When fandom and depression meet...

ANYONE who reads The Guardian will be familiar with John Crace’s ‘Digested Reads’, where the journalist takes a well-known book and compresses it down to six or seven hundred words, a process that tends to isolate the good — and bad — aspects of the tome in question (try his filleting of Philip Roth’s ‘Exit Ghost’ for a taster).

Now Crace has written a full book of his own, however. ‘Vertigo, One Football Fan’s Fear of Success’, which chronicles his love of Spurs and battle with depression.

We’re accustomed to fans hymning their sporting obsessions, but mental health issues aren’t as common in sports books, are they?