Nige Tassell

Nige Tassell writes about popular culture and sport. This has been his job for the last quarter of a century. His work has appeared in The Guardian, The Word, The Sunday Times, The Independent, GQ, Esquire, Q, FourFourTwo, New Statesman, the Times Literary Supplement, The Blizzard and When Saturday Comes among others. Over that quarter of a century, he has interviewed many hundreds of public figures, from comedians to cricketers, pop stars to Premier League winners. He has also written and presented music documentaries for BBC Radio 4.

Nige writes books, too – seven at the last count. These include The Bottom Corner: Hope, Glory and Non-League Football, which was named among Waterstones’ top 12 sports books of 2016. Another – Three Weeks, Eight Seconds: Greg LeMond, Laurent Fignon and the Epic Tour de France of 1989 – was shortlisted at the Sports Book Awards and has since been published in the Netherlands, Spain and the US.

He’s also written books on football’s transfer window (Boot Sale), TV sport (Butch Wilkins and the Sundance Kid), live music (Mr Gig) and the film Fargo (And It’s A Beautiful Day). His most recent book is The Hard Yards: A Season in the Championship, Football’s Hardest League, published by Simon & Schuster in August 2021.

Danny Baker has described Nige as ‘one of my favourite chroniclers of sport’, while Ian McMillan anointed him as ‘the F Scott Fitzgerald of football writing’. He lives in Somerset’s Mendip Hills with his wife, kids and faithful hound. It’s where, for the next quarter of a century, he intends to keep writing about popular culture and sport.

@nigetassell