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We Don't Know What We're Doing, by Adrian Chiles

Simon Redfern
Sunday 18 May 2008 00:00 BST
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As he is a popular and highly paid BBC Television presenter, not least of 'Match of the Day 2', you could argue that Adrian Chiles seems to know exactly what he's doing. Add in the fact that his team, West Bromwich Albion, have just returned to the Premiership and you might wonder whether this chronicle of the 2005-06 season, which saw them go down, is somewhat past its sell-by date. Yet his hopeless passion for an unfashionable side is timeless, and he tells his tale of woe with self-mocking humour.

He's no fair-weather fan – he's a Hawthorns season-ticket holder – and introduces us to an eclectic cast of fellow sufferers, ranging from One-legged Kev to the Ambassador to Romania, and has a keen eye for the absurd; in one bizarre vignette he startles Portsmouth's Serbian captain Dejan Stefanovic by greeting him in fluent Serbo-Croat (Chiles' mother is Croatian) while dressed up as the Baggies mascot Big Bird. But there's no disguising his talent to amuse.

Published by Sphere in paperback, £7.99

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