I see that the story about massive match fixing in international football is about to break. I did this story five years ago for a Channel Four series (see: investigative journalism). The series was spiked - shot to bits with prior restraint threats of libel, injunctions, massive brick wall from teh swarms of press officers the top professional clubs employ to give you the run around (think Winch's press officers x 1,000,000) threats of Ofcom, threats of legal action from agents, threats from the press offices of the clubs, the individual stars, their sponsors of no more co-operation on day to day stuff for channel four - the whole bit - and in addition I expect objections from advertisers (Nike, Addidas, Coca Cola all implicated). So I ripped out all teh bits the lawyers were most worreid about. I wrote it all down in a book that virtually nobody read but - like a lot fo my books - the tiny number of people who did read it, really liked it. Sadly in those days there was no Reynolds - let alone Jameel. So it was sort of impossible to do this story - because football is the key to the finances of commercial TV (at that time partic ITV and Sky) and if nobody thinks the 'Champions League' is worth watching ebcause it is fixed like WWF wrestling (why wouldn't it be?) then the whole financial basis of pay TV collapses. But the book is still out there and I am delighted to find that you can buy a copy for one penny.
In the meantime I am speaking at a conference at the London School of Economics next Saturday. If anyone would like to go to this it could be good, because it is being organised by Derek Dyson of ITV, and it would be good to video this and webcast it live and make a highlights package for YouTube - which I reckon would get good hits. It would mean hiring two cameras for the weekend and going up to London. LSE is walking distance from Waterloo. Any takers please email me at chris@horrie.com.
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