First they moved in on the cosy, not to say lucrative world of football agents, now they’re treading on the toes of the Beautiful Game’s literary brethren. Of whom do we speak? Why, Blacks LLP, of course.
We wrote of the Yorkshire firm’s involvement in Field, an innovative collective of lawyers, property experts, tax supremos and designers, as last year came to a close. Among other things, Field aims to bring what many observers would say is a much-needed professionalism into sportsperson management. A welcome development and a noble aim, but we didn’t expect Blacks to start doubling up as literary agents, too.
But that’s just what they’ve done. Led by Stephen Lownsbrough, Head of Sport, the Blacks’ team has brokered a no-holds-barred account of the ever-entertaining, not to say controversial, Wales’ star Robbie Savage’s life. The book, perhaps unsurprisingly entitled Savage!, will be published by Mainstream and is due out this autumn.
Savage welcomes the chance “to put the record straight” by writing his autobiography, which will, of course, appear only a few weeks after the suave Italian himself, one Fabio Capello, has led England to World Cup success. Whether Mr Capello is given a bonus by the FA in the form of a Lamborghini Murcielago – Savage’s conveyance of choice – remains to be seen.
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A lawyer of Swordplay’s acquaintance finds himself in a fix.
“My teenage son is to be interviewed by the local constable,” he tells us. “He is alleged to have committed an offence.”
We gasp, for such seems the appropriate response, and then ask: is it serious?
“No, it is not,” our troubled legal friend tells us. “In the great scheme of things, my son’s alleged transgression is about as de minimis as they get.”
For a split second, we wonder if said teenage son is cognisant of lawyerly terms of art such as de minimis, but rapidly conclude that the answer to this question is not a sine qua non of further discourse. And so we press on. That sounds good, we say, relatively speaking, at least.
“Yes,” says the lawyer, “but I am at a loss as to what to do with him. Do I come down hard and ground him, or do I play the liberal card, or do I find a compromise?”
That depends, we aver.
“On what?” asks our man.
On whether you would prefer to deal with your son’s alleged offence as a lawyer, or as a father, or as a father who is a lawyer, or maybe even as a lawyer who is a father.
“I see your point,” says the lawyer. And then, as if to prove that there is no cure for recidivism, he says: “The offence is, after all, de minimis.”
Without prejudice, we add.
Pictured: something out of Kafka. Now there was a man who knew about the law. And had a tough old father, too.
We rarely enjoy pondering Max Mosley – the man, the sins, the legal action, what he stands for – but confess to a degree of grudging admiration for his tenacity in trying to change the law of privacy. As this story from the Independent has it, Mosley has lodged a request with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg asking that, by law, journalists must inform the subject of a story of the private details they intend to print, prior to publication.
We suspect the motor racing man would never have thought it, but he would appear to have an unlikely bedfellow in a certain England footballer. Step forward, Wayne Rooney, who would presumably put his name to Mosley’s petition.
Pictured courtesy of NashvilleScene: some bedfellows are stranger than fiction.
Woe betide those who freelance and fail to return a call.
We say this upon hearing of a normally prolific freelance journalist who picked up a voicemail from an editor at one of the nationals on Tuesday afternoon. Please call us, was the message, and it could mean just one thing – a commission.
Our hero’s habitual practice is to return such calls as soon as is reasonably practicable, as m’learned friends might put it. In practice, that would habitually mean within a couple of hours. Most atypically, and for reasons we have yet to fathom, our man failed to call back for a full 24 hours.
By then, said editor had looked elsewhere. One of our man’s competitors had the gig, an interesting piece about cricket and the law, one which might just be in The Times today and which, we assume, asks whether the Pakistan cricket team have been caught out (in the legal sense, you understand).
We make no judgement on the no ball scandal, save to say that it is a scandal, but in another sense the moral is clear: in the fast-paced world of modern media, he who hesitates is lost.
Pictured courtesy of PrintedClothing.com: a fast-selling shirt.
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Richie Benaud, 1930 – present, cricket player and commentator.