even agree with yourself any more --Sid Lowe, The Guardian

Johnny has ideas about football you didn't know you had until you find yourself nodding along to every word. Except the words that drive you mental, of course. But the beauty of Johnny is that you love those words too.' --Sarah Winterburn, Editor. Football365

John is often compared to Hunter S Thompson, to Vivian Stanshall and to Bill Bailey, but comparisons are erroneous if they suggest that he is anything other than a 100 percent original --Steve Anglesey, Editor. Mirror.co.uk
The cumulative effect is akin to a long, rambling and unexpectedly interesting conversation with the bloke on the next stool in a pub you've stumbled into by accident, and is none the worse for that. --Simon Redfern, Independent on Sunday
--Steve Anglesey, Editor. Mirror.co.uk

A thematic survey of football in his lifetime... with much that is perceptive or simply funny --Huw Richards, The Guardian

John is often compared to Hunter S Thompson, to Vivian Stanshall and to Bill Bailey, but comparisons are erroneous if they suggest that he is anything other than a 100 percent original --Steve Anglesey, Editor. Mirror.co.uk

A thematic survey of football in his lifetime... with much that is perceptive or simply funny --Huw Richards, The Guardian

John is often compared to Hunter S Thompson, to Vivian Stanshall and to Bill Bailey, but comparisons are erroneous if they suggest that he is anything other than a 100 percent original --Steve Anglesey, Editor. Mirror.co.uk

In Who Ate All the Pies?, the gonzo sports journalist explores and celebrates the things we love about the whole culture of the game, tries to explain how we got to where we are now and speculates where we the game is headed. Amongst other things, he explores the history of the football shirt in style and design; how and why sponsorship became the norm; the culture of food inside the ground, around the stadium and in the pubs and clubs, and how the culture of pies and the modern trend of fine dining changed the match day experience (and why prawn sandwiches are the perfect expression of the class-politics of football); why booze is so important to football; how football is used by people to vent their everyday frustrations and emotions and how this is managed by the clubs. He also describes the history of football on TV and how it changed perceptions of teams and countries (in particular, the 1970 World Cup TV revolution); the role of international football in national identity and the intricate complexities of being a Teessider, Northern and English, in that order!