Truly, Madly, Charlie by Stewart Taylor – Review
By Karl Hornsey
Stewart Taylor takes us back to the 1980s with this, his second book, chronicling the memorable seasons that Charlie Nicholas spent at Arsenal and the deep impact they had on his life.
Taylor has been here before, with his profile of Paul Vaessen being longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Awards for 2014, and this excellent release is made so thanks to his passion for the subject, as much as anything Nicholas ever achieved at Highbury.
As a child of the 80s myself, I have similar memories and adulation for my own football heroes, so I can feel the same feelings and enjoy the same sort of flashbacks that Taylor does about Nicholas, who was one of those players who became known for more than his achievements on the field.
Nicholas, today probably better known for his punditry and his part on the panel of Soccer Saturday on Sky for several years, took his place among the characters that the sport seemed to so regularly throw up during the 1970s and ‘80s. ‘Champagne’ was a nickname that stuck and, while his move to Arsenal from Celtic couldn’t ever be qualified as a success, there were enough highs to look back at what might have been.
Taylor enhances his own recollections with those of several other Arsenal supporters, as well as a roll call of Gunners who played with Nicholas, and journalists who were around during his time at the club, and this makes for an inside take on those seasons.
“Deeply personal”
While Charlie might be considered a luxury player, he came to England with a stellar reputation and turned down advances from Liverpool and Manchester United to head for the bright lights of London, and he suffered more than his fair share of bad luck, which contributed to his time at Arsenal being relatively short, and not so sweet.
Eventually, it was a clash of personalities with new manager George Graham that ultimately saw Nicholas head back to Scotland, and it’s clear from the testimonies of those at the club at the time that he was highly regarded both as a player and as a person.
This is a deeply personal book, as Taylor shares his innermost feelings, his scrapbook cuttings and makes no secret of his idolatry, the number of hours he spent thinking of Charlie and the lengths to which he would go to meet his hero.
This honesty also leads to the feeling that this is a book that could no longer be written about players today, with there being so much more distance between players and supporters, a less personal feel to clubs and fewer maverick characters. Without falling into the ‘things were better in the past’ cliché, Taylor had produced a fabulous snapshot of a bygone age and of the impact that just one player can have on your life.
Truly, Madly, Charlie by Stewart Taylor is published by Pitch Publishing
Karl’s love of writing was piqued at the age of eight, when he won a Blue Peter badge in an essay-writing competition. The location of said badge might be a mystery now, but the memory never fades. Hours spent writing about sport as a teenager, in pre-internet years when you had to make your entertainment, honed his skills, and Karl has worked in TV and radio listings at PA Media for 28 years, and the age of hybrid working means 50% of that can be at home listening to Classic FM and thinking about his next visit to his beloved Yorkshire Dales.
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