Shelley Webb

Webb married former England footballer Neil Webb, and the couple had two children Luke and Josh, who both became professional footballers.^[2] Webb's father was a professional footballer, and she has been a fan since childhood.^[3] She was a university student when she and Neil met.^[3] They married when she was 21.^[3]

Webb, who holds a first-class honours degree in English and History, trained as a journalist before her marriage and resumed that career with the local Nottingham Evening Post, working as an occasional sports writer. She was forced to turn down a job as a radio broadcaster in Nottingham when Neil Webb moved from Nottingham Forest to Manchester United.^[4] She later moved to TV presenting.^[4][5] She worked as an on-air journalist for Standing Room Only (UK TV Programme), then for BBC World Service Television.^[4]

This professional visibility led to interviews about her life as a footballer's wife, and, eventually, led her to write the book Footballers' Wives Tell Their Tales in 1998,^[6] the year she and Neil split up.^[7]

Her Footballers' Wives looked at the reality of being a modern footballer's wife.^[8][9] Webb interviewed 14 of her fellow footballer's wives for her 1998 book, painting what The Daily Telegraph called "a dismal picture of chronic insecurity, upheaval, boredom and loneliness."^[10]

The book was the basis for the TV series Footballers' Wives, a series that portrayed the lives of footballers and their families in the years when they became "like pop stars", receiving a level of coverage that the Scotsman described as "even sillier" than fan enthusiasm, as well as offers of sex and a lack of privacy.^[5]