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The Bid by Alec McGivan and Hugh Roderick A new novel about double dealing in the murky world of international football. Snouts are in the trough and fortunes are to be made from World Cup campaigning and presidential patronage. Who will host the Global Football Organisation’s World Cup 2003? Six countries are bidding but Russia and Germany have a gentleman’s agreement that will fix the result to suit them both. Or so it seems... Meanwhile, the GFO’s President is up for re-election. He and his confidants – including the sinister ‘Laundryman’ – are desperate to hang onto their golden tickets. And they don’t care how they get the support they need. Bumbling onto the international stage comes England’s credulous football chief. He begins to unravel a web of corruption, some of it closer to home than he ever imagined. But how can an elderly Cornishman bring down this monstrous organisation? Or will he get blown away by ruthless men with too much to lose? |
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Sometimes this is a world of farce. Where a drunken former footballer is slow to unravel the mysteries of Bangkok. And where a GFO Board member happily offers his World Cup vote in exchange for naming rights to a royal baby. Then suddenly it all becomes a matter of life and death... Alec McGivan Alec was born and brought up in Bristol, the son of Welsh parents. In 1981 he was appointed National Organiser of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the new party’s first member of staff. He quickly established a reputation as a formidable campaigner in a series of high-profile parliamentary by-election victories. A decade later Alec was recruited by The Football Association to be part of its management team established to plan and stage manage the highly acclaimed Euro 96 tournament. He then became Director of a bid to stage the World Cup in 2006. Following the bid Alec joined the BBC, working first on the project to renew the BBC’s Charter, and then as Head of BBC Outreach. Hugh Roderick By a strange coincidence, Hugh Roderick was also born in Bristol to Welsh parents. But the authors first met much later, while living in the same village in Oxfordshire. After university he became a journalist, specialising in education. He went on to write speeches for Government Ministers (including Shirley Williams…coincidentally one of the SDP ‘Gang of Four’ that Alec was working with shortly afterwards) and IBM UK’s chairman and CEO. Hugh later headed marketing and communications at the Science Museum, and then became director of a corporate marketing agency. |
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