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Heroes of VIP Hospitality: Alison Kervin OBE

Alison Kervin OBE is the Sports Editor of the Mail on Sunday, the first woman to edit the sports pages of a UK national newspaper.

She was previously Chief Sports Feature Writer of The Times, Chief Sports Interviewer for The Telegraph and editor of Rugby World magazine. As well as writing a very popular series of ‘WAG’-themed novels, she has written authorised biographies of Sir Clive Woodward, Phil Vickery, Denise Lewis and Jason Leonard.

Just last month, GiveMeSport.com listed her in the top five of the most BADASS women in UK Sport.

What was the first Live Event Hospitality programme that you attended, and what particular impressions did it make on you?

I honestly can’t remember the first one, but I have been to some lovely ones. I went to a lovely event at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, drinking cocktails on the beach after the cycling at the velodrome. A lot of Premier League football matches have got their hospitality absolutely right now. I’ve been to lovely events at Chelsea and Spurs. It used to be terrible, but the clubs have really upped their game.

[A vlogger gives a very enthusiastic thumbs-up to Chelsea’s official ‘Museum’ VIP Hospitality package for their home match against Wolves in March last year.]

And what is your favourite Live Event that you would encourage everyone to book when it goes on sale, and what makes it so special?

I think the British Lions Tour next year will be great. Lions tours are still so special, perhaps more so as the sport becomes more professional.

[The coach for the 2021 Lions tour to South Africa Warren Gatland talks about his love of rugby, his experiences of playing against the Lions and then coaching the Lions, and what he has learned while coaching Lions’ tours to South Africa in 2009, Australia in 2013 and New Zealand in 2017.]

Who do you consider to be your business mentor or mentors, and what particular examples did they imprint on your business values?


I’m not sure I have business mentors in the traditional sense, but the writer Simon Barnes (also a friend) is inspirational and writes beautifully. Also Julian Barnes. His novels are wonderful and his writing about sport when Leicester won the Premier League was great.

This is Barnes’ brilliant piece in The Guardian celebrating the Foxes’ extraordinary title-winning season on 2015/2016. The Booker Prize-winning author offers up this fabulous and oh-so-true definition of being a sports fan as ‘a swirling mix of stupid love, howling despair and frantic self-loathing … To be a lifelong supporter of Leicester is to have spent decades poised between mild hopefulness and draining disappointment. You learn to cultivate a shrugging ruefulness, to become familiar with the patronising nods of London cabbies, and to cling to an assortment of memories, of pluses and minuses, some comic, some less so … Yes, there have been some fine managers, glorious moments, and players like Banks, Shilton and Lineker. But more typically I think of that year not so long ago, when, weeks into the season, the team’s leading scorer was one of our defenders – with three own goals.’.

What was the most significant ‘Sliding Doors’ moment in your career, and how did this impact you?


It was probably when I was offered the job as sports editor of the Mail on Sunday. I was writing novels at the time, and enjoying a varied and interesting freelance career. Taking it lifted my professional reputation and allowed me the platform and resources to really have an impact. I’m very glad I took the job.


Read how the UK trade magazine The Press Gazette reported Kervin’s appointment in March 2013.

Impressionable moments

What was your favourite televised live sport event or moment that you remember from childhood, why did it make such a lasting impression on you?


The 1976 Olympics – Nadia Comaneci – I adored her. My walls were full of posters of her and I wanted to be her. It was astonishing to finally and meet her and interview her much later in life and find that the surly, sad-looking brunette had turned into an all-American blonde.

The Olympic Channel puts Nadia Comaneci’s extraordinary performance on the uneven bars at the 1976 Olympics into historical perspective:

Who was playing at the first concert you attended, where and when, and what do you remember of the experience?


I’m not sure which was my first, but I remember seeing Bad Manners and Hazel O’Connor. I saw David Bowie a few years after that and he was magical.

[Bad Manners’ 1981 hit Walking in the Sunshine was from their Gosh … It’s Bad Manners album. The video was filmed in Southend-on-Sea.].

What do you remember — across all genres — as the most emotional moment in television or film or a sporting event that has brought tears to your eyes?


Watching the tsunami on Boxing Day. I remember just staring at the television in horror.

The Rahmatullah Lampuuk Mosque in Banda Aceh, Indonesia was one of the few buildings left intact after the 2004 tsunami hit the area. An estimated 230,000 people died across the Indian Ocean areas affected.

What was your childhood or earliest ambition?

To be a writer (novelist).

Which experience had the biggest impact on your life and how you see the world?

Having my son, George.

If your 15-year-old self could see you now, what would he think and what advice would you pass back to your younger self?

I think she’d be pleased with how it all turned out. My advice to her would be to work harder in school! And not to worry so much about all the little things going on.

If you had the option to experience/live in one movie which would it be and why?

Midnight in Paris – going back to meet Dali, Hemingway and other icons of art and literature.

The official trailer of the 2011 Midnight in Paris starring Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams and directed by Woody Allen:

What’s the best, most useful word from another language that you aren’t fluent in?

Zeitgeist.

What is the greatest painting and photograph in history?

I love van Gogh ‘The Chair’ – I don’t know why except that I find it really moving knowing the story behind it, and van Gogh’s desperation to impress Gauguin who was starting to tire of the friendship. He painted ‘Gauguin’s Armchair’ and ‘Vincent’s Chair’. Also, I love the self-portraits that Frida Kahlo did, and the incredible anatomical paintings she did on her corset.

Vincent’s Chair with His Pipe and Gauguin’s Armchair were both painted in December 1888 and are in London’s National Gallery and the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam respectively:

What is a luxury you could never forgo?

Nice shoes!

What is/was the new technology or device that you immediately understood was going to be life-changing and how has it/did it impact your life?

TomTom satellite navigation. When they came in I saved hours every day. I’ve got no sense of direction and used to get lost all the time.

The British TV presenter Shaw Taylor explains in the 1970s how a fearsome-looking chunk of technology [which would in time become SatNav] could help us find our way quickly and efficiently to our destinations:

Recommendations

What are the best books you’ve read in the past year?


I read Normal People and Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, both of which were great. Read Diary of a Somebody by Brian Bilson which I also enjoyed. David Nicholls, Sweet Sorrow

Which TV shows’ intro/theme songs do you never skip because they are so good?


Sex and the City.

The Sex and the City theme tune. Entertainment Weekly gives a 5-minute oral history about the song and the famous opening credits.

What are the most rewarding accounts you follow and why?


Mail Online (of course).

And if you could invent a technology, device or App what would it be?

I’m so low-tech it’s embarrassing. I haven’t got a clue.

Tell us something even your colleagues might not know about you...

I used to be a national squad gymnast.

What non-curriculum subject[s] should be required for anyone leaving school or university to understand fully before they enter the workforce?

Basic skills like: understanding how to full in a tax form, look after money, open a bank account, how to wash, iron, cook, social skills.

During this lock-down what are the things you’ve come to value most by their absence from your life and how will you put that right when this over?

My parents and family – it’s so odd not to be able to see them.

What company or brand has lost your goodwill because of their actions during the coronavirus?

I never go to Wetherspoon, but if I did I would be re-thinking my decision to give them my custom.

The FT reported that staff at British pub chain Wetherspoon criticised their chief executive Tim Martin in March after he sent out a video message suggesting that should the company decide not to pay them, they could always find work at supermarkets.

What is something your generation did that you regret most your child’s generation will never get to experience or understand?

Going out without phones, cameras or anything. Just you, your mates and having fun.

What is the darkest, most unsatisfactory and on-going issue you have seen or experienced in your business?

The big issue for newspapers is obviously the decline in people reading newspapers in their traditional format. The move to online and the difficulties in making that work commercially threatens the future of the industry.

The Associated Press looks at the small-town Berkshire Eagle newspaper in Vermont which is trying to reinvent itself in a world where eyeballs are digital but the majority of the advertising dollar is still generated by the traditional print format.

You get to fly anywhere after the coronavirus to take a trip you’ve always wanted to make: Where are you going, with whom and what are you planning to do?

St Lucia with my son. Hopefully in October if the world is working by then!

Get to know St Lucia, one of the Caribbean’s Windward Islands, and one of only two countries in the world named after a woman. Supposedly French sailors were shipwrecked on St. Lucia on 13 December, the feast day of St. Lucy, and thus named the island in honor of Sainte Lucie.

What is the first sentence from the best novel yet to be written about the coronavirus?

I’ve written one! I write this series of mini books under the name ‘Bernice Bloom’ about an overweight but gorgeous woman called Mary Brown.

The latest one is called: Adorable Fat Girl in Lockdown.
The first sentence is: ‘Have you seen the biscuits?’ I ask, as Juan stretches out against the back of the sofa like a languid, hairless cat.

Author image
Charlie Charters is a former rugby union official and sports marketing executive turned thriller writer whose debut book Bolt Action was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2010.
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