Sticky Bottle by Carlton Kirby – Review

By Nigel Armitage
Subscribers – nay adherents – of Eurosport’s professional cycling coverage hardly need an introduction to Carlton Kirby. Alongside his esteemed colleague Sean ‘King’ Kelly, Carlton commentates on and glorifies a sport that he says “has no equal in terms of drama and emotion.” Entertainment, passion and insight characterise Carlton’s TV work, and in Sticky Bottle, he brings to the page this same always enthralling combination of qualities.
In fact, Carlton is on something of a mission in this book. He wants those Eurosport subscribers to do more than just watch the cycling races from the comfort of their own sofas, as pleasant a pastime as that is. His aim is to inspire them to get out into the world and experience the sporting and cultural thrills of watching the races live and in person. It is a compelling invitation.
A working life of amazing experiences (as well as sometimes embarrassing and downright dangerous ones) allows Carlton to make his case with unabashed sincerity and candidness. And if he writes like he has the best job in the world, it’s because he believes that he does. He wants to share this extraordinary piece of luck with his readers, giving the inside track on the favoured location to watch one of the monument races, say, and other important subjects, like Milan’s best (but relatively undiscovered) pizza restaurant.
Structured around the professional cycling calendar, Carlton starts the book (oddly enough) in January at the traditional season curtain-raiser, the Grand Prix La Marseillaise, and concludes his two-wheeled odyssey twelve months later in Polynesia at the Tuvalu Coast to Coast race. In between, almost every facet of human experience is here, in all its weird and wonderful variety, with professional cycling the golden thread running through all of it. If anybody can pull off such an audacious undertaking, it’s Carlton Kirby!
“Blood, guts and glory”
After all, who is it that manages to ruin the filming on a Paris bridge of a spectacular (and hugely expensive) action sequence for a Hollywood blockbuster movie in the service of getting to work on time? Who is it that breaks his leg after a parachute jump in Sanremo? And who is it that heroically launches a large overripe tomato from his hotel window in order to quell a late-night drunken mob in the courtyard below? Escapades like this and many more like them from Carlton’s extensive back pages feature throughout the book. As with his cycling commentary work, the tone is wry, self-deprecatory, and never less than endearing.
All of which sounds like the book is at risk of turning into the Carlton Kirby show. The fact that it doesn’t speaks again to both Carlton’s characteristic modesty and his highly attuned journalistic nous. He knows who the real stars of the show are: the professional cyclists risking life and limb throwing themselves down Alpine mountains, all in the name of sport and for the viewer’s enjoyment.
As well as summarising the history and evolution of the bike races included in the book, he also provides compelling accounts of notable editions, covering some of the great rivalries and astonishing occurrences. In detailing the blood, guts and glory of professional cycling, Carlton also acknowledges its ‘fascinating cruelty’. Evident throughout the book is his deep appreciation of the riders who must endure such working conditions. The greatest cyclists, of course, transcend them and the book justly celebrates many of their amazing feats.
Included is a fabulous collection of photographs to illustrate the routinely thrilling nature of Carlton’s subject matter. But the enthusiasm and skill of his story-telling makes the photos a pleasing optional extra rather than an essential requirement to enjoying the book.
Seeking to distil his commentating craft to a few words, he says that when calling the races, he’s always ‘fully invested in the moment’. Less of an ‘approach’ to his Eurosport work than a philosophy, it’s what defines Carlton as a commentator and explains his pre-eminence. Sticky Bottle is drawn from the same well and it will therefore delight, enthral and, yes, inspire the reader to listen to Carlton a little less, but to gain immeasurably more by witnessing sporting history a few feet away from them. As with this superb book, it is an experience that any professional cycling fan cannot afford to miss. Good on you, Carlton!
‘Sticky Bottle’ by Carlton Kirby is published by Bloomsbury