Over 13 years of sports insights, I've had a ball
20.05.12
I've listened to Ken Bates, talked to Bernie Ecclestone about the Train Robbery and learned that Damon Hill used to wet himself. I even made it through four meetings with Ian Botham. For 13 years, it's been a blast.
David Ginola started it; Vinnie Jones finished it. It sounds like a spot of argy-bargy in a match between Tottenham and Wimbledon in the late 1990s, but in this instance it's the weekly sports interview I did for the Independent from January 1999 until last Monday.
It was the longest-running sports interview in English national newspaper journalism, a source of some personal pride, and yielded many of the most memorable encounters of my life, not least on day one with the "Divine David", over lunch in an Italian restaurant near the Spurs' training ground in Chigwell.
We both ordered pizza quattro formaggi, and I gamely but inexpertly tried to follow his lead by eating it with my fingers. While he made a neat envelope with every gooey slice, I ended up with quattro different types of formaggi on my chin.
Source: New Zealand Herald