Jeff Stelling releases new book based on years of letters and correspondence

I’ve Got Mail: The Soccer Saturday letters is a look at a selection of letters, emails and correspondence that he has received over his years in broadcasting football and the intriguing stories behind them.

Jeff, who comes from Hartlepool, wrote the book, his fourth, during the lockdown. It is out on Thursday, September 17.

He told the Mail: “Like everybody else I was bored crazy during the first few weeks of lockdown.

"I needed some sort of focus and wrote it as much to amuse myself as much as anything.

"It includes lots of letters and communications; the good, bad and the ugly from over the years and just thought it was an idea to put them together.

"They have all got a story behind them and each one is an introduction to that.”

The book begins more than 40 years ago in 1977 when Jeff, then a cub reporter for Radio Tees, received a telegram ordering him to go to Leeds to cover their match against Middlesbrough.

"I had only been there for a week,” said Jeff. "I was playing football on Catcote Road and my mam came running across the pitch with this telegram.

"Suddenly I got this massive opportunity. It’s really where my broadcasting career started form that moment.”

The book also contains moving and poignant letters and stories, like a message he received from a suicidal woman saying watching him and the boys on Soccer Saturday had saved her life.

Jeff, President of his beloved Hartlepool United, and who lives in Hampshire with his wife and children, added: “Occasionally I’m entrusted with personal issues that the correspondents probably would not tell their closest friends.

"The only thing they all have in common is they start ‘Dear Jeff’.”

Jeff’s previous books are England’s Worst Footballers, Jellyman’s Thrown a Wobbly and Jeffanory.

I’ve Got Mail is published by Headline in hardback and is priced at £16.99.

It is also available as an e-book and in audio.

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