Being Eddie Waring: The Life and Times of a Sporting Icon

FINAL JACKET BLURB To those of a certain age, Eddie Waring’s trademark trilby and contorted vowels conjure golden memories of 1970s light entertainment: an era in which a humble rugby league commentator with a comical accent could line up alongside stars such as Morecambe and Wise. At the height of his success, Waring was regularly referenced on Monty Python’s Flying Circus and imitated by impressionist Mike Yarwood, and he co-hosted ratings smash It’s a Knockout. Yet Waring was far from universally popular, and many fellow Northerners viewed his bumbling on-screen persona as an embarrassing regional stereotype. To his critics, Waring was a Southern-Establishment lackey and at best the unwitting stooge of an organisation riddled with class snobbery and rugby union bias, dedicated to keeping the 13-a-side code and, by extension, the north of England in its place. The truth, as ever, was far less simple. Being Eddie Waring is the meticulously researched biography of a man whose professional life was lived in the breach of the North–South divide. It reveals how, far from being merely a figure of fun, Eddie Waring was a true sporting pioneer whose influence is still being felt more than 20 years after his death. Containing first-hand accounts from those who worked with Waring and knew him best, this thought-provoking, entertaining book traces his childhood in poverty-stricken Dewsbury through to his final years, blighted by illness and shrouded in mystery. In doing so, it reveals a talented and pugnacious administrator, journalist, publisher, showman and players’ champion, who, throughout the course of his 45-year broadcasting career, took rugby league into the nation’s living rooms like no one before or since. AUTHOR BIOG ON JACKET Tony Hannan is the former editor of Total Rugby League and Rugby League World magazines. A regular contributor to The Times and one-time sports journalist with the Press Association, he is the author of a number of books on rugby, including Seasons in the Sun: A Rugby Revolution. Born in Bradford, he currently lives in West Yorkshire with his wife and three children.Hannan, Tony is the author of 'Being Eddie Waring: The Life and Times of a Sporting Icon', published 2008 under ISBN 9781845963002 and ISBN 1845963008.