Book reviews

The great escape artists of English football, Carlisle United, finally surrendered their league status this month. Roger Lytollis reports on their relegation to the Conference

On December 20 last year Carlisle kicked off their home game against Torquay 16 points adrift of Third Division safety. Their first 21 matches had yielded a grand total of five points: one win, two draws, 18 defeats. The next 23 games produced 39 points. A team which had just set a club record of 12 consecutive League losses embarked on half a season of promotion form. And now it all counts for nothing. Carlisle United, football’s great escape artists, have finally been snagged on the barbed wire. 

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Dingwall, home of Ross County, is the smallest town in Great Britain with a senior league club. Gordon Cairns explains the secret of their success against Inverness

When the Scottish Football League was formed in 1890, the founding members gave their new organisation a very misleading title. The clubs were clustered within Scotland’s industrial heartland – the central belt – and could hardly be said to represent the nation. Only now, with two Highland teams, Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Ross County, on the cusp of the Premier League, can top-level football truly be seen to encompass the country. These two teams have reached this position ten years after admission, but whether they can take the next step up depends on the whims of the clubs who make up the Premier League.

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Is David Beckham "the most famous person in the world"? Perhaps the most ubiquitous, with his affairs in the papers, his official lookalike aiming for the charts and his sleeping body in an art installation. Barney Ronay tries to work out what it all means

A spell abroad at a glamorous foreign club, a Gucci-clad celebrity wife, Eastern-themed parties at their palatial home, a bogus kidnap scare, a series of hushed-up extra-marital dalliances – and finally a homosexual affair with Paul Scholes. Actually, this last detail appears to be the only major distinction between the lifestyles of Conrad Gates, blond-highlighted Eng­land skipper in the television series Footballer’s Wives, and our own David Beckham. While Conrad happily puts it about in the showers, Becks, we assume, has yet to swing that way. Although nothing, it seems, is to be taken for granted. Over the last month we have been confronted with a new version of David Beckham. Gone is the uxorious cultural icon who once inspired Julie Burchill to exclaim that in the face of his “breathtaking boldness and beauty… the clamour and loutishness of modern celebrity recede”. In his place we have a leering philanderer, a preening fraud and the possessor of a secret “mistress phone” on which he “lays bare his deepest cravings”. 

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Do you ever see a picture of a player and come up confidently with half a dozen names for him? Matt Nation knows the feeling, especially with one former Arsenal man

A recent article on European Union expansion  highlighted the problems Slovenia faces in trying to convince people that it is who it says it is. People who try to point it out on a map usually end up putting their finger on Serbia & Montenegro. The flag gets confused with the Russian one. Even George W is convinced Slovenia is half of what used to be Czechoslovakia.

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At face value, it has possibly been Livingston's most successful season ever. The semi-finals of the Scottish Cup, winners of the League Cup and a decent-looking league finish are not enough to cheer up their fans, though, as they face administration, Neil White reports

His side had just reached the semi-finals of the Scottish Cup and won the CIS League Cup, their first major trophy, yet the man I know only as “Deasel” sounded de­pressed. It was understandable. Deasel supports Livingston.

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