A laugh-out-loud collection

December 22 2015

Mad All Over: The funniest Crystal Palace quotes... ever!

Jamesey reviews an excellent new book – a must for every Palace supporter.

I have been a friend of Gordon Law (probably better known to HOL members as "Penge Eagle") since the very early days of this website.

I always knew Gordon had a deep and dry sense of humour - sometimes hidden behind a deadpan demeanour - and he has certainly gathered a fine array of quotes in his third Palace-related volume, "Mad All Over".

Reviewing a wide range of funny comments is a difficult task. One would't want to give the game away by reproducing too many of them verbatim and beyond that it is hard to manufacture a great deal to analyse.

Suffice it to say that the author has spent a lot of time trawling many sources for over 400 of the funniest items, from the mixed metaphors and malapropisms of Ian Holloway to the put-downs of Simon Jordan.

Both Aki Riihilahti and the aforesaid Mr Jordan have been given well-deserved sections of their own.

It's been a while now but Aki became almost a cult figure way beyond the football world with his national newspaper blog.

Aki's brave battle with the English language produces some hilarious results, sometimes quite surreal but still amusing.

All the Finns I have ever met have a certain weirdness about them - it must be the Arctic weather. Having said that, I did have the pleasure of meeting Mr Riihilahti at Dougie Freedman's testimonial game and he turned out to be a grade-A gentleman.

As for our ex-chairman, Simon Jordan, like many of us Eagles fans I started off loving him and ended up loathing him.

At one of our administration meetings I sat practically behind him and had to restrain myself from reaching out and strangling him.

However, in fairness to Simon, some of his quotes are absolutely side-splitting and his acid comments on Ron Noades are given a mini-section of their own.

Although I picked out the two sources above, there are many, many more from a wide range of Palace characters and this book is worthy of a football club which can count Jo Brand and Eddie Izzard as supporters.

It's almost certainly too late to recommend the book as a Christmas gift but I can't think anyone will be disappointed buying it for so many chuckles at such a reasonable price.

Incidentally Gordon hasn't paid me a penny to write any of this although I will be expecting the drinks to be on him when next we meet on licensed premises.

'Mad All Over: The funniest Crystal Palace quotes... ever!' is published in paperback at £8.99 + shipping cost.

UK Standard Mail £1.90, UK Signed For £3.00, Europe £4.40, USA £5.45, Australia and Rest of the World £5.75.