Paul Ferris, "Once Upon a Toon" - TF Book Review

A crowdpleasing collection of anecdotes from inside United, but also a footballer's book with rare heart

I'd better start with a confession. I'm not a great fan of footballers’ books. Books about football, good; books by footballers, not so much. Let's face it, we’ve all read the standard ghost-written paint-by-numbers footballer’s autobiography that has all the depth of a B&Q paint catalogue (actually, I'm sure much more creative energy goes into the paint catalogue and its assortment of ludicrously inventive colour names - “serendipity ghost” for the living-room wall, anyone?).

Happily, Paul Ferris isn't your standard footballer, as his subsequent careers as a physiotherapist and lawyer might suggest. His own wonderful autobiography - The Boy on the Shed - is the exception that very much proves the above footballers' book rule, and most definitely not a book about a young Chelsea fan. If you haven't read it, I suggest you do. It has a depth, vulnerability, and humanity that you won't normally find in a footballer’s memoir. And every word is his own.

His new offering - Once Upon a Toon - is a different kind of book, even if it inevitably mines some of the same autobiographical material. Instead of longer chapters making up a narrative whole, it consists of around 90 short episodes, all of them focused on his time at United, first as a promising teenage winger in the early 1980s and then as physio during the glory years of Keegan and Robson (plus the less glorious years in between and immediately after).

The episodes are told more or less in chronological order, but there's no attempt to fill in the bits between. In fact, you could read them in any order, dipping in and out as you choose, as is the way in the modern world of “content”, I suppose. Each episode - ranging between half a page and three - works perfectly well in its own right.

The intent of the book and each of the episodes is expressly to entertain and make the reader smile. It's effectively a series of Ferris’s pub anecdotes printed in one place, intended to point affectionate and knowing fun at the world of football and its very peculiar backroom world. Given that the characters are so familiar and, in most cases, beloved - from David McCreery and Arthur Cox to Davide, Sir Les, Tino, and Shearer - it's a surefire crowdpleasing formula among its intended NUFC readership.

Laugh you most certainly will, whether at his first meeting with Shearer - “I find that a finger up the scrotum is a good ice-breaker in any situation” - Derek Wright bare-arsed in a pink tutu, or the mensa-level struggles of the dunce apprentice, his towel, and the pre-season weigh-in. And, of course, the privileged dressing-room knowledge of someone who was there is a joy to share, not least Shearer serenading his teammates with “The Fulwell End” pre-match at Roker Park.

Not that there aren’t darker and more poignant moments. Ferris handles these with his customary sensitivity and compassion, even if they are usually laced with tragi-comedy, like the mystery player with the drink problem, failing marriage, and acute paranoia who the young physio decides to take out to the pub for a therapy session.

My only minor quibble is the structure. If you prefer to read a book in the old-fashioned way from front to back (or if you've got a deadline for a fanzine review to meet), then there's a danger the anecdotes might become a bit samey, while the brevity of the episodes gives less opportunity for critical depth and reflection than we might hope for. If you're a bit of a curmudgeon like me, there's also only so many times you can be told what a thoroughly good and hilarious person famous player X actually is. God, even Nicky Butt emerges with his reputation enhanced. But that's much more a slight on me than on Ferris or the book, which after all only does what it sets out to.

In fact, what emerges most clearly from the book is what an incredibly impressive human being Paul Ferris is and how he forms strong and warm relationships with all those he encounters. At the same time, he's appealingly thoughtful, introspective, and riddled with the self-doubt we all share, at least if we have a modicum of self awareness.

Maybe that's why I find the early sections the strongest because that’s where the vulnerability of the young boy uprooted from his insular and conservative home across the Irish Sea comes to the fore. It's probably also because football in the early 1980s feels so much more alien than the more recent and familiar scenes and, as a result, particularly fascinating, especially for those of us who experienced the St James's Park of that era. To read the description of the Benwell training ground that started and ended Ferris’s career is to peek at an impossible, compelling world long gone.

The author’s combination of compassion and humility probably explains who it is that emerge as the real heroes of his book. It's not all the famous superstars he's met in his time, but instead the more understated, kind, and loyal figures who accompanied his life at United and who each get their own section: Ted and Vi, his host family; Benwell Bill, the tea man; John Shearer, the superfan without a ticket; Tony Toward, the ever present United fixer; even Brian Horton and John Motson whose small kindnesses Ferris goes out of his way to acknowledge.

Oh and his brother-in-law Kieran. I defy you to read his section late on in the book without the dust getting firmly in your eyes.

Only 217 days to go till Christmas… You could do a lot worse.

Matthew Philpotts

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You can get Once Upon a Toon directly from the publisher and with a 30% discount sorted by our Newcastle United Supporters Trust - NUFCTRUST30. Click here.

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