03 May CGM blog: Dilly Dong, Dilly Dong
Rarely has a sports book had a seemingly more esoteric title than Lee Wellings’ The Dilly Dong Bell, but then fewer books have hit the nail of the true value and social significance of sport so well and truly on the head and personalised it so perfectly.
Perched from the privileged position of a lifelong career as a multimedia sports journalist, Wellings uses the incredible 5000/1 story of Leicester City’s 2015-16 Premier League triumph as the bedrock of a book that gorges on the character of sport, not least the man who masterminded Leicester’s amazing title tilt – Claudio Ranieri.
The prominence of pizza parties, the quirk of waving his little bell to bring calm and clarity to matters and, probably most revealing of all in an era where managers are supposed to be eternally grumpy, Ranieri’s kindness in shaking the hands of each and every reporter who attended his press conferences.
Revealing that. But this book offers more than bells – it has plenty of whistles too.
Wellings unerringly spots the devil of the detail behind the bigger picture time and time again, such as Frank Bruno’s repeated, subconscious, crossing of his chest on his ring walk to face the waiting, prowling Mike Tyson for the second time.
Small wonder the subtitle of this book is ‘a wake-up call for sport’, for there is much here to disturb the soul, from dodgy ethics to sporting politics. A soft touch, it ain’t.
That said, you can revel in Wellings’ own sporting story – from an early appetite to devour books at his local library ‘where it all began’ to wandering up The Strand from Charing Cross Station – the main route into the heart of the capital from his native South-East London – as a teenager to work at Hayter’s Sports Agency, just off Fleet Street.
This isn’t a nauseating story of entitlement but the sheer wonderment of a working-class lad experiencing the genuine joy and duty to report accurately on sport and coming across the acute professional ease of less-is-more commentators like Richie Benaud.
The stories are carefully woven together to dovetail into our own memories of major sporting moments, often with that smidgeon of added inside knowledge a globetrotting sports reporter of major events can add – or just those that inspired and informed Wellings’ own primal love of sport.
Thing is, it would be easy to let these stories waft over you, to speed read with your own memories intact and added to float over the narrative. Resist, resist.
Like fine wine, The Dilly Dong Bell is best absorbed in small doses with time taken to fully taste and savour with splendour.
As the late Barney Ales, the infamous sales and marketing manager at Tamla Motown, said in the 2019 film, Hitsville: The Making of Motown on the inexorable rise of the most influential and successful independent record label of all time, in reflection: “I’d do it exactly the same way again – just a little slower to enjoy it more.”
That’s how you should read The Dilly Dong Bell.
Take time to enjoy a life (or career’s) worth of loving sporting memories. Dwell on those inspiring and amazing people Wellings meets at the grassroots end of sport and reflect warily on the ne’er do wells who have done their utmost to drag it down.
More than anything, simply enjoy this book for all it is worth (which is lots) and all it offers, which is plenty.
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