DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING

TAYLOR SWIFT The Graham Norton Show | 3rd October 2025

Liverpool Football Club is deeply shocked and saddened by the sudden passing of former LFC Women manager Matt Beard.

This is devastating news.

He was such a key figure in the women's team, having managed the team through our most successful title-winning years, and later on, in his second stint at the club, leading us through our promotion to the WSL after we got relegated.

Beyond that, everything I've seen and heard about him is what a great guy he was. During these times when male coaches are finally being exposed for their abuse of power--either by dating their own players or committing mental and emotional abuse--Matt Beard was a man whom I feel I could relax about, someone I could trust with my beloved Liverpool Women's Team. Because of how he talked constantly about his family on his socials, and because of how the players and match-going fans talked about him.

The game lost one of the good ones, and the players lost a good coach and mentor. More importantly, his loved ones lost a brother, son, friend, husband, and father.

It is a novel approach to how to do audiobooks and it is at once harrowing and I adore it.

First it’s got a cast of 45 narrators. Most are professionals but a handful are the real people, recounting their own eyewitness to history.

Second? Where the original book has transcripts of recorded calls and events, like flight attendants calling the airline to ring the alarm their plane had been hijacked, the audiobook has the original recordings. Where the book has transcripts of black box recordings, the audiobook has the real things played. Where the book has written out what people said in frantic calls home, the audiobook has those recorded calls. It is genuinely remarkable to listen and read along to. To hear those voices, to hear the calls.