Nige Tassell

In 1986, the NME released a cassette that would shape music for years to come. A collection of twenty-two independently signed guitar-based bands, C86 was the sound and ethos that defined a generation. It was also arguably the point at which 'indie' was born.But what happened next to all those musical dreamers?Some of the bands, like Primal Scream, went on to achieve global stardom; others, such as Half Man Half Biscuit and the Wedding Present, cultivated lifelong fanbases that still sustain their careers thirty-five years later. Then there were the rest, who ultimately imploded in a riot of paisley shirts, bad drugs and general indifference from the record-buying public.Now, for the first time, music journalist Nige Tassell tracks down the class of C86 and recounts their stories, both tragic and uplifting.Yet, while the pursuit of long-lost musicians can often manifest as earnest hagiography, Tassell's unique, light-hearted approach makes this a very human story of ambition, hope, varying degrees of talent and what happens after you give up on pop - or, more precisely, after pop gives up on you. It's a world populated by bike-shop owners, architecture professors, dance-music producers, record-store proprietors, birdwatchers, solicitors, caricaturists and even a possible Olympic sailor - and let's not forget the musician-turned-actor gainfully employed as Jeremy Irons' body double...More than simply the tale of the tape, Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids? is an exploration of C86's wide-reaching and often surprising legacy.

Everyone loves an FA Cup a smug Premier League team being knocked out by plucky underdogs. In these days of oligarch owners, superstar managers and players on sky-high wages, the tide is turning against the big teams as fans search for football with a soul. Enter non-league football – the heartland of the beautiful game. Nige Tassell spends a season among the characters who inhabit this world. The raffle-ticket seller who wants her ashes scattered in the centre-circle. The envelope salesman who discovered a future England international. The ex-pros still playing with undiluted passion on Sunday mornings. One thing unites they are all dreamers. Tassell ventures all over the footballing map, from the giantkillers of Salford City to hungover cloggers on Hackney Marshes, interviewing obsessive groundhoppers, record-smashing goalscorers, dictatorial managers, ukulele-strumming fans and the captain of the Filipino national team. He makes extended stopovers at both new boys Tranmere Rovers looking for a speedy return to the Football League and the inhabitants of the ‘bottom corner’ Bishop Sutton, who are just trying to get eleven men on a pitch. Hope and ambition. Triumph and tragedy. Faith and despair. All human life is here in the win-or-sink drama of non-league football.

The 1989 Tour de France is arguably the greatest ever. It saw American rider Greg LeMond overturn a 50-second deficit to France's Laurent Fignon on the final stage on the Champs Elysees to snatch the title by a mere eight seconds. After three weeks and more than 2,000 miles in the saddle, these few seconds remain the smallest margin of victory in the race's 100+ year history.But as dramatic as that Sunday afternoon on the streets of Paris was, the race wasn't just about that one time-trial. During the previous fortnight, the leader's yellow jersey had swapped back and forth between LeMond and Fignon in a titanic struggle for supremacy, a battle with more twists and turns than the maziest Alpine mountain pass. At no point during the entire three weeks were LeMond and Fignon separated by more than 53 seconds.In Three Weeks, Eight Seconds, Nige Tassell brings one of cycling's most astonishing stories to life, examining that extraordinary race in all its multi-faceted glory with fresh interviews and new perspectives and laying bare that towering heights of adrenaline, agony, excitement, torment and triumph that it produced.

‘Gus Poyet declared it to be the toughest league in England. Neil Warnock went further, believing it to be the tightest division in Europe. Norwich boss Daniel Farke went further “The Championship, without any doubt, is the toughest league in the world.”’ On the final day of the 2019/20 season, only four clubs in the Championship, England’s second tier of soccer, had nothing to play for, everyone else was fighting for promotion or survival. It’s stats like this that give the league its well-deserved reputation as the most exciting league in football. Anything can happen, and often does. In The Hard Yards, Nige Tassell tells the Championship’s stories, uncovers its hidden gems and takes the reader on an entertaining and eye-opening tour of the 2020/21 season. Following three clubs in particular – newly promoted Wycombe Wanderers, newly relegated Bournemouth and stalwarts Sheffield Wednesday, who start the season on 12-point deficit – he’ll dip into the seasons of clubs across the league, interviewing managers, fans, kit men and chairmen. A world away from the glamour and melodrama of the Premiership, the Championship is the heart and soul of football and in The Hard Yards Nige Tassell will take it back to basics. Praise for The Bottom ‘Warm and celebratory but also sharp and insightful, The Bottom Corner is a love letter to non-league football that is also a vivid snapshot of its place in our national life’ -- Stuart Maconie ‘A wonderful journey through life in the lower reaches of the football pyramid. A fascinating tale of a very different world of football from that of the overpaid stars of the television age’ -- Barry Davies

For football fans who hungrily feed on gossip and rumour, Christmas comes twice a year – once in August and again in January. These are the months when the transfer window dominates thoughts, when the prospect of a new signing or two reinvigorates the hopes and dreams of the hopelessly devoted. Nige Tassell goes behind the scenes to observe the workings of the transfer window and to examine why it continues to hold such fascination for a nation of football lovers. He speaks to players, managers, chairmen, agents, scouts, analysts, fans, journalists, broadcasters and even bookmakers to hear how they survive – and possibly prosper from – these red-letter months in the football calendar.

Nige Tassell's life has been defined by live music. It's the fabric of his being, his bloodline, his DNA. He is Mr. Gig.Or at least he was.A few years back, Mr. Gig hung up his backstage pass and headed off to raise children and eat pies in rural isolation. The thrill had gone. Now, with a widening waistline, less hair and a mid-life crisis coming over the hill, he hits the road to reawaken that long-dormant passion, to rediscover his gigging groove.Zigzagging from super-sized arena shows to microscopic folk festivals, from metal gatherings to pop reunions, Nige's 6000-mile journey comes crammed with incident and adventure. Michael Eavis's practical jokes. Elbow's sumptuous backstage . A genuine near-death experience. And shopping trips for gladioli with a Smiths tribute band...Will Nige fall back in love with live music? Can he make peace with middle age? And will he ever again be able to rightfully call himself Mr. Gig?

'Skilfully written, engaging and sensitive' HELEN O'HARA'Hugely readable' MOJO'A compelling, moving book' THE TIMESIn the early 1980s, the pop charts were dominated by musicians tarted up in Day-Glo colours, who fought it out for coverage on our TV screens and magazine pages. Dexys Midnight Runners did things differently. They were surly. They were serious. They were ambitious, but success had to come on their terms. They were a disciplined outfit, a gang with a defined to make music so pure that it couldn't fail to elicit a deep emotional response from anyone within earshot.And they managed it. This motley crew - in woolly hats and donkey jackets for their first coming; all dungarees and copious body hair for the second - gate-crashed the charts, scoring number-one hits around the globe. But being in Dexys wasn't all sunshine and roses. Many members came, many members went. Some returned unexpectedly as being part of this particular gang was a way of life; it was everything.Nige Tassell, author of the Penderyn Prize-shortlisted Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids? employs his skills of detection to go off in search of the dozens of members who - for however brief a period, and to whatever level of success - have been a part of Dexys Midnight Runners. These are the people who gave the band its sound, its soul, its substance. But whatever happened to them?

100 years of Wembley Stadium told through 100 matches. The 1923 FA Cup final – also known as the White Horse final – was the first football match played at the British Empire Exhibition Stadium. Although best remembered for its vast, well-beyond-capacity crowd, which had to be marshalled by a policeman atop a white horse, that afternoon marked the opening chapter of the long and eventful history of the stadium soon to be known simply as Wembley. Over the 100 years since that overcrowded day, Wembley has established itself as the home of the beautiful game and, almost certainly, the world’s most famous football stadium. It occupies a special place in the hearts of players and punters alike. Watching your team at Wembley is the highlight of a fan’s lifetime of support; playing there the fulfilment of a childhood dream. Its sacred pitch has been the crucible of many classic matches across the World Cups have been won here, as have FA Cups, European Cups, play-off finals and more. And that hallowed turf has also seen greyhounds, stunt motorcycles, American football, plus the feet of 72,000 music fans at Live Aid in 1985. Nige Tassell chooses 100 matches - from the well known to the esoteric - that have shaped Wembley's legacy and tells a lively and original alternative history of the past 100 years of football, and of Britain. We hear a ball boy’s perspective on the FA Cup Final when Bert Trautmann broke his neck, about the other commentator of the 1966 World Cup final, and why a cup-winning team of eleven unemployed men didn't receive a trophy from a future king. Field of Dreams is the story of how football found its home.

'A beautifully observed and sympathetic tour of modern Britain that runs on the tracks of our years.' David Quantick'Charming…The accounts will make any fan of railways want to experience these delights for themselves.' – The Independent All aboard for a one-of-a-kind journey by train to some of the most obscure parts of BritainOn the 200th birthday of the world’s first passenger-carrying railway, Nige Tassell sets out to ride Britain’s railway network all the way to its lesser-travelled-to corners, its seldom-visited outposts. From Wick to Penzance and many points in between, he stays on until the end of the line. He is the last man sitting.The sixteen final destinations he visits offer sixteen different stories. By delving into their histories, by speaking to their people and by having a good old-fashioned nose around, Tassell reveals much about places that rarely have light cast upon them – from ferry ports to abandoned resorts, from tiny hamlets to towns being reclaimed by the sea. It's a journey that takes in Harry Potter, Muhammad Ali, goths, Alan Bennett, Vera Brittain, Viz comic, Alex Horne, Nigel Farage. Vikings, John Betjeman, Aneurin Bevan, Tyson Fury, Charlotte Rampling's dad and the weepy judge from The Great Pottery Throwdown. All human life is here.So grab yourself a window seat for an odyssey that tells us much about Britain today. All aboard, all aboard.

Butch Wilkins and the Sundance Kid chronicles the author's decade-long obsession with televised sport during his teenage years in the 1980s. Charting similar waters to Nick Hornby's classic Fever Pitch, but with the hopeless devotion of a teenager faithfully following his team around the country replaced by the hopeless devotion of a teenager faithfully following sport (any sport) around the TV schedules. It is memoir intertwined with nostalgia, ruminations on the changing face of sport during this time, portraits of its heroes and villains, and reflections on teenagehood and impending adulthood.Sweet, wise and witty, Butch Wilkins and the Sundance Kid is a hymn to televised sport in the 1980s – as well as to the decade itself – combining humour, insight and poignancy to vividly depict the way sport can transcend the television screen to impact on wider life, hopes and ambitions.

Shortlisted for the Penderyn Music Book PrizeA Rough Trade Book of the YearA Resident Book of the YearA Monorail Book of the YearA Virgin Radio Book of the YearA unique journey into the legacy and afterlives of the artists who featured on the legendary NME C86 tape.In 1986, the NME released a cassette that would shape music for years to come. A collection of 22 independently signed guitar-based bands, C86 was the sound and ethos that defined a generation. It was also arguably the point at which 'indie' was born.But what happened next to all those musical dreamers? Some of the bands, like Primal Scream, went on to achieve global stardom; others, such as Half Man Half Biscuit and the Wedding Present, cultivated lifelong fanbases that still sustain their careers thirty-five years later. Then there were the rest, who ultimately imploded in a riot of paisley shirts, bad drugs, and general indifference from the record-buying public.Now, thirty-five years on, journalist Nige Tassell tracks down the class of C86, unearthing members of all twenty-two bands and sharing the stories, both tragic and uplifting, of these long-lost musicians. Told with warmth, compassion and humor, this is a very human account of ambition, hope, varying degrees of talent and what happens after you give up on music - or, more accurately, after music gives up on you. It's a world populated by bike-shop owners, dance-music producers, record-store proprietors, ornithologists, driving instructors, solicitors, caricaturists and possibly even an Olympic sailor. And let's not forget the musician-turned-actor gainfully employed as Jeremy Irons' body double...More than simply the tale of the tape, Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids? is an exploration of C86's wide-reaching and often surprising legacy.

In the early 1980s, the pop charts were dominated by musicians tarted up in Day-Glo colours, who fought it out for coverage on our TV screens and magazine pages. Dexys Midnight Runners did things differently. They were surly. They were serious. They were ambitious, but success had to come on their terms. They were a disciplined outfit, a gang with a defined purpose: to make music so pure that it couldn't fail to elicit a deep emotional response from anyone within earshot.And they managed it. This motley crew - in woolly hats and donkey jackets for their first coming; all dungarees and copious body hair for the second - gate-crashed the charts, scoring number-one hits around the globe. But being in Dexys wasn't all sunshine and roses. Many members came, many members went. Some returned unexpectedly as being part of this particular gang was a way of life; it was everything.Nige Tassell, author of the Penderyn Prize-shortlisted Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids? employs his skills of detection to go off in search of the dozens of members who - for however brief a period, and to whatever level of success - have been a part of Dexys Midnight Runners. These are the people who gave the band its sound, its soul, its substance. But whatever happened to them?

A Fargo companion

Fargo - that bloody tale of greed, kidnapping and murder set in the freezing tundra of Minnesota - was the Coen brothers' break-out film, scooping two Oscars and a towering snowdrift of critical and commercial acclaim. On the 25th anniversary of its release, former Minnesota resident Nige Tassell slips on his snowboots to revisit the film and its landscape. The result is a leisurely stomp around Fargo 's intricate plot, its snappy dialogue and its unforgettable characters. Insightful, revealing, entertaining and esoteric, And It's A Beautiful Day strips back the film's multiple layers to pose intriguing questions. What has made car salesman Jerry Lundegaard such a desperate man? Does Carl Showalter deserve to be fed into a woodchipper? And just how much food can police chief Marge Gunderson put away in a single sitting? Sharp and snappy and full of quirkiness and humour, And It's A Beautiful Day is perfect companion to one of the all-time great cult movies.