Many people remember Tom Watt for playing barman Lofty in Eastenders. But the Englishman and passionate Arsenal fan is now better known as a football writer. His new book, The Beautiful Game, includes interviews with dozens of the world's greatest players, including New Zealand defender Ryan Nelsen, who explain how they grew to love football. Watt can talk, so this is part one of two.
Hayden Meikle: How are you?
Tom Watt: I'm good, not bad. It's pretty early in the morning here after a late night, but I'm all right.
HM: Where are you? London?
TW: No, I'm down in the Cotswolds. Everybody tells me it looks just like New Zealand. It's about an hour and a-half drive from London.
HM: Tell me about the book. Where did the idea for The Beautiful Game come from?
TW: It actually came out of some other work I do. I produce educational resources for schools in the UK connected to something called the Double Club, which is kind of a literacy project that uses football as a key to helping kids who are struggling.
A guy I work with is a fantastic man called Alan Sefton, who works in the community department at Arsenal. He was talking about how it would be great to come up with something that celebrated the sort of ethnic diversity of local kids and used football to connect the different backgrounds.
We made the observation that probably the one place that is as diverse - racially, ethnically, religiously and culturally - as an inner-city classroom is probably a Premier League dressing room.
Then I got talking to a guy called Geoff Blackwell, a New Zealand bloke who's got the PQ Blackwell publishing company, and he got really excited by the idea. He sort of turned this into something more than a local schools project.
HM: So it grew from there?
TW: Yeah. It grew and we made a connection with Unicef. I had some background with them through David Beckham, because I ghost-wrote his autobiography. He was a great person to write the introduction. He also suggested we connect the project to Unicef, because he's been a goodwill ambassador for them for the best part of 10 years. Suddenly it all made sense.
HM: Did you have to travel far to interview all these players?
TW: There was a certain amount of travel. But one of the things about modern football is that the world's best players have gravitated to the best leagues in Europe. I didn't have to come to New Zealand to interview Ryan Nelsen. I just had to drive up the M6 to Blackburn and have lunch in the canteen with him after training.
HM: We don't have a lot of global football stars in New Zealand. I assume Nelsen was a fairly obvious choice to represent us.
TW: Yeah, I think so. What I tried to do with every player was think, `If I was in that country, and asked who the top player was, what would people say?' I would guess 99.9% of New Zealand people would say Ryan Nelsen.
I was out in South Africa for the Confederations Cup recently and you could see how much the New Zealand team missed him. He's a fantastic guy. He's got real presence and enthusiasm. Just a born leader.
I got a really strong sense from him of what it must have been like growing up in a sports-mad place like New Zealand. That's what the book tries to capture.
HM: When people think of the best English footballers, they probably think of Steven Gerrard or Frank Lampard or Wayne Rooney. You went for David James as the English interview in the book.
How come?
TW: Various reasons, really. Football is marketed in this country like nowhere else in the world. We're not necessarily the best at playing football but we are, by a country mile, the best at selling football.
One of the upshots of that is an awful lot of players have written their autobiographies in recent years. All the top players have done books. Steven Gerrard's was actually very good. Also, I was conscious that the book wasn't just about the leading players. It was about the good stories.
HM: And David James has a good story?
TW: Well, he's got an amazing story, particularly in the context of what the book is about. He was a lad of mixed race, growing up in a single-parent family, English mum, Jamaican father, a father who he didn't really know at all until recently.
He grew up in a place called Hatfield, just outside London, which is very sort of white working-class. They call them "New Towns", set up for people working in London who wanted to live near the country.
Culturally, it was a difficult situation to grow up in, and how football helped David cope with that is a great story. I just made the judgement that others had done their autobiographies and we needed to hear a different story.
David's story was strong and little known. He might not be the top hombre but there were other factors to consider.
HM: You mentioned working with David Beckham on his book. What's he like?
TW: We had a very good professional relationship. We spent a lot of time together and I've got huge respect and admiration for him. I found him absolutely genuine. He had real integrity and a very strong sense of who he was. I've never known anybody who could concentrate on the job at hand with such intensity.
HM: I suppose most people only get to judge Becks by what they see on TV or read in the gossip magazines.
TW: I was talking to a friend recently about this. David Beckham is the most famous sportsman on Earth. It's interesting how, when people look at him, they see different things. In a funny sort of way, he reflects people's values back at them. Do you know what I mean?
HM: Sure.
TW: The relationship David has with the media is very different from the relationship he has with, for example, England supporters. You just have to be at Wembley on a night he's playing to get that.
They see what he's achieved and what he's given to England. Whatever else is going on, they know he is the one guy you can rely on for courage, commitment and hard work.
The supporters recognise qualities in him that perhaps aren't so interesting to the media. There's an interesting gap between the Beckham you read about on the back pages and the Beckham you see play.
Part two of the Tom Watt interview will run next week.
