Celebrant of sorrow

This is the same Barry Dickins who used to write a column for the religion section of The Melbourne Times. The religion section dealt with football, and Dickins covered the waxing and mostly waning fortunes of the Fitzroy Lions, who were long ago squeezed into amalgamation with Brisbane. Brisbane was never an inner suburb of Melbourne, a sore point with followers, many of whom wore black to the game. They looked like mourners. Dickins alone could describe all the griefs that held them together. He was and is an unparalleled celebrant of sorrow. He is the bloke you want to be around when you need jokes for a funeral.

Dickins’s column was a weekly dose of the lunacy that is needed to keep readers sane. The column was not so much about football as it was about life, especially the life of hapless supporters. Often enough, especially when a game was interstate, his opinions would be delivered from the couch in front of the television where he kept company with a steady supply of grog. In this new book, he gives thanks for the influence of Dylan Thomas, but his prose also brings Flann O’Brien to mind. Dickins is as sharp, funny and discomforting an observer of his narrow world as you could want.