Garth Crooks

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
This article has been tagged since March 2007.

Garth Crooks (born 12 March 1958 in Stoke-on-Trent) is a retired English football player of Jamaican ancestry. The striker began his career at Stoke City F.C., scoring 53 goals in 162 appearances. He became most famous following a 1980 transfer to Tottenham Hotspur, where he formed a successful striking partnership with Steve Archibald. With Crooks leading the line, Spurs won two FA Cups and the 1984 UEFA Cup. He later enjoyed spells at West Bromwich Albion and Charlton Athletic, before injury forced his retirement in 1990.

Garth was educated at the high school called St Peters High School - a church of England school.

In 1988, Garth Crooks became the first black chairman of the Professional Footballers' Association. Towards the end of his playing career he began to work for the media, and since retiring he has become a successful sports journalist and commentator. Late in its run, Crooks surprisingly presented BBC late night political show Dispatch Box. In 1999 he was awarded an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours for his services to football.

He has the nickname Garth 'Paxman' Crooks, a sarcastic reference to his interview style which is very dissimilar to the searching style of Jeremy Paxman of Newsnight. Crooks' style is often regarded as laborious and lightweight, mostly relying on footballing journalism clichés and stating the obvious.

However, others argue that in fact he is able to extract much more from his interviewees by his more empathetic style. Where Paxman often only meets resistance and prepared defences, Crooks is able to lure people into relaxing and being more open to dialogue. He is commonly referred to in cult circles as "the voice of reason"^{[citation needed]}.