Caught her signing her last book of the day

I don’t know who the BBC or ITV have lined up for their World Cup pundits and the wifi isn’t good enough here to google it, but I think they should sack whoever they’ve got and hire Geoff Hurst, Ossie Ardiles, Ricky Villa and Alan Smith. In fact, the BBC could do a lot worse than giving Ossie his own football/stand up gig. There was a lot – and I mean a LOT of love for Geoff in the room, from more-than-middled aged men responding in the way that a teenage girl might respond to Harry Styles, right down to mobbing the exit for a glimpse of their hero – but Ossie was far and away the star of the show: articulate, thoughtful and above all, funny.

The Telegraph made an unexpected choice in asking their arts editor, Sarah Crompton, to referee the event, which meant questions stayed very broad and general – the impact of money in the game, whether players from humble backgrounds are more likely to succeed, the problem of match fixing, whether foreign players are affecting the national game – and answers were practiced and polished. Geoff Hurst has a collection of anecdotes to match his tally of goals – he was once asked what he was doing when the fourth goal went in during the ’66 final…(at which his fans swooned).

The Argentinians came to life when Maradona came up: asked what it was like to play with him, Ardiles said ‘it wasn’t bad’. Both believed he was better than Messi is – apparently because Maradona is also quite good with his hand….

Inevitably the main question was who is going to win this summer’s tournament and equally unsurprisingly, the Argentinians tipped themselves. Germany, Brazil and Spain were also mentioned. The only surprise was Villa tipping Belgium. Might be worth a fiver.

Those of you who followed the blog last year may remember I was ill, so relied on Pete and Max to help me out. Max enjoyed it so much he’s put together a snapshot of recent events he has attended:

!Hey, Hay! Max’s shout out!
(Not in any order)
So far…

I have been to see Liz Pichon (the author of Tom Gates). She was EXCELLENT as she showed us how to draw ‘Tom Gates style’
Also Liz showed us two short videos of Tom Gates that I have never seen before and they were brilliant!
Here’s her new book (I read it and loved it – would recommend!)

The next thing that I loved was Geeks, Gadgets and Gizmos which was basically three men who love sci-fi and gadgets and write books about it (I bought one by Steve Feasey called Mutant City).

After this I went to see Marcus Sedgwick who gave a really great talk about his book which is all about a girl whose father goes missing and she and her little brother go to find him. That story line might seem simple but the odd and interesting thing is that the main character is blind (I think that that’s a really good idea and I’ve never seen it before!)
But as well as talking about his book he told us that he feels he’s getting followed by the number 354. For example, he once got in a cab and the phone number was 354. Then after getting out of the cab he went into his hotel room and his door number was 354. He has used this number in his book as much as he can, things like if you times 354 by another number in the book you get the number of words in the book, the book ends on page 354, the word dad is said 354 times and so on (it took him ages he said he’s never doing it again and that also his editors hate him!). The book is called She is Not Invisible.

Finally, and the event I loved the most was Charlie Higson (yes he is the one from The Fast Show!) and not surprisingly he gave a really funny talk about his new book that is definitely for at least over 11 year olds as it’s about a disease that only over 14 year olds can get (classic zombie disease) and it just leaves the kids to fend for themselves. I’m reading it and it’s really good!! The book series is called The Enemy.

Thanks for reading!

Max