Mark Mason

When Geoff Boycott was a DJ in a Sydney nightclub

A review of The Highlights, by Frank Keating. Keating's tales of what sports legends got up to off the field of play are priceless – and beautifully written

• From magazine issue: 21 June 2014

• Text settings

  Text size

  • Small
  • Medium
  • Large

  Line Spacing

  • Compact
  • Normal
  • Spacious
• Comments
• Share

  Share

  Mark Mason

  When Geoff Boycott was a DJ in a Sydney nightclub

  

  Copy link

  • Linkedin
  • Messenger
  • Email

• The Highlights

  Frank Keating

  Guardian Faber Publishing, pp. 336

Already a subscriber? Log in

This article is for subscribers only

Subscribe today to get 3 months' delivery of the magazine, as well as online and app access, for only £3.

• Weekly delivery of the magazine
• Unlimited access to our website and app
• Enjoy Spectator newsletters and podcasts
• Explore our online archive, going back to 1828

Most popular

Alexander Larman

What happened to the Rishi Sunak I knew at school?

So we get to see Bob Taylor rising early to visit Mother Teresa in Calcutta — the only member of the England cricket team to do so — and Geoff Boycott’s stint as a DJ in a Sydney nightclub (yes, you read that correctly). We see Pelé refusing to stretch for something that has landed fractionally out of his reach, meaning the person throwing it to him has to walk 50 yards to deliver it right to the palm, and George Best morose at the Savoy after winning the European Cup. Tony Jacklin tries Scientology to cure the yips, and Nigel Mansell takes Keating for a spin round Silverstone in a Ferrari F40: ‘They crammed me, quivering, into the terrifying tube of a coffin.’ Even when Keating does relate on-the-field activity it’s the entertaining stuff. Rodney Marsh, for instance, donning the gloves when Fulham’s goalie gets injured., tries to tip the first corner over the bar with a bicycle kick. Own goal.

The writing itself is sublime. A Sobers square cut is ‘late and cleanly murderous’. George Cohen is ‘a tubby antelope’, while Port Vale contend with ‘the muddy slop and slap and siege of the penalty area’. The Open’s silver claret jug is presented ‘with all the garden-party formality and mayoral pomp of a church fete in a snooty parish,’ and Richard Dunn, floored six times by Muhammad Ali, looks like ‘a drunken matelot trying to take off his waders underwater’. Keating, who could remember the time ‘when LSD was a couple of Friday fivers’, leaves one hospitality box ‘as sponsored as a newt’.

Keating was a true fan: he watched TV coverage with the sound turned down so that he could listen to the radio commentary. But he appears to condone (or certainly fails to question) a friend who, unable to bear the final-frame tension of the 1985 World Snooker final, locks himself in another room. Why do fans react like this? John Peel was often to be found walking the streets during important Liverpool matches. Surely ‘can’t take the heat’ applies to supporters as well as players?