Shelley Webb is a British TV presenter, writer, and sports journalist and author of the book Footballers' Wives Tell Their Tales. The book was the basis of the ITV series Footballers' Wives , which was an "enormous hit." [1]
Webb married former England footballer Neil Webb, and the couple had two children Luke and Josh, who both became professional footballers. [2] Webb's father was a professional footballer, and she has been a fan since childhood. [3] She was a university student when she and Neil met. [3] They married when she was 21. [3]
Webb, who holds a first-class honours degree in English and History, trained as a journalist before her marriage and resumed that career with the local Nottingham Evening Post, working as an occasional sports writer. She was forced to turn down a job as a radio broadcaster in Nottingham when Neil Webb moved from Nottingham Forest to Manchester United. [4] She later moved to TV presenting. [4] [5] She worked as an on-air journalist for Standing Room Only (UK TV Progamme), then for BBC World Service Television. [4]
This professional visibility led to interviews about her life as a footballer's wife, and, eventually, led her to write the book Footballers' Wives Tell Their Tales in 1998, [6] the year she and Neil split up. [7]
Her Footballers' Wives looked at the reality of being a modern footballer's wife. [8] [9] Webb interviewed 14 of her fellow footballer's wives for her 1998 book, painting what The Daily Telegraph called "a dismal picture of chronic insecurity, upheaval, boredom and loneliness." [10]
The book was the basis for the TV series Footballers' Wives , a series that portrayed the lives of footballers and their families in the years when they became "like pop stars", receiving a level of coverage that the Scotsman described as "even sillier" than fan enthusiasm, as well as offers of sex and a lack of privacy. [5]
The Handmaid's Tale is a futuristic dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood and published in 1985. It is set in a near-future New England in a patriarchal, white supremacist, totalitarian theonomic state known as the Republic of Gilead, which has overthrown the United States government. Offred is the central character and narrator and one of the "handmaids", women who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the "commanders", who are the ruling class in Gilead.
"Bluebeard" is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault and first published by Barbin in Paris in 1697 in Histoires ou contes du temps passé. The tale tells the story of a wealthy man in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of the present one to avoid the fate of her predecessors. "The White Dove", "The Robber Bridegroom" and "Fitcher's Bird" are tales similar to "Bluebeard". The notoriety of the tale is such that Merriam-Webster gives the word "Bluebeard" the definition of "a man who marries and kills one wife after another". The verb "bluebearding" has even appeared as a way to describe the crime of either killing a series of women, or seducing and abandoning a series of women.
Daniel Ronald Cox is an American actor, singer and songwriter. His best-known roles include Drew Ballinger in Deliverance (1972), George Apple in Apple's Way (1974–75), Ozark Bule in Bound for Glory (1976), Colonel Kerby in Taps (1981), Lieutenant Andrew Bogomil in Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), Dick Jones in RoboCop (1987), Franklin Reed in Family Ties (1986), Vilos Cohaagen in Total Recall (1990), The President in Captain America (1990), Justin in Age of Dinosaurs (2013), Vice President Kinsey in several episodes of Stargate SG-1 and Captain Edward Jellico in two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1992) as well as in an episode of Star Trek: Prodigy (2022). Cox is also active as a musician, performing over 100 times per year at festivals and theaters each year as of 2012.
Duet is an American sitcom that aired on Fox from April 19, 1987, to August 20, 1989. Originally, the story centered on the romance of a novelist and a caterer, but gradually the focus shifted to their yuppie friends and the show was rebranded as Open House. The series was created by Ruth Bennett and Susan Seeger, and was produced by Paramount Television.
Celia Diana Savile Imrie is an English actress and author. She is best known for her film roles, including the Bridget Jones film series, Calendar Girls (2003), Nanny McPhee (2005), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015), The English dub of The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales... (2017), Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018), Malevolent (2018) and for the FX TV series Better Things (2016-2022).
Alexandra Lendon Bastedo was a British actress, best known for her role as secret agent Sharron Macready in the 1968 British espionage/science fiction adventure series The Champions. Bastedo was a vegetarian and animal welfare advocate, and wrote a number of books on both subjects.
Footballers' Wives is a British television drama about fictional Premier League football club Earls Park F.C., its players, and their wives, broadcast on ITV from 2002 to 2006. The show initially focuses on three very different couples, but from the third series onward revolves around a complex love triangle between Tanya Turner, Amber Gates, and Conrad Gates.
Audrey Niffenegger is an American writer, artist and academic. Her debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, published in 2003, was a bestseller.
The Frog Princess is a fairy tale that has multiple versions with various origins. It is classified as type 402, the animal bride, in the Aarne–Thompson index. Another tale of this type is the Norwegian Doll i' the Grass. Russian variants include the Frog Princess or Tsarevna Frog and also Vasilisa the Wise ; Alexander Afanasyev collected variants in his Narodnye russkie skazki.
Question Quest is a fantasy novel by American writer Piers Anthony, the fourteenth book of the Xanth series.
Carmel Myers was an American actress who achieved her greatest successes in silent film.
Barbie of Swan Lake is a 2003 computer-animated fantasy film co-produced by Mainframe Entertainment and Mattel Entertainment, and distributed by Artisan Home Entertainment.
"The Robber Bridegroom" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 40. Joseph Jacobs included a variant, Mr Fox, in English Fairy Tales, but the original provenance is much older; Shakespeare alludes to the Mr. Fox variant in Much Ado About Nothing, Act 1, Scene 1:
WAGs is an acronym used to refer to wives and girlfriends of high-profile sportsmen. The term may also be used in the singular form, WAG, to refer to a specific female partner or life partner who is in a relationship with an athlete. The term was first used by the British tabloid press to refer to the wives and girlfriends of high-profile footballers, originally the England national football team. The WAGs acronym came about following an increasing focus on the coverage of athletes' partners in the late-20th century, and it came into common use during the 2006 FIFA World Cup to refer to Victoria Beckham and Cheryl Cole, although the term had been used occasionally before that.
Anne Yvonne Gilbert is a British artist and book illustrator. Her cover design of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 1983 single "Relax" has been described as "one of the most famous record sleeves of all time". While much of her career since then has focused on illustrating the covers and interiors of popular books, Gilbert has also designed series of stamps produced by the Royal Mail depicting Christmas themes and Arthurian mythology. She illustrated several of the books in the Ologies series, among other children's books.
Katie Joplin is an American sitcom created by Tom Seeley and Norm Gunzenhauser that aired for one season on The WB Television Network from August to September 1999. Park Overall stars as the title character, a single mother who moves from Knoxville to Philadelphia and tries to balance her job as a radio program host with parenting her teenage son Greg. Supporting characters include Katie's niece Liz Berlin as well as her co-workers, played by Jay Thomas, Jim Rash, and Simon Rex. Majandra Delfino guest-starred in three episodes as the daughter of the radio station's general manager.
The Testaments is a 2019 novel by Margaret Atwood. It is the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale (1985). The novel is set 15 years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale. It is narrated by Aunt Lydia, a character from the previous novel; Agnes, a young woman living in Gilead; and Daisy, a young woman living in Canada.
Princess Himal and Nagaray or Himal and Nagrai is a Kashmiri folktale, collected by British reverend James Hinton Knowles and published in his book Folk-Tales of Kashmir.