Brian Viner

Brian Viner swapped London for the Herefordshire countryside, and his column ‘Country Life’ documents his attempts to chase the rural idyll. Chiefly a sports writer, he pens a weekly sports column and interview for the paper. He is the author of Ali, Pele, Lillee and Me: A Personal Odyssey Through the Sporting Seventies.

Brian Viner: The mystery is how Goss and his crew find courage

About 15 years ago, I was offered an interesting journalistic assignment: spending four days and nights on a fishing trawler off the coast of Cornwall. In February. My editor thought that I was just the man to write a colour story about the experience, but in the end, it became clear to him that I probably wasn't (manacling myself to railings outside his office screaming "please, please, please don't send me to sea" might have planted the first seed of doubt in his mind).

Recently by Brian Viner

Brian Viner: Don't despair: polite people do still exist

Wednesday, 23 April 2008

Trying to find uplifting words in the national press can be like fishing for marlin in Lake Windermere, so I am indebted, as Cyril Fletcher used to say on That's Life! to John Grist, whose letter in these pages yesterday put a spring in my step and a song in my heart.

Brian Viner: Mark Speight and the shattering of a child's illusions

Thursday, 17 April 2008

In December 1971, when I was 10 years old, an American actor called Pete Duel killed himself. To my friends and me, the news came as a horrible blow. Duel played the outlaw Hannibal Heyes, alias Joshua Smith, in our favourite TV show, Alias Smith and Jones.

Brian Viner: Country Life

Wednesday, 16 April 2008

It must be five years since I picked up a forlorn-looking hitchhiker on the A44 who sniffed the air in the Volvo and asked whether I was a chicken farmer. We hadn't been living in the country for long, so it was nice to know that I was already fitting in, smell-wise. I wasn't offended at being mistaken for a man with 10,000 or so chickens, even though we only had four. It made me feel, for the first time, like a horny-handed son of the soil.

Brian Viner: Does Tiger burn too bright to keep up with Jones?

Saturday, 5 April 2008

Our betting correspondent, Mr Hey, with whom I am privileged to share this page, knows as well as I do that every gambler, like every fisherman, has a story about the one that got away. And while I hesitate to call myself a gambler, lest I give the wrong impression to my mother, who reads this column and was married for 24 years to a compulsive gambler in the form of my late father, I have been known to press into the palms of Mr Ladbroke the odd tenner, one of which accompanied a betting slip marked "double: Durham Edition to win the Grand National, Nick Faldo to win the US Masters".

Brian Viner: Country Life

Wednesday, 2 April 2008

The Bell in Yarpole, a classic Herefordshire village pub with a black-and-white timbered exterior and an old stone cider press at one end of an oak-beamed dining-room, is run by the modern incarnation of the classic Herefordshire pub landlord, a Frenchman from Lyon. A charming fellow called Cedric Bosi, he is the younger brother of Claude Bosi, who last year transplanted his highly-successful restaurant Hibiscus from Ludlow to London.

Brian Viner: History is bunk so Everton must put hoodoo to bed

Saturday, 29 March 2008

Stoked up by the media, football fans have always enjoyed the idea that certain fixtures are subject to well-established jinxes, that it is 30 years since team X won in London or 20 seasons since team Y prevailed in Manchester, or that for team Z a particular stadium is a "bogey" ground, and that the weight of history is consequently tilted against them.

Brian Viner: Beattie breaks the mould ... 27 years after the event

Saturday, 22 March 2008

A fortnight ago in this space I explained the predicament of 41-year-old Linda Uttley, once a super-fit forward with the England women's rugby team, but now suffering from a rare form of terminal cancer. Last Friday at a hotel in Richmond a dinner took place to raise funds for Linda's care, and a number of readers of this column were moved to make donations, for which I offer my –and, more to the point, her – gratitude.

Brian Viner: Country Life

Wednesday, 19 March 2008

Around the time that George W Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, a mischievous gag did the rounds about the world suddenly seeming topsy-turvy, on account of the leading rapper being white, the leading golfer being black, landlocked Switzerland winning the Americas Cup, the French accusing the Americans of arrogance, and the Germans not wanting to go to war. An update now would include Delia Smith recommending tinned mince.

Brian Viner: Cup runneth over with true spirit of 'Fantastic Four'

Saturday, 15 March 2008

Last weekend, 44 men collectively breathed life back into the FA Cup. But I wonder whether the blazers at the Football Association feel as indebted as they should to the players of Barnsley, Cardiff City, West Bromwich Albion and Portsmouth.

Brian Viner: Raise a glass – or six – to Uttley, a true rugby spirit

Saturday, 8 March 2008

To previous generations of international rugby union players, popping into a London nightclub for 20 minutes, reportedly to drop some tickets off for a mate and without consuming any alcohol, must seem like a laughably innocuous reason for a dynamic rising star for Wasps and England to be dropped two days before the Calcutta Cup match. Take a former star for Wasps and England, who one evening on tour in Paris, in 1992, stripped almost to the buff and, covered in butter and salt, took on and beat a French No 8, a hulk of a bloke called Bernard, in a sumo wrestling match. Linda Uttley could teach Danny Cipriani a thing or two about painting the town red.

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