The Working Man’s Ballet by Alan Hudson
Alan Hudson was Chelsea Football Club’s home-grown boy genius. He broke into a team already fizzing with the flamboyant talent of Peter Osgood and Charlie Cooke, his mercurial skills and style imprinting themselves on football fans far and wide. The Working Man’s Ballet documents Hudson’s journey from a prefab in working-class Chelsea to the heights of global football via Chelsea, Stoke City, Arsenal, Seattle Sounders and England.
A true maverick, his story is set against the backdrop of The Kings Road – the spiritual home of the Swinging Sixties and Seventies – and captures the essence of a man who could delight and frustrate in equal measure. His post-football life has seen many twists and turns, with a road accident nearly killing him in 1997. A natural storyteller, and a friend and contemporary of George Best and Bobby Moore, Alan Hudson remains an intriguing London character.
Michael Parkinson wryly observed: ‘Apart from being abducted by aliens there is nothing dramatic that hasn’t happened to Alan Hudson, but give it time.’
Jeff Powell of The Daily Mail describes The Working Man’s Ballet as: ‘Idiosyncratic, off-the-wall, quirky, often bizarre, sometimes surreal – Hudson offers his weird and wonderful insight into the world of flowing football and life in the London fast lane.’
• The book comes with an extended introduction and afterword by John King (author of The Football Factory and Human Punk) and Martin Knight (biographer of George Best, Peter Osgood and Charlie Cooke). |