Lock, stock and two smoking hooligans: low sport journalism and hit‐and‐tell literature

Abstract

In a period where there is a relative dearth of criminological, sociological or cultural accounts of football hooligan subcultures, ‘low culture’ amateur journalistic accounts have proliferated. They are now extensive in number and collected together form a library of hooligan stories in the fashionable, confessional form of sports fan memoir which is termed here ‘low sport journalism’. They are distinct from, but related to, the football and youth culture fiction of writers like John King and Irvine Welsh which is adjacent to what I call ‘hit‐and‐tell’ literature. This article draws on some aspects of a continuing research project looking at the connection between deviant football hooligan literature and the history of football hooligan subcultures in Britain. Part of the ongoing research work is archival, involving a comprehensive collection and reading of 20 years of football hooligan gang memoirs. The earliest dates from 1987 and the latest was published in December 2007. The article documents the building and application of the archive, and signposts some possible routes to producing more satisfactory research into heavily male‐dominated hooligan subcultures.