John Blake: 861 books

…Boys, lads, men and women are laying into us. One bloke in full motorcycle leathers crashes his helmet down onto our heads. We have to retreat towards the pitch-side hoardings, slugging back on the move. The locals look well pissed off! They must have got some shitty Crimbo presents that year,...

Few footballers have 'Jailhouse Rock' played over the PA when the make their professional debut, but that's what happened to Jamie Lawrence when he came on as a substitute for Sunderland against Middlesbrough in 1993. In a life that has seen him go from prison to the football premiership, Jamie has...

When it comes to football chants, British fans surely must be top of the league. Throughout the country every weekend, stadiums ring with the sound of hundreds of thousands of supporters singing the praises of their favorite players, rubbishing the opposition, having a go at the ref, and waxing lyrical...

TAKE A LOOK INTO THE RICH HISTORY OF ENGLISH FOOTBALL AND THE GRAND OLD NAME OF CHELSEA FOOTBALL CLUB WILL INEVITABLY ENJOY MORE THAN A PASSING MENTION. AND AFTER A FRUSTRATING SEASON WHICH SAW THE CLUB FINISH TANTALISINGLY CLOSE TO WINNING THE PREMIER LEAGUE TITLE, THE SUMMER OF 2014 WITNESSED THE...

Revealed for the first time, the truth behind TV chef Lorraine Pascale's marriage and the colorful aristocrat who betrayed her. While Lorraine was suffering the pain of divorce the woman who had taken her husband was in court formally changing her name to his. The result was an intriguing clash of...

He was known as The Golden Torso, the underwear model who famously dated Keira Knightley. But Jamie Dornan has always dreamed of being an actor - and as star of the hotly-anticipated Fifty Shades of Grey movie he has finally sealed his position in Hollywood. From his role as S&M hero Christian...

Harry Tyler, undercover cop, is the best in his field. Sharp-witted and cool-headed, he always nails his man. Johnny Too, East-End gangland villain, is handsome, cunning, and dangerous, and always gets what he wants. So when Harry's next job is to infiltrate Johnny's firm and bring the chaps to book,...

In September 2002, house hunters Anthony and Linda O'Malley from North Wales arrived in Benidorm of Spain's Costa Blanca to bid for a house at auction that they had earmarked for their retirement. Within a week of their arrival, the couple vanished. Alerted by the withdrawal of large sums of cash...

On 28 November 2004, banker and father-of-two Alistair Wilson was shot three times on his doorstep in a killing more commonly associated with inner city gang wars than a sleepy seaside town in the Scottish Highlands. Almost fifteen years later, the question remains: why? Who would wish to kill...

To Wildlife Aid’s Simon Cowell, animal emergencies are just a typical day’s work. In fact, he and his staff deal with more than 12,000 wildlife incidents each year. From a hedgehog trapped in a freezer, to a little owl colliding with a 17-ton lorry, there are not many rescue situations that he...

Racheal Baughan suffered from the illness BDD (Body Dysmorphic Disorder), a powerful and destructive condition that causes you to see a completely distorted reflection of yourself: the person in front of the mirror might be extremely good looking, but their state of mind dictates that they see a flawed...

On the morning of 9 February 2014, when Sam Smith woke up and saw the four statuettes he’d taken home from the previous night’s Grammy Awards Ceremony, it must have felt like a dream come true. At only twenty-two years old and coming just eight months after the US release of his debut album, In...

In September 2012, mother of five Davina Williams found two policemen on her doorstep. Her daughter "Gemma," fifteen, had been abducted by her thirty-year-old teacher Jeremy Forrest. It was the start of a year-long nightmare that still haunts the family. While the media painted a picture...

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is an Old Trafford legend. After three injury-ravaged years, he blazed back to reignite his career and that of his club, Manchester United. His fantastic goals have thrown out a challenge to the Abramovich empire which had emerged in his absence and risen to dominate the Premiership,...