The Times

I went to the Times newspaper on Monday. They very kindly let me go in to see how they work. My next Football Detective novel - Dead Ball (May 2009) is set partly in a newspaper office - and I needed to see how such a place works.

It was great. I got a tour, met journalists and sat in on a meeting to plan yesterday's Times sports pages. There's so much work that goes into preparing a newspaper. I never dreamed it'd be so complex. They've got journalists all ovet the world watching sport, interviewing people and thinking. Then writing. Once all the writing comes in it needs to be sorted and set out by writers, designers, picture editors and others.

It didn't help matters that they had to use six of their pages for the football fixtures. However, they dealt with it brilliantly.

Thank you to the Times newspaper.

At the meeting I learned that Leeds have Scunthorpe away as an opening game. I can't wait.