The Long, Long Road to Wembley
In 1968, fourteen-year-old Dave Roberts had a dream – to see the team he'd recently begun supporting, Bromley, play at Wembley. The trouble was that Bromley were rubbish, and when they spent the following decades far from the peak of non-league football, the dream seemed unreasonably ambitious.
But he never gave up. After all, Bromley had been there before – the proof was in the black-and-white pictures of the club's 1949 Amateur Cup triumph which hung on the wall of the tea hut at Hayes Lane, and which Dave stared at longingly. It was enough to keep that dream alive, as the rest – fortune, success and marrying Olivia Newton-John – fell by the wayside.
But after fifty years of never losing faith despite constant disappointment, a favourable draw in the FA Trophy gave Bromley the chance to finally make Dave's dream come true...
Home and Away: Round Britain in Search of Non-League Football Nirvana
Life as a non-league football fan is rarely glamorous, but for Dave Roberts, the 2015/16 Vanarama National League season looked like paradise. With perennial underachievers Bromley having been promoted to the highest level in their 130-year history, Dave would have the chance to travel the nation with a loyal band of fellow supporters – and even his wife Liz when he could persuade her. Since it was also 35 years since he had last lived in the UK, it would be like the ultimate package holiday; well, for Dave at least. And with a man called Moses banging in the goals up front, could Bromley even find their way to the promised land of the Football League?
Home and Away is the brilliant, Bill Bryson-esque account of a year exploring the real heartlands of football, from glamorous seaside resorts (Grimsby, Southport), fallen giants of the game (Wrexham, Tranmere) to Cotswold upstarts (Cheltenham, Forest Green) to name but a few. Conditioned to expect dismal performances, Dave instead found himself on a journey of discovery of a forgotten Britain, and of rediscovery of the joy of being a football diehard.
Sad Men
Ever since he started watching television, Dave Roberts only wanted to do one thing: to work in advertising. And at the dawn of the 1980s, there was only one destination on his shortlist - Saatchi and Saatchi, the world's favourite advertising agency based in Soho’s glamorous Charlotte Street. Dave had major obstacles to overcome - not least his sketchy employment history, lack of a bomber jacket and only the crumbliest, flakiest copywriting skills. But all this, and the odd directions a career in advertising would take him, couldn’t stop Dave from trying to realize his ambition.
Sad Men is the hilarious and heart-warming story of one man’s dream and an advertising scene a long way from London, or Madison Avenue for that matter. As Britain's leading ad men are refreshing parts other beers cannot reach, Dave finds himself in a world of second-hand car dealerships in Yorkshire and washing-machine manufacturers in Manchester. Ever focused, Dave sees opportunities, not problems. And when the opportunities lead to writing ads on the other side of the world featuring a roof-loving lothario, a rapping cowboy and David Jason playing Space Invaders, Dave remains convinced that these are just stepping stones that will inevitably lead to his dream job.
Bursting with brilliant ideas – and some pretty daft ones – this is the cautionary tale of a quest for advertising immortality... and never quite reaching it. So roll the credits, and meet the Sad Men.
For more, visit The Sad Men Blog
32 Programmes
When Dave Roberts relocates to the USA, his wife informs him that they can only take what is "absolutely essential". Packing his collection of football programmes (1,134 of them - football fans are sticklers for statistics), Dave is aghast to be informed that the programmes do not fall into that category. He must whittle down his treasured archive to only what will fit inside a Tupperware container the size of a Dan Brown hardback.
32 Programmes tells the story of how Dave made the selection of his most important programmes, and how the process brought back a flood of nostalgia for simpler times. As the sights, sounds and smells of those 1,134 football matches return, the choices Dave makes reflect the twists and turns that life takes. Finally, with just hours to go before the flight, the container is full to the brim. One more programme will be added to the collection - one that Dave never thought he would see and which means more to him than any other.
32 Programmes is the story of youthful football obsession, crushes on disinterested girls, rubbish jobs and trying to impress skinheads. But most of all, it is the story of a man's life and loves.
The Bromley Boys
In the late 1960s, in the warm glow of England winning the World Cup, Dave Roberts, like most teenage boys his age, was football mad. There was just one difference: rather than supporting the likes of Arsenal or Manchester United, Dave's team of choice was the ever so slightly less glamorous Bromley Football Club - one of the last genuinely amateur football teams left, fighting for survival in the lowest non-league division.This book is the story of Bromley's worst ever season. It is a funny and heart-warming tale of football at the very bottom: Dave turns up to each match with his football boots in his bag, just in case the team are a player short; the crowd is always announced as 400 as no-one can be bothered to count; the team ship so many goals that in one match, the taunting opposition fans actually lose count of the score. It's easy being a football fan when your team are always winning.
The Bromley Boys is the touching true story about supporting a club through thin and even thinner: proof that the more your team may lose on the pitch, the more there is to gain on the terraces. This is a brilliantly written part football memoir, part coming of age story.
e-luv: an internet romance
What happens when online dating appeals more than a real life encounter, when cybersex is more satisfying than the real thing, and when the boundaries of fantasy and reality blur beyond recognition? All these questions, and more, are answered in e-luv, a compelling tale of cyber romance, cyber cheating, cyber weddings, and the glorious fantasy land of cybersex (where literally anything is possible). Follow Trevor, and his cyber persona, Lord Brett Sinclair, along a 3-year marathon of online flirting, dating and fornicating. Share the highs and lows of an unmitigated obsession with the internet, a gradual disconnection from reality, and the hazards of 'reply all', intimate photography and unpleasant packages in the post.
e-luv: an internet romance is a witty and excruciatingly honest story that explores the dark world of internet addiction. Hilarious and, at times, disturbing, you'll be desperate to find out if Lord Brett finally finds the cyber Lady of his dreams.