Ghost-busted

I was sorry to miss last week’s ghostbusting gig at the Hay-on-Wye festival when David Beckham’s surrogate-scribbler, actor-writer Tom Watt, joined two mates of mine, Paul Hayward (Sir Bobby Robson, Michael Owen) and Peter Burden (novelist-amanuensis of horseracing’s Francome and Pitman, and vet-thesps Hemmings and Phillips). Ghostwriting has a long literary history, but suddenly there’s a superabundant blight of it on the back pages; in my days on the desk at least we employed the strapline courtesy that the star performer ‘was talking to’ such and such a hack. No longer. Added insult to the reader these days is an uncertainty about who actually writes their own stuff. In fact, a select group are setting bespoke new sportswriting standards: well, a 1st XI could be led by long-established sparklers like cricket’s two Mikes, Brearley and Selvey, rugby’s Paul Ackford and Gerald Davies, followed by such green-neon talents as Stuart Barnes, Eddie Butler, Tony Cascarino, Gus Fraser, Steve James, Mark Nicholas, Derek Pringle (with Brian Moore, Alan Smith and a fair few others bristling on the bench). Latest unmissably stand-out is Mike Atherton’s stuff in the Sunday Telegraph. In lamentable contrast, some of the ghosted columns by current performers are execrable. For banal drivel, cricket’s Ashes tour in the winter reached rock bottom; stand by for further depths to be quarried during rugby’s World Cup this autumn. Poor ghosts. Why do sports editors bother?  

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Julie Burchill

Will I ever pee again?

On tour once, I came across a disgruntled Ian Botham. ‘What ails you, Beefy?’ I asked. ‘My ruddy ghost sends back such a daily load of crap,’ said the great man. I did a book in the 1980s with Ian. He returned the proofs unopened; I doubt he ever once opened the book itself. I did another with master-batsman Graham Gooch; by return the conscientious good fellow would fax back reams of improvement suggestions, plus pointed sharpeners to my shoddy punctuation.