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It looks like cycling has finally reached the mainstream… A new fly-on-the-wall book is set to be published and apparently (we’ve not read it yet) it pulls no punches. The claims from Orion publishers will certainly upset a few very respected journalists who have written about the Tour recently, their press release, as follows…
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Johnny Green, former road manager of The Clash and author of A Riot of Our Own, gets behind the security cordon of Le Tour de France to provide a rock ‘n’ roll account of the world’s greatest cycle race. Forget about all the po-faced journalism that usually reports ‘LeTour’, Push Yourself Just a Little Bit More is the much more interesting story behind the battle for the Yellow Jersey. In his own inimitable style, Johnny Green reveals the outrageous showmanship, the characters great and small, the sex, drugs, rock’n’ roll, oh yeah and the cycling that makes the Tour de France one of the great sporting events in the world!
Recently, there has been a glut of books on the Tour de France, none however, get quite as close as Johnny Green’s account of the 2003 and 2004 races. Viewed from inside the security cordon, Green mingles happily with the cyclists, press and the ‘Credit Lyonnais trophy girls’. After blagging his way right to the innersanctum, he chats to the likes of Sheryl Crow and David Millar and the many stagehands behind the scenes on the three-week tour.
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The only place he didn’t make it was into the doping van! Johnny Green has a degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Lancaster University. After spending five years on the road with The Clash he left the music business and eventually became Kent county education adviser on sex and drugs. He lives in Whitstable, Kent.
‘Johnny Green captures the essence of The Clash. He’s pretty funny too… A Riot of Our Own enables you smell the leather, the hairspray, the sweat and the spliff. It could quite happily sit alongside Kerouac, Kesey and Ginsberg in terms of its celebration of living life on a knife edge.’ Ben Myers, MELODY MAKER
Should be worth waiting for…
HB 0 75286 752 0
£14.99
Published by Orion on 16 June 2005
