Steve Tongue

My name is Steve Tongue and I'm a football addict.

There, I've said it.

I was born in Walthamstow, London in 1951 and apart from short breaks in the Midlands and at university have lived there all my life, suitably close to Leyton Orient FC, who I first watched aged six on Good Friday 1957. They lost 5-1 at home to Leicester City but my dad said not to worry as they were at home again the next day. So we returned 24 hours later to see them lose again - 2-0 to Fulham. But on Easter Monday they played the return game away to Leicester, the Second Division champions, and beat them 4-1. Supporting the O's (who shouldn't really have an apostrophe, but look better with one) has been similarly down and up and down ever since.

Leaving school in Leyton I worked on the sports desk of the local newspaper before university, where I founded FOUL, the first football fanzine (some years before any of us knew what a fanzine was). It ran intermittently for 34 editions from October 1972, and fetches good money on eBay - though beware of bidding for a mag called 'Murder Most Foul' by mistake.

I later worked for LBC radio (1973-86), and in between various spells as a freelance was on the London Daily News, Sunday Correspondent, BBC Radio and the Independent/ Independent on Sunday (2000-13). That added up to covering nine football World Cups, nine European Championships and two Olympic Games (Sydney and London).

Since 2013 I have been writing books:

- David Beckham, Fifty Defining Fixtures (2015)

- Turf Wars, A History of London Football (2016), being republished as London Turf Wars in an updated version summer 2026

- Lancashire Turf Wars (2018), to be updated for summer 2028

- West Midlands Turf Wars (October 2021) which was longlisted for the Sunday Times sponsored Football Book of the Year; to be updated for summer 2027

- Yorkshire Turf Wars (September 2024)

The Turf Wars series, of approximately 120,000 words each (300-350 pages), aims to explore the rivalries of all the Football League (and later Premier League) clubs past and present in a particular area from earliest days to date, with a chapter on local non-League clubs and a season-by-season list, never previously published, of the highest and lowest placed teams in the area.

For exercise I play Walking Football and have the great honour of representing Leyton Orient Walking FC in the Essex League, and captaining the Over 70s team - winners of the Mallorca International Tournament 2022.