"Who?" you might say... Officially, Truss writes mostly non-fiction, making her name and fortune from writing about punctuation and how hilariously bad at it you all are. A self-styled pedant, she was once a football reporter for the Times, who saw her objective eye and skill for language as reason to employ her as a Euro '96 reporter, despite her admission that she didn't know anything about the finer points of the sport, like tactics. But since Alan Pardew has managed to become a coach without that knowledge, we can't really hold it against her. Truss admitted in 2006 that she used to love Shearer, but that after a while she couldn't hear his name "without spitting on the floor" because he was able to con everyone that he wasn't a cheat, wasn't a bully, didn't get away with murder with referees, and didn't have too much player power (in that he "kept" getting managers sacked for dropping him). Truss clearly couldn't stand everything he represented, saying he seemed "like a big, waddling, sullen, dirty, immovable and permanently pointing obstacle to beautiful football" and though her self-confessed limited knowledge of the finer details of the sport question her expertise, you really can't question her passion:
"Here are the regular questions I would ask, out loud, in exasperation, at England matches during this period: How does he get away with it? Why is he walking? Why doesn't anyone notice that he raised his arm to appeal for that penalty before he artfully tripped over the keeper? Why doesn't he run? Why is he never rested? Why is he never substituted? Would you call that strolling or ambling? Why is he never sent off? Why is he never even booked? Who died and made him God?"
