A Beautiful Game

The Journey

Although still best known as an actor in the UK, Tom has written and broadcast on football for the past twenty years. His early work as an author included The End, which told the story of @arsenal ’s famous North Bank terrace and marked the first use of oral history techniques in a football context; and The Greatest Stage, the official history of Wembley Stadium. He’s since ghost-written David Beckham’s million-selling autobiography My Side and collaborated with Andy Woodward on his critically acclaimed autobiography, Position Of Trust. Tom’s latest book saw him work with Arsenal favourite, FA coach developer, and anti-racism campaigner Paul Davis on his life story, which was published by Reach in 2022. Tom has written extensively on football for the national press, contributing match reports, features and interview pieces for The Observer, @TheTimes , @dailymail , @DailyExpress , @theindependent , The Evening Standard, @ScotlandonSunday , Ireland On Sunday and The Sportsman. He has also been a regular contributor to Arsenal FC’s matchday programme. As a broadcaster, Tom presented and helped create Row Z, the @BBC 's first success on a digital platform, and co-produced the innovative children’s sports series, Rookies, for @Channel4Entertainment . He has presented the country’s most popular football phone-in, 606, for @BBC Five Live for whom he also wrote and presented Watt In The World, a Sony-nominated documentary series on world football. Between 1998 and 2001, he presented 7 shows a week for @talkSPORT before moving on to host @bbclondon 's weekend football coverage for eight years and then present weekly worldwide phone-in shows on Arsenal TV for a further five. More recently, he has been a co-host for the successful Early Doors football podcast and producer of a podcast series for Tony Adams and the Sporting Chance charity. Since the mid-1980s, Tom has collaborated with Arsenal’s community department across a wide range of initiatives, offering advice and support as a film-maker, interviewer, writer and event host. He continues to work with the Arsenal Foundation, recently using text and video to create a long-format report on current projects around London and across the world. Tom produced football-themed educational resources such as The Shelby Town Story, written to tie in with literacy and numeracy projects around the UK, and The Jags, a short fiction series for younger children. Following on from those books, Tom edited a collection of short stories for teenagers, Football Shorts, based on the exploits of fictional club side, Shelby Town, and written by leading UK children’s authors and Premier League players. A Beautiful Game, a book about football and childhood undertaken in co-operation with @UNICEF and 40 of the world’s leading footballers, was published worldwide in 2009 and in the US in 2010, winning the Sportel award for Best Illustrated Book of the Year. The following year, Tom’s legacy book for the 2010 World Cup Organising Committee about the tournament’s impact on the host nation -- 2010: When The World Cup Came To South Africa -- was delivered to schools and sports organisations across RSA. His second World Cup book, Oscar’s Brazil, was published in 2014. For two years, Tom produced and co-curated Kicking & Screening, the UK’s first festival of football films, in association with the Everyman Cinema Group. His early work as a film-maker included producing and directing short films for clubs such as @houstondynamo in @mls and SK Gabala in Azerbaijan and sports organisations such as Sporting Chance. He wrote and presented three Football Outposts films and produced REF, a ground-breaking documentary about referees, all for BT Sport (now known as @TNTSports ) He has recently produced a new series, The Contract, a journey behind the scenes at a football league club, which will be streamed on @DAZN later this year. He continues to work as a researcher, writer and narrative consultant on other film and TV projects in a freelance capacity. He is a narrative and writing consultant for @easportsfc FIFA game. Currently, Tom works as a story consultant, writer and script editor for EA Sports’ @fifa games. He delivers media training across a wide range of industries in the Midlands with Chris Green Media, and lectures on public-speaking, broadcast media and documentary film-making at UCFB’s Wembley and Etihad campuses. Tom serves on the advisory board of Bounce Back and as patron of No Going Back, two charities working with offenders and ex-offenders, the latter in partnership with the Livery Companies of London. Tom is currently directing ‘Stories Like Ours’ a series of short films which will be available free to organisations engaging with young people in the widest variety of settings. He was recently appointed as a trustee at the National Football Museum. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thejourneyishere/support