Saturday Afternoon Fever

A profoundly personal, warmly nostalgic and deliciously funny memoir by the legendary Sky Sports anchorman Jeff Stelling, chronicling a life spent obsessing about ’The Beautiful Game’ ever since he was a little boy, and underpinned by a deeply rooted love of football and of people.

For a quarter of a century the iconic Sky Sports football presenter Jeff Stelling was the face and voice of football television. As the host of Soccer Saturday, a results show with National Treasure status, he expertly presided over a live panel of former footballers watching the most exciting sporting chapter of the weekend, on the telly, in front of a transfixed audience of millions, watching, unbelievably... on the telly.

Beginning at midday and wrapping just after the Premier League’s players had showered and changed, the show’s popularity stitched Stelling into the fabric of match-day rituals up and down the country. For fans, the weekend didn’t exist without an hour or four of Soccer Saturday.

Saturday Afternoon Fever is Stelling’s moving and fascinating memoir: a love letter to the game that has shaped and defined him, as it has millions of other football fans across the UK. This is the passionate, engaging tale of one fan’s journey from the terraces at Hartlepool’s rainy Victoria Park in the 1960s to the sleek and salubrious confines of the Sky Sports studios, an adventure that spans well over half a century and some of the most fast-changing, exciting periods in football’s history.

Born in Hartlepool in 1955, Jeff Stelling is a lifelong supporter of his hometown side, Hartlepool United, and the club’s President.

He was a presenter on LBC’s Sportswatch programme in the early 1980s then moved to BBC Radio 2’s Sport on 2. He later spent time as a sports newsreader before moving to Sky in 1992 to present coverage of horse racing, snooker and darts.

Three years later Stelling became presenter of what is now called Soccer Saturday, a show he hosted until 2023. Between 2011 and 2015 he also fronted Sky Sport’s coverage of the Champions League.

Stelling was voted Sports Broadcast Journalist of the Year for five consecutive years, and presented Channel 4’s Countdown quiz show from 2008 to 2011.

Stelling now hosts talkSPORT radio’s Breakfast show on two days a week.

An Ambassador for Prostate Cancer UK, Stelling has helped raise hundreds of thousands of pounds by undertaking a series of marathon-walking events.

He lives in Hampshire with his wife and children.