Beating Berlusconi

Beating Berlusconi! is a hilarious and tragic odyssey, a panoramic journey through inner-city Britain from the early eighties, crammed with character and laughter, all communicated through the ideas and passions of mouthy, irreverent Everyscouser, Kenny. Using football as a metaphor for the fortunes of the UK since the 1980s, Beating Berlusconi! traces the life of one Liverpool FC fan and his search for his estranged Irish father, and his relationship with his two best mates and with his wife Marie.
As it traces Kenny's life as a football fan, Beating Berlusconi! passes through a number of political events: the 1981 UK riots, the Thatcher years, the H-block Hunger Strikers, Hillsborough, the Liverpool docks’ dispute, the Blair election and the Iraq war, where one of Kenny's mates - a Liverpool Somali - dies.
With its large, carbuncular and comic cast of Irish and scouse characters, the novel touches on questions of cultural identity, particularly that of the Irish and Liverpool Somali communities, of love and friendship, and of fathers and sons.
The barnstorming climax, based on the barely believable true story of a Liverpool football fan, Mark Radley, who managed to blag his way into the AC Milan Directors' box at the Champions' League Final, is a comic tour-de-force, during which Kenny overcomes ghosts from his past, and comes to realise that football isn’t everything