The Working Man’s Ballet

by Alan Hudson

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Alan Hudson was Chelsea Football Club’s home-grown boy genius. He broke into a team already fizzing with the flamboyant talents of Peter Osgood and Charlie Cooke, his mercurial skills and style imprinting themselves on football supporters far and wide. The Working Man’s Ballet documents Hudson’s journey from a prefab in working-class Chelsea to the heights of global football via Chelsea, Stoke City, Arsenal, Seattle Sounders and England.

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A true maverick, his story is set against the backdrop of The Kings Road – the spiritual home of the Swinging Sixties and Seventies – and captures the essence of a man who could delight and frustrate in equal measure. His post-football life has seen many twists and turns, with a road accident nearly killing him in 1997. A natural storyteller, and a good friend and contemporary of George Best and Bobby Moore, Alan Hudson remains an intriguing London character.

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Michael Parkinson wryly observed: ‘Apart from being abducted by aliens there is nothing dramatic that hasn’t happened to Alan Hudson, but give it time.’ Jeff Powell of The Daily Mail describes The Working Man’s Ballet as: ‘Idiosyncratic, off-the-wall, quirky, often bizarre, sometimes surreal – Hudson offers his weird and wonderful insights into the world of flowing football and life in the London fast lane.’