SPORTING PSEUD OF THE WEEK

As any author will tell you, it's next to impossible to earn a mention for your pride and joy in the review sections of a national newspaper.
Unless you work for that newspaper, that is.
No problems, then, for Jon Henderson of the Observer who was granted the best part of half a page - in the Observer - to plug his offering, Best of British: Hendo's Sporting Heroes.
I may be alone in this, but I am not really interested in the choice of hero offered by anyone calling himself Hendo, but I was transfixed by his justification for embarking on such a large scale cuttings job, an intro which read: "Choose 100 men and women for a book of British sporting heroes, said the publisher." (my italics).
In other words, it was the publisher's idea.
This is a laughable conceit for, as anyone with the slightest knowledge of the business will tell you, publishers never approach authors with ideas. It's simply not in their make-up. It's the wannabe author who has to do the bowing, scraping and pleading, particularly if, like Henderson, you don't have a track record as a published author.
He may not get many other positive reviews - cronyism has its limits, even in journalism - but by way of consolation Henderson is our Sporting Pseud of the Week.
Now he can rejoice in the other truism of publishing: that in this game there is no such thing as bad publicity.