Tom Watt
Actor, Writer, Broadcaster
Tom Watt is probably best known in the UK as an actor after starring in BBC TV’s EastEnders for the first three years of the popular soap opera’s run. Since the late 1980s, he has appeared in West End hits, national tours - including an acclaimed one-man show based on Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch -- and several television series. His film credits include And A Nightingale Sang, Patriot Games, Lost Dogs, Flirting With Flamenco, Sherlock Holmes and Small Island.
Tom has also written and broadcast on football for the past fifteen years. His first three books were The End, an oral history of Arsenal’s famous North Bank terrace; A Passion For The Game, 90 first-person accounts of life behind the scenes in the professional game; and The Greatest Stage, the official history of Wembley Stadium. More recently, he ghost-wrote David Beckham’s million-selling autobiography My Side. Tom has written extensively on sport, books and television for The Observer, The Times, The Daily Mail, The Evening Standard,
Scotland On Sunday, Ireland On Sunday and The Sportsman.
As a broadcaster, Tom presented and helped create Row Z for the BBC and co-produced the innovative children’s sports series, Rookies, for Channel 4. He has presented the country’s most popular football phone-in, 606, for BBC Radio 5 Live, for whom he also wrote and presented Watt In The World, a Sony-nominated documentary series on world football. Between 1998 and 2001, he presented 7 shows a week for TalkSport, creating the successful drive-time Season Ticket and Saturday morning It’s Round & It’s White formats before moving on to host BBC London’s weekend football coverage for eight years. Currently, Tom writes for the London Evening Standard, hosts a weekly worldwide phone-in show for Arsenal TV and is a regular member of Radio 5’s Fighting Talk panel.
Tom’s series of football-themed books for schools, The Shelby Town Story, written to tie in with literacy and numeracy projects around the UK, was published last year by education specialists Rising Stars and a new series, The Jags, was released in April 2009. A Beautiful Game: Football Through The Eyes Of The World’s Greatest Players - Tom’s book about football and childhood, undertaken in co-operation with UNICEF and 40 of the world’s leading footballers - has just been published worldwide and will be released in the USA early in 2010.
The End
A Passion for the Game
The Greatest Stage
My Side
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