Results tagged “sport” from Birmingham Mail - Veron Graham

I've never been one for reading celebrity autobiographies but I've always had a soft spot for big Frank Bruno, having supported him ever since he appeared on the boxing horizon when I was just 9 years old! So when I came across his 2006 book 'Fighting Back' in a Salvation Army charity shop a few weeks ago, I paid my money and took my chance. I must say it was the best £1.95 I've spent in a long time!

Written with great honesty and clarity, the book begins with his 2003 sectioning after he went through psychiatric problems and then rewinds all the way back to his humble beginnings in south London. It takes in his relationship with his late father, run-ins with authority that prompted his move to boarding school, all the big fights, injuries, drug abuse and even his courtship, marriage and break-up with ex-wife Laura.

It couldn't have been easy for him to go into such detail, particularly that he risked opening himself up to ridicule. In taking the chance Frank has allowed me, like many others in the Sunday Times best-selling book to understand that the challenges of life come to all of us regardless of our fame or the state of our bank balance.

In my teens and early twenties, I harboured dreams of following Frank into the professional ring, until the media bug bit me. Still, now he's set me another challenge - to be able to write with such honesty and self-effacing humour in a way that sheds light into the corners of life many don't understand.

Big Up Big Frank!

Which celebrity tell-all books have you read? Did they disappoint or impress?

By the way, when you have a moment, check out our website, www.GMAgency.co.uk and tell me what you think.

Where do you stand on the debate over whether athletes should be involved in the Olympics considering the Chinese hosts' human rights record concerning Tibet?

Well they shouldn't go and the very fact that this is an ongoing debate highlights something about society too many of us complain about but still overlook.

For far too long folks have looked at other peoples' situations and decided that it is nothing to do with them. Well as far as I am concerned it has everything to do with every person who takes part in those Games later this year.

The very act of getting involved equates to acceptance of the situation. How can it not? Is the fact that Tibet isn't the most celebrated country in the world that its plight can be overlooked so easily?

Is it that China is the world's leading emerging financial power which offers a major market for business from the 'developed' world why the Games were even given to them in the first place?

If sport and business/ politics were truly to be kept separate as some of the apologists for China have been saying, the country wouldn't have been given the chance to host the Games in the first place.

Will you join me in chanting, 'Hell No They Shouldn't Go ...?'