Gosh Its Tosh

Gosh It’s Tosh (1976) by John Toshack
Publisher: Duckworth / Elmswood
ISBN: 0715611984
Condition: Good

There are football autobiographies. There are books of sporting photographs. There are collections of poetry.

And then there is Gosh It’s Tosh.

Published in 1976, at the height of John Toshack’s fame as one half of Liverpool’s legendary strike partnership with Kevin Keegan, this remarkable volume asks a question nobody knew needed answering: what if one of Britain’s most famous footballers released a book of poems and pictures?

The result is gloriously, unapologetically seventies.

From the moment you encounter the cover, featuring Toshack standing triumphantly with arms spread wide beneath the title Gosh It’s Tosh, you know you are entering a world where confidence levels have reached previously uncharted territory. Even the T-shirt features a picture of John Toshack wearing a Liverpool shirt. There is a certain admirable commitment to the theme.

Foreworded by Kevin Keegan, because apparently the project required additional star power, the book captures a fascinating moment when footballers were beginning to become celebrities in a broader sense. Not merely athletes, but personalities. Brands, before anyone used the word "brand" quite so enthusiastically.

What makes the book genuinely delightful is that it could only have emerged from the 1970s. This was a decade that looked at convention and decided to have a lie down instead. Somewhere between platform shoes, concept albums and orange household furnishings, somebody evidently concluded that football supporters would welcome a volume combining poetry and photographs from one of Liverpool’s greatest forwards.

And, remarkably enough, they probably did.

For younger readers, it is difficult to explain quite how famous John Toshack was. Towering, talented and instantly recognisable, he formed part of a Liverpool side that dominated English football. Yet rather than merely producing another account of goals scored and matches won, here he offers something considerably more unusual and infinitely more entertaining.

Our copy remains in Good condition, having survived nearly fifty years of changing football fashions, countless managerial sackings and the gradual transformation of football from a Saturday afternoon pastime into a global entertainment industry worth billions. The pages remain sound, preserving this wonderfully eccentric snapshot of sporting celebrity before media training ironed all the personality out of public life.

Collectors of football memorabilia will find much to enjoy. Liverpool supporters may regard it as a period treasure. Students of 1970s culture may wonder if they have accidentally stumbled into an alternative timeline. Poetry enthusiasts may be surprised to discover that footballers occasionally have literary ambitions. Everyone else will simply marvel that this book exists at all.

A magnificent piece of football ephemera from an age when players seemed larger than life, publishers were willing to take chances and nobody thought it remotely strange to publish a volume called Gosh It’s Tosh. In retrospect, perhaps they should have. Thankfully, they didn’t.

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