Shelley Webb

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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]

Contents

Personal life

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]

Career

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]

References

  1. ↑ Ryan, Andrew (4 August 2006). "Tune in, turn on and enjoy the trip". The Globe and Mail . ProQuest   383515529.
  2. ↑ Bosley, Sarah (13 August 2009). "FA Cup winners medal goes under the hammer". Newbury Today.
  3. 1 2 3 Bernard, Peter (29 January 1996). "A game of two halves on and off the pitch". The Times of London. ProQuest   318060136.
  4. 1 2 3 Redding, Mark (6 December 1996). "Webbs crossed As Neil Webb turns out in the twilight world of non-League football, his wife is presenting a new radio show". The Guardian . ProQuest   245085961.
  5. 1 2 Smith, Aidan (7 January 2002). "Off the ball". The Scotsman . Archived from the original on 25 July 2018.
  6. ↑ "Footballers' wives - the shocking truth". BBC News Online . 5 October 1998.
  7. ↑ Kimmage, Paul (28 November 2004). "The Big Interview: Neil Webb". Times Online . Archived from the original on 29 June 2011.
  8. ↑ Mott, Sue (27 September 1998). "How the inside halves survive (Book review)". Scotland on Sunday . ProQuest   326496200.
  9. ↑ Pizzichini, Lilian (25 October 1998). "Paperback Roundup (short book review)". The Independent . ProQuest   312743088.
  10. ↑ "The Home Team". The Daily Telegraph . 13 January 2002. Retrieved 2 August 2016.


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