Lives Less Ordinary

How to Understand Paul Gascoigne

Danny Baker (Author) 
 Danny Baker is an author, comedy writer, journalist and Radio DJ. He is the author of the bestselling memoirs Going to Sea in a Sieve, Going Off Alarming and, most recently, Going on the Turn. He still lives in south-east London. Follow Danny on Twitter @prodnose 
 
Danny Kelly (Author) 
 Publishing overlord Danny Kelly is former editor of NME, Q and Total Sport , and founder of the Football365 website. He regularly broadcasts on TalkSport and BBC FiveLive. He appals Baker by knowing 97.4% of everything there is to know about football and 85.3% about every other sport. He loves Spurs but annoys those who sit around him at White Hart Lane by booing the team as they run out just in case.

The Lives Less Ordinary series brings you the most exciting, adventurous and entertaining true-life writing that is out there, for men who are time-poor but want the best. Lives Less Ordinary drops you into extreme first-hand accounts of human experience, whether that's the adrenaline-pumping heights of professional sport, the brutality of the modern battlefield, the casual violence of the criminal world, the mind-blowing frontiers of science, or the excesses of rock 'n' roll, high finance and Hollywood. Lives Less Ordinary also brings you some of the finest comic voices around, on every subject from toilet etiquette to Paul Gascoigne. 
 
Paul Gascoigne is a legend, both on and off the pitch, and a hero to a generation of football fans. The man who, during Italia '90, made it OK to cry, and made the English fall in love with football all over again. Despite endless books about him he is still an enigma to most, so who better than his closest confident (and national institution himself), Danny Baker, to explain what truly makes him tick. 
 
This digital bite has been extracted from Danny Baker and Danny Kelly's brilliant book Classic Football Debates.

Classic Football Debates Settled Once and For All, Vol.1

Sometimes right. Sometimes wrong. Always Certain. The most entertaining football book ever published from the legendary Danny Baker and Danny Kelly

If it's an intelligent, witty and surreal read you're after, this one beats most football books out there

Most football books are rubbish, but this one, written by Britain's funniest broadcaster and a legendary magazine editor is full of the sort of vim and brio that will make you want to throw off your velvet pantaloons, your crushed silk undershirt and your embroidered codpiece, done a box-fresh donkey jacket and hurtle down to your local for a couple of metres of mead and a family packet of Kettles

Danny Baker (Author) Danny Baker is an author, comedy writer, journalist and Radio DJ. He is the author of the bestselling memoirs Going to Sea in a Sieve, Going Off Alarming and, most recently, Going on the Turn. He still lives in south-east London. Follow Danny on Twitter @prodnose Danny Kelly (Author) Publishing overlord Danny Kelly is former editor of NME, Q and Total Sport , and founder of the Football365 website. He regularly broadcasts on TalkSport and BBC FiveLive. He appals Baker by knowing 97.4% of everything there is to know about football and 85.3% about every other sport. He loves Spurs but annoys those who sit around him at White Hart Lane by booing the team as they run out just in case.

At last! The award-winning Baker &amp; Kelly bring you the most entertaining, radical and unreliable football book ever published. The Two Dannys argue the toss, spill the beans and chew that fat about everything and anything from the biggest questions down to stuff they have frankly invented themselves. 
 
Which club has the handsomest fans? Who is the greatest player of all time? Pele? Maradona? Puskas? Rougvie? Have foreign players helped or hindered the English game? Well, Marco Boogers, well? And who was the greatest football dad, Fred Baker or Andy Kelly? 
 
Now with even more footballing facts, myths and legends, the paperback asks (and answers) hard-hitting questions, such as, what was the greatest ever World Cup? Just how much pathetic World Cup tat can one own, Danny Kelly? And where do all those beautiful women in the crowd come from? 
 
A cornucopia of footballing fun and well-crafted wisdom that is certain to sell like beer-flavoured crisps. Baker &amp; Kelly: Sometimes right sometimes wrong - but always certain.

Gary Lineker

Danny Baker

This is Lineker unleashed. As a non-football nut I didn’t expect to enjoy it, but between laddish anecdotes are passages of sudden tenderness. Lineker recalls deathbed conversations with his father, Barry, a Leicester market trader who’d taken him and his childhood team-mates to matches in his fruit and veg van. The process seems to have acted as a sort of talking therapy for Lineker, opening him up, dislodging memories and reflections, not just about football but his whole life.

Gary Lineker and Danny Baker relate stories both honest and hilarious about the world of football.

Without doubt, it’s one of the funniest books around.

Is there anything Gary Lineker can’t do?

This personal and often hilarious book is the perfect gift for any footie fanatic.

Life, Laughs and Football

***Includes a new foreword by Gary Lineker about football in lockdown*** 
 
Shortlisted for The Telegraph Sports Book Awards 
 
'Lineker is nearly as good a presenter as I was a footballer' DIEGO MARADONA 
'Hilarious, almost as funny as me' ALAN SHEARER 
'This is Lineker unleashed. As a non-football nut I didn't expect to enjoy it, but between laddish anecdotes are passages of sudden tenderness. . . Lineker opens up, dislodging memories and reflections, not just about football but his whole life.' THE TIMES 
_______________________________________________________________ 
'Football is a simple game. 22 players chase a ball for 90 minutes, and at the end the Germans always win.' 
 
This book is inspired by the stories Danny and I have shared with each other about what life in football is really like: in the dressing room, in the commentary box, on the pitch and - with the appropriate pixellation - in the showers afterwards. 
 
What's it really like to play with Messi? I wouldn't know, but I have starred alongside him in an advert for Walkers crisps. And, well, his performance was world-class. 
 
And what is a life in football really like? You won't learn much from the dull-as-dishwater post-match interviews - it's a world of secrets, superstitions, laughs and personalities, and let me tell you, half of it you won't believe. 
 
I've looked back at my playing days, from England to Leicester, Everton to Barcelona, Tottenham to, er, Nagoya Grampus Eight, and shared the chaotic behind-the-scenes secrets of Match of the Day - and Danny has chipped in with stories from a lifetime following the game as a fan. 
 
From Italia '90 to Leicester's Premier League fairytale, from yellow cards to World Cup trophies (I've never been awarded either), from Gascoigne to Maradona, you'll find it all here - everything you always wanted to know about football, but didn't realise that you did. 
 
Inspired by the No.1 podcast Behind Closed Doors

Danny Baker

Praise for Behind Closed Doors

This is Lineker unleashed. As a non-football nut I didn’t expect to enjoy it, but between laddish anecdotes are passages of sudden tenderness. Lineker recalls deathbed conversations with his father, Ba ...

Gary Lineker and Danny Baker relate stories both honest and hilarious about the world of football.

Without doubt, it’s one of the funniest books around.

This is Lineker unleashed. As a non-football nut I didn’t expect to enjoy it, but between laddish anecdotes are passages of sudden tenderness. Lineker recalls deathbed conversations with his father, Ba ...

Gary Lineker and Danny Baker relate stories both honest and hilarious about the world of football.

Without doubt, it’s one of the funniest books around.

This is Lineker unleashed. As a non-football nut I didn’t expect to enjoy it, but between laddish anecdotes are passages of sudden tenderness. Lineker recalls deathbed conversations with his father, Ba ...

Gary Lineker and Danny Baker relate stories both honest and hilarious about the world of football.

Without doubt, it’s one of the funniest books around.

Books by Danny Baker

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