ve only read one of the two Stoke City hooligan books, both of which are written by Mark Chester, and I have to admit it was an excellent read with plenty of good crack in it and going off the reviews of the second one it promises to be a good read as well.
Naughty
Official Synopsis
In 1985, forty hooligan followers of Stoke City FC took a riotous trip to Portsmouth – and the Naughty Forty was born. It became one of the most notorious soccer gangs in Britain.
Mark Chester was a founder member of the N40. Expelled from school after an unsettled childhood, he joined the Staffordshire Regiment, only to be discharged for misconduct. Stoke City’s emerging ‘casual’ mob became his family. ‘Right or wrong, i was ready to become a committed football hooligan.’
Pivotal clashes with the likes of Everton, Manchester United and West Ham defined the new firm. Formidable characters came to the forefront, men like the giant Mark Bentley, Philler the Beast and the legendary Miffer.
The N40 code was simple: whatever the odds, they would always make a stand.
Soon they were joined by the Under-Fives, a younger element determined to win the acceptance from the terrace legends they admired.
Naughty is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the illicit but seductive lure of terrace combat, the emotional ties of a gang and the addictive buzz of Saturday afternoons.
Sex, Drugs and Football Thugs
Official Synopsis
What does a football hooligan firm do outside football? In the case of Mark Chester and the infamous Stoke City Naughty Forty, the answer was: live off their wits and burn the candle at both ends.
Chester left his native Stoke in the mid-Eighties in search of something more than the buzz of terrace violence. He lived in North Africa with a pickpocket gang called The Hawks and dealt hash and coke in the Spanish coastal resorts, fighting off rival Moroccan dealers.
After returning to London as a down-and-out – “to strip myself bare” – he took off again for Benidorm and the start of the rave scene scene.
Soon the Stoke boys had teamed up with the 6.57 Crew from Portsmouth to run Ecstasy rackets, driving pills in from Holland hidden in the tanks of motorbikes and clashing with international organised crime bosses.
The Nineties saw Chester in California, enjoying riotous road trips with prostitutes and taking jaunts to watch the England football team abroad, and the inevitable carnage that ensued.
Sex, Drugs and Football Thugs is part travelogue, part confessional, and by turns harrowing and hilarious.
As well as Ebay and Amazon we do occasionaly have copies of these, and loads of other football hooligan books, for sale on our own Footybooks site here.