Sports and media memoir is up for prestigious award…
HE IS ONE OF BRITAIN’S top journalists and now has a book to his name that is up for the prestigious Sports Book of the Year prize.
Shekhar Bhatia is about as self-effacing and humble as they come.
His sports memoir, ‘Namaste, Geezer’ deserves to win in the category for which it is up later this evening (May 1) in the Football Book of The Year section.
It is about so much more than just supporting West Ham, the Premier League team, Bhatia has followed all his life – right from the age of about six or seven; the early parts are touching and evocative and relatable to anyone who has had a dream from a young age.
Amazingly – Bhatia’s was not only to play for West Ham – and when that didn’t seem possible – then, to become a journalist – watching as a youngster, reporters going to games and talking to players and managers after the matches.
He has several World Cups behind him now and describes what it was like to be at the last finals in Qatar in 2022, in ‘Namaste, Geezer’.
“It’s not just a football book,” he told www.asianculturevulture.com. “It’s unusual because so few books have been written about our experience of football.”
Indeed, we – as a community that is – British Asians – remain largely invisible from what is the national game.
There are very few professional footballers – none in the Premier League and not too many journalists of Asian heritage cover the game – though this has improved slightly in recent times.
What makes ‘Namaste, Geezer’ a powerful and profound read is how Bhatia weaves together a narrative about growing up, getting into journalism and following football, all together. You don’t have to be interested in football to appreciate ‘Namaste, Geezer’.
“My Dad used to take me. He was a typical Punjabi man, he just wanted his son to be happy,” Bhatia recalled.
Champion Marion Bartoli
The title reflects Bhatia’s Hindu Punjabi upbringing and the Geezer is London speak all the way.
When he was old enough, Bhatia started going to the Old Upton Park ground (West Ham’s home is now the Olympic Stadium in Stratford, east London), dodging the turnstiles, initially, to get in free as a cheeky nipper.
Back then in the 1970s, the terraces were rife with racism – black players were routinely booed – for no other reason than they had a different colour of skin; the right wing fascist party The National Front, routinely sold their rags outside grounds and recruited young lads to their heinous cause, and ‘P**I bashing’ was considered a popular pastime by some lads.
Bhatia braved racism and everything that came with it to follow West Ham; he also became a top reporter on Fleet Street, working for principally for the London Evening Standard where he made his name; was Entertainment Editor at the Daily Express before taking up a role more recently as roving North American correspondent for Daily Mail online– it doesn’t get much bigger than that as a print journalist and he has covered some seismic world events.
He was in Paris on the night Princess Diana died in 1997.
“I have been asked by others to write a news biography. I’ve done 48 years as a newsman,” said Bhatia, who has just taken six months out after accepting a redundancy package from the Mail Online. “I’ve done front pages and back.
“People want to know more about what it was like just three hours after Princess Diana died, turning up there…
“I just love telling stories…”
He first got his foothold into journalism, working on newspapers in his neighbourhood and writing all sorts of stories.
This book came about because of his friendship with the late great campaigning sports journalist and editor Vikki Orvice, who died from breast cancer in 2019, aged 56. Her husband Ian Ridley is a well-known football journalist and curates an imprint called Football Shorts produced by Pitch Publishing.
“We are friends and he told me ‘you should write about what it was like being a football fan in the 1970s’, being literally the only person of colour on the terraces.”
As many news journalists might tell you, writing anything over about 1,500 words can be daunting, let alone a whole book.
Good Morning team at the Tokyo Olympics
“Ian just said ‘write your story from childhood until now focusing on the football’ – he edited it. I was travelling all over the world for the Mail and I’d write a chapter in Brazil, and then another in South Africa, writing it in hotel rooms and it took about a year.”
There’s so much in the book that we can’t recommend it highly enough and there is one particular section that should be part of the National Curriculum really …
While being an ardent West Ham fan and supporting England in many sports, he simply can’t bring himself to support the England football team – despite the undeniable progress – he even states in his book – was made under former manager Gareth Southgate.
It is the quite simply the most brilliant distillation of why some British Asians will never support England at football. Read it and be enlightened, please. You don’t have to agree with it…
©Dharam Bir Bhatia
‘Namaste, Geezer’ is simply one of the best books ever written about being a fan and following your team through some very personal ups and downs.
Along the way, Bhatia also married and amicably divorced actor and writer Meera Syal. The book is dedicated to their daughter, Milli – a theatre director.
“I enjoyed writing it – I was laughing and I had a few tears as well – thinking about my (late) mum and dad.”
How proud his Dad would be if he won tonight – but more than that just how far the “gangly” (Bhatia is over 6ft), “geeky” briefcase-carrying young Shekhar has come from the kid who was put in the bottom set of his school class, ever so briefly.
All pictures: ©ShekharBhatia (except where stated)
‘Namaste Geezer’ by Shekhar Bhatia, Pitch Publishing and Floodlit Dreams £9.99
See here – https://www.pitchpublishing.co.uk/shop/namaste-geezer
