As I’ve written before, many football autobiographies can be categorised as by-the-number rehashes of a player’s career, or cash grabs to capitalise on a player’s contemporaneous popularity. There are few that transcend these categories, and those that do tend to be the choicest cuts that leave you savouring for more. Don’t be fooled—Mark Bright’s My Story is not one of these outliers. Although it does have its moments, it does unfortunately embody the quality of the first category class of autobiography, wherein the echo of banter and stories of yesteryear is keenly smothered by the ghostwriter’s hollow embrace.
In My Story, Mark Bright—with Kevin Brennan—takes us through his life growing up in foster homes, his experiences with racism in the 1970s West Midlands, his glut of goals across seven clubs, and his burgeoning media career. Throughout the narrative, the flavour of changing UK footballing and societal landscapes across the 1980s and 1990s can be sampled. Bright’s experiences with family, and what family means to him, colour his experiences and keeps him humble—and we, in turn, can be empathetic and, at times, inspired.
Family estrangement, finding family, starting a family, teammates as brothers, and mentoring young players—each variation on the family theme runs as an undercurrent to his footballing journey. Although this theme is one of the strengths of My Story in facilitating his footballing journey, it may put off the readers who aren’t able to slog through the first third of the book as we follow Bright from foster home to foster home.
And this gets to my main criticism of My Story—the style. The words are so hemmed and hedged by the even and perfunctory tone of writing that it all seems so detached. Voice and personality are blunted. These criticisms mark the careful footfalls of the ghostwriter. Hence my use of the word slog. There is no searing insight that you can recognise as coming from a strong opinion or a voice of change. In conveying his story through the sideman, Mark Bright—the scorer of over 160 professional league goals across three divisions and a bona fide Crystal Palace and Sheffield Wednesday legend—becomes the strike partner rather than the main man. He becomes the stage and lights for others. He becomes the dull blade in his own stories. He even becomes the butt of jokes in an awkwardly comedic and seemingly hastily-penned foreword by Gary Lineker.
In looking for points of difference and telling what has yet to be told, writers tend to narrow what we look for in football autobiographies. We look for the anecdotes and pub stories. And there are seams of anecdotal gold and silver in My Story. The words neon up whenever Ian Wright is mentioned—such is the testament to his ability to light up any room and in My Story to provide spice to some sparse writing. Bright’s brief jaunt at FC Sion meeting Ronaldinho’s older brother is a great yarn. Yet the best of all is the story of centre back-turned-the most in-form striker in the league, Paul ‘Albert Tatlock’ Warhurst, and his insistence on displacing one of Bright or David Hirst as striker on the eve of the 1993 FA Cup Final. Lessons of humility and perspective from Roy McFarland and Kevin Lisbie bookend Bright’s career. Punters may take or leave everything else, considering that the sentiments within are tempered by the economy of emotion.
This review isn’t intended to be a swipe at ghostwriters. In a genre where ghostwritten works are close to the norm, there are many well-written ones that lend a layer of emotional heft, flourish, and substance to someone’s story. We attribute such quality in writing to the strength of what has been told, and perhaps it is cruel that the ghostwriter gets the tiny by-line below the name we are all familiar with. But when the style of writing leaves the subject and their experiences a certain shade of bland, it all just comes across as disconnected and weightless.
I cannot remember exactly when My Story came into my possession, but it may have been part of an early-pandemic bulk buy from Book Depository before Amazon closed it down. The book had sat on my shelf, unassuming and unread, for a few years. Yet from this unclear provenance comes clear recommendation: Unless you are heavily invested in Crystal Palace’s Coppell years or Wednesday’s Francis years, you can leave this unassuming book similarly unread and untouched near the bottom of your pile until a later date.
HIGHLIGHTED PASSAGE
“I don’t think I’m overstating things by saying that the move to Crystal Palace changed the direction of my life forever. I might not have been aware of it at the time, but I can now see that’s exactly what happened. It changed me in so many positive ways. It broadened my education, I mixed with more black people than I had ever done before, London was so much more multicultural than anything I had ever experienced, and I immediately loved it and felt very much at home. There was always a lot going on and, perhaps most important of all, I grew in confidence as a player and a person.”
Bright on his move to London (pg. 140)
STARS: 2/5
UNDER 20: An uneven slog that blandly colours the narrative and gives no justice to the experiences contained within.
FULL-TIME SCORE: The star player doesn’t come off the bench; without him, his teammates on the pitch look forlorn and stilted in possession as the team goes down 0-2.
RELATED READING: A Life in Football by Ian Wright (2016); Crystal Palace FC: The Coppell Campaigns 1984-1992 by Nigel Sands (1992); One in a Million: Trevor Francis by Trevor Francis (2019)
Dispatches from Row-Z 