Interview with ex-Liverpool website editor Jimmy Rice

Jimmy is a novelist , journalist and most importantly a Liverpool fan and today he sits down with BeyondtheKop to talk all things Liverpool

Why is LFC your club ?

Because my brother supported Everton. The 1986 Cup final was on and I wanted to wind him up.

What are your memories of your first LFC game ?

I grew up in Grimsby and my dad died when I was young so I didn’t have anyone to take me. When I went to university and got my student loan I started going to games regularly. The first was a Champions League game in 2001 against Dynamo Kiev. My memory is awful. The only thing I remember is sitting in the Anfield Road Lower and being awestruck during You’ll Never Walk Alone. I’ve been to louder stadiums in this country and abroad, but I don’t think there is anything in sport that comes close to the atmosphere at Anfield during those few minutes when that song plays.

After working as a journalist for a few years , you got a job with LFC. What was it like working for the club you grew up loving?

It was a privilege. I thought it was a joke when Paul Rogers emailed to tell me I’d got the job - not helped by the fact he titled the email ‘Bad news, Jimmy’. I feel really proud and lucky to have collected so many memories from seven great years there: reporting from Melwood on the day Suarez signed; being called in the early hours of the morning to get into work when Rafa left and during the ownership struggle; seeing the fans in Australia and Thailand and Malaysia last summer; interviewing Charles Itandje.

Working on the website, you can’t affect results on the pitch, but I was incredibly proud to be news editor when we reached 100m page views in a month for the first time, and to be able to say we were the biggest club website in the Premier League when I was editor. I had seven fantastic years, and I’ll always keep in touch with the website lads there.

It seems there’s an ever-expanding array of Liverpool based websites, writers, podcasts and social media accounts. What are your thoughts on this growing community ?

It’s proof that we’ve got the biggest and most engaged set of ‘hardcore’ fans in the world. I don’t think any club has a fan writer of the calibre of Paul Tomkins, and younger writers like Si Steers (to name just one) and stats people like Andrew Beasley are doing a great job in providing perspective and evidence-based opinion. I’ve got so much respect for supporters who have the nous to set up their own sites – that’s how James Carroll at the official website started, with Shankly Gates.

You are now working on a novel, can you tell the readers something about it ?

It’s done – we’re on to book two now. The first one is called The Best Thing That Never Happened To Me. It’s a modern and hopefully edgy romantic comedy co-written with another journalist, Laura Tait. We take it in turns to write chapters so you get a male/female perspective of the same story. We managed to get a book deal with Transworld, which is home to Dan Brown and Bill Bryson among others, and it’s out as a paperback in July (eBook in spring).

Was your goal always to be a novelist ?I started an anonymous dating blog about five years ago – Plentymorefishoutofwater.com. People seemed to like it and I got the buzz for writing stories. It became my aim to write fiction full-time and luckily that’s the position I’m in now.

Liverpool have got off to a great start this season and you even tweeted recently that no team who was top at Christmas has finished outside the top 4 in the PL era. Is this our year that we finally get back into the top 4 ?

Aston Villa is the only exception to that – that was in the 1990s though. I reckon we have a great chance. The top three looks pretty set to me, which leaves us, Everton, Spurs and United fighting for fourth. Three of those teams are likely to miss out, which says something about the quality of the Premier League at the moment. Even if we’re one of the three I think we have a top manager and there’ll be some good times in the next few years.

You have had the pleasure to interview a lot of LFC players, managers etc, Is there any one interview that stands out ?

Rafa demonstrating judo on me was one I went back to the office and told everyone about for days. I loved watching Fernando Torres and doing his first interview was a privilege. Also Thierry Henry. I always say you can’t judge someone based on how they treat journalists, because they often have reasons for being wary, but Henry was an absolute gent.