Is an allegedly autobiographical book by a person who remains nameless but who is allegedly the wife or girlfriend of a top flight Premiership Footballer. For the benefit of our colonial friends, a WAG is a Wife And Girlfriend of a professional footballer, and a footballer is someone who plays, for a living, a sport involving kicking a ball. Not to be confused with that turn-based rugby nonsense you lot refer to when talking about football.
It seemed to have grown out of an earlier book called "I Am The Secret Footballer" in which an anonymous Premiership Footballer talked about how playing football for a living was not a peachy a job as you might think. It was gratifyingly honest as well. On the one hand, the pay is humongous, but on the other hand, your prime ages for playing it are when other folks are starting normal careers and/or going to university and getting qualifications, and this, combined with the fact that you are effectively on the shelf at 32 or so, that your job security is not good, that there is a culture of ostentatious spending surrounding it (which is subtly encouraged as teams seem to slightly enjoy players looking the part), that you can suffer injuries on the field comparatively easily which to normal folks would be recoverable from but which would prevent you from playing top flight football ever again, and that it is legal for managers to fine players over and above merely docking their wages, and there can be little redress in respect of this, means that getting in with a top flight team does not automatically mean you are set for life because you'll probably have almost nothing to fall back on once your career is over.
This is a spin off the above. It is not honest or meaningful in any way. It is, in fact, little more than bad writing and humblebragging.
Executive Summary
First World Problems: The Autobiography
A bit more detail, if you don't mind?
I Am The Secret WAG seems to be attempting to disabuse you of the notion that if you marry a Premiership Footballer you're set for life. Unfortunately it fails utterly, because its author comes over as totally loathsome and vain in every which way, and constantly makes a fuss about how difficult her life is in between name dropping luxury hotels she goes to regularly, how she gets a new car every year, how she spends her days shopping and doing work for charidee (ugh), and, well, humblebragging. She also puts on the sickly affectation of referring to her husband as "my man" which gets very, very, grating. Can you taste the diabetes already?
But anyhow. The book starts with how she met her football-playing husband. While wasted in a nightclub. He was just getting into playing and she was at university. Never said what her degree was in, but although she stayed on and finished it, she didn't do anything with it afterwards. We're treated to humblebragging about teat the Ritz, going to luxury hotels, and, of course, the obligatory blow by blow account of their first time together in bed. Sorry, but people writing about their sexual encounters in fascinating detail is not something I like. Not because I'm any sort of prude, but because it's BORING. Unless something comedic or terrifying happened mid-tryst (think the bit between Logen Ninefingers and Ferro Maljinn in The First Law), or it's fantastically written (think Stephen Wraysford and Isabelle in Birdsong) every single literary sex scene is exactly the same. This is not fantastically written or has something unexpected happen. It does, in fact, make reference to the Secret WAG's "inner goddess." Yes. Like in Fifty Shades of Grey. Tally ho! And I now can't get an erection for the next 20 years. The bit where she arranged sushi over her mapatasi and invited her husband to eat it off her was particularly uninspiring. (Insert obligatory joke using the phrase "fish mitten" here.)
The rest of the book is basically her continuing to go on about how not very difficult it is to be a WAG and how having tabloid journalists at your door is really terrible and you have to sneak out the back to avoid them. Though at the same time she then went and boasted about how her wedding was on the front page of Hello! as if it was no biggie. Ahhh, the sweet smell of Z-list celebrity hypocrisy. Bellyaching about being hounded and harassed by the press on one hand then at the same time practically jerking off the editors to get her fizzog in the papers. Why not just act normally and tell the tabloid hacks to just fuck off and die forever because it's NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS. Apparently there is pressure to constantly look good in case one is snapped by a photographer, otherwise you'll be accused of being fat or ugly or depressed or whatever. This I can believe. But why not cut it out at the source by simply telling the press to stay out your life or you'll ram their telephoto lens up their arse sideways then whistle at the resonant frequency of the glass therein.
She touches on people who sneer at her for being a WAG and thus having a life consisting of being a secretary-cum-sex object for her footballer. Her answer is, of course, they're just jealous. At the risk of sounding like a Daily Mail reader, is the idea that easy fame by dint of who you marry really the sort of message we want to be sending to impressionable young girls.
There's also many war stories about what happens when her other WAGs all get together in the player's lounge or suchlike. Basically, it's the usual bitchfest you've come to expect. I read a very interesting essay a while back actually in which it was proposed that the reason schoolkids, prisoners, and society wives act so smeggy to one another is because they are, effectively, trapped; they can do nothing to affect their situation or have an impact on the world around them. This is exactly the same as happens here. But don't worry, people, it's okay, because she gives to CHARIDEE therefore she MUST be a good person. Blech. And she's really down to earth. Honestly. She herself has said it. For me, though, the moment in this book where I put it down for good and decided that she, and all her works, were not worth the cheddar off me dick, was where she started boasting about meeting celebrities including going backstage at an Elton John show and meeting him and crying as he played the version of Candle in the Wind that he wrote in 1997 to cash in on the demise of Saint Diana, Our Lady of the Landmines. PASS THE SICKBAGS. I'm sorry, but you can't expect me to believe that you're just a normal down to earth person when you brag about meeting celebrities and suchlike and then name-drop all your designer clobber and what expensive brands of make-up remover and stupid woo-laden detox x16 bollox you do in January because you might actually have put on half a pound over Christmas and how woeful it is to be expected to calorie-count your drinks when oot on the tap which just happens to be at some "elite members only club" and suchlike. Jesus wept. But it's okay because you give to CHARIDEE.
I don't think I can take much more of this. The only noteworthy thing about this book is that at the beginning she wants to see herself as just being normal and comes over as same, but then becomes the very bitchy, boastful, showy, deeply annoying, hypocritical, materialistic, superficial spacewaste that she is. This could have been a massive opportunity to show some real honesty and express that such a life as a WAG could be deeply unsatisfying at times due to the above mentioned lack of autonomy, and more of an explanation as to why becoming a WAG is not for everyone, but every time it starts to go down that road, there's yet more humblebragging and namedropping of designer gear and/or celebrities, and the point is swiftly forgotten.
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