Five Quick Q’s with STEPHEN FOSTER

Stoke City fan and author Stephen Foster has just had his second book on Stoke City published, ‘…And She Laughed No More’, a follow up to the excellent ‘She Stood There Laughing’. He has also penned books on his dogs and leaving Stoke for the south in the 80’s. You can find out more at his blog

1. ‘…And She Laughed No More’ is out now. How did you go about writing this follow-up to the bestselling ‘She Stood There Laughing’ given that this new book would see Stoke in a much more successful spell. Have you read any of the other books on Stoke that have been published in the last couple of years?

This is my second follow up (after ‘Along Came Dylan’) so I already know that they make you feel slightly wary: ‘I’ve done this before, do I feel fresh enough to do it again, and how do I make it sharp enough for readers to want to read it?’ Also, the deadline looms up very quickly on a ‘season with’ book – ideally I like two years to put a book together – write, edit, re-edit, rewrite, edit, etc – but that’s just a non-starter on a title like this. In the end I left it late to start getting stuck into the job properly – partly because I wanted to absorb the experience of being in the Premiership, partly because of natural indolence, and also because it’s not just a sequence of match reports (because that would be so boring):

I have a particular relationship with the manager, that’s one of the rolling threads, and there are several more to keep the non-football-football balanced with the actual matches. By the time I was really rolling it was getting to be late in the day & I was working my rocks off, and that, I hope, gives it some energy. As soon as I had a finished manuscript, the time between delivering it to the publishers and actual publication was so compressed (three months as compared to the much more usual one year) that it seemed as if the proofing never stopped – I am a scruffy enough writer in first draft anyway, but in a book like this there are so many stats and spellings to worry about – I sent the page proofs out to four major Stokie stattos and to two other-team-football-supporting stattos who want to become proof readers too, but there will still be several typos in the first editions, it’s guaranteed. The jacket came together late in the day too (there was a holding ‘crowd scene’ shot for months) but that has worked well, I think, I really like it, as most people seem to.

I read ‘Tie Me To The Mast’ by David Johnson last Christmas and enjoyed it a lot, it’s a completely different style to mine: there’s room for plenty of works about the Mighty Potters on the bookshelves. I intend to read Exile in the Promised Land by Steve Mifflin too…

2. What were the highs and low of the first season back in the top flight? What teams (bar the top four) impressed you? 

Just being there was a constant high – the contribution of our home support was the biggest single highlight, Pulis’ away formations the low-light. West Ham picked up a huge amount under Zola – I thought theirs was the best defence I saw at the Brit.

3. Which players were you impressed with and who should we be getting rid of?

The whole team were terrific, weren’t they, even bit part players like Danny Pugh gave it their absolute all. ‘Team’ was the key word. Ab Faye was the obvious, obvious Player of the Year, but Shawcross was immense too. My Player of the Season from another side (with the possible exception of Ryan Giggs) was a chap called Tuncay 🙂

4. Any good films…TV…music…books you’d recommend…

Against all the negative review coverage I went to see The Baader Meinhof Complex movie. It was excellent. Slumdog Millionaire is ace, and I have to recommend the new album by Tinchy Stryder, ‘Catch 22.’ I’ve just read ‘Of Mice and Men’ by John Steinbeck for the first time, quite brilliant, and very short too, always a good thing in a book if you read at a snail’s pace like me.

5. Given the recent signings of Tuncay and Robert Huth how do you think Stoke will do this season?

Europa top six finish; it’s hardly an original thing to say, but Tuncay is the most exciting signing since Hudson – his cameo on Saturday was so, so promising…