PROLIFIC former Worcester journalist Bob Blandford promises more Worcester ‘Wows’ and ‘I Didn’t Know Thats’ than any other publication in his latest two-volume venture.
His sixth and seventh books in eight years, his two latest volumes totalling nearly 700 pages have been packaged together as ‘Bob Backenforth’s 866 Worcester Secrets’ box set launched this month.
It’s a compendium of the daily blogs from the Bob Backenforth Worcester Secrets Facebook page posted between July 7th 2019 and October 20th this year, reprising all 866 ‘Well I never knew thats’ about the Civitas in Beero et Pubbi Fidelis (Faithful to its Beer and its Pubs).
“If there’s one thing a journalist likes above anything else, it’s giving away others’ secrets. In that respect, it ticks all the boxes at several levels” he reckons.
He adds that there’s never been a publication like it – in content, presentation or the power to shock and amuse with hundreds of little-known facts and amazing observations on the city he for one, he says, is proud to call home.
The city born-and-bred several times award-winning nationals and locals journalist’s past catalogue to date includes three top-selling volumes of ‘Bob Backenforth’s Worcester Pubs Then and Now’; ‘The Spike’ telling the tales of Worcester City Police (2016); and ‘Worcestershire Bird’ the inside tales of Worcester City and County Gaols, their inmates and their lives and crimes (2019) – all Worcestershire best-sellers, totalling in excess of two million words.
Now, in the new two-volume boxed set, merged into the till-now secrets are articles geared to making readers forget that laughs were in shockingly short supply during 2020 and this year to date.
The books also include tales of being in The Goodrest with Adol Fittler; a view of Worcester in 2041; his priorities on becoming a) Britain’s first Ayatollah and b) Worcester first official ale taster in 150 years, all alongside true-life accounts of the Worcester Disease; the chilling coincidences in Worcester’s three triple murders; a brush with Fred and Rose West in The New Chequers and working up-close and personal with the late Cecil Duckworth.
The insights into every aspect of Worcester, its people and its way of life will make you laugh, cry and wonder what on earth the world has come to.
The two books – ‘Bob Backenforth’s 501 Worcester Secrets’ and ‘Bob Backenforth’s 365 More Worcester Secrets’ are available individually or as the two-volume boxed set ‘Bob Backenforth’s 866 Worcester Secrets’ via the Worcester Secrets FB page
E-mail [email protected] for more.
