A former journalist who spent 20 years in the regional press has put his passion for the Premier League into a book.

Phil Ascough, who has worked for four UK regional newspapers, has had his book Kissing The Badge: How Much Do You Know About 20 Years in the Premier League? published by Bloomsbury.

Phil, whose journalism career started as a trainee in 1978 on the Doncaster Gazette, said: “We wanted to mark the occasion of the 20th season of the Premier League. We looked at a variety of ideas including a picture book and a heavyweight written volume but we knew from our dealings with people within the game that there was interest in something light, bright and affordable. One of our contacts kept asking if we had come up with the perfect toilet book yet.

“So we developed the theme of 20 – it has 20 sections, each with 20 facts and 20 questions. There are also some famous quotes from over the years.”

After starting his career on on the now defunct Gazette, Phil did three years at the Hull Daily Mail before moving on to the Yorkshire Post until 1989. He then worked for The Royal Gazette in Bermuda until 1992 before a six month stint at the Middlesbrough Gazette. Following a year with the BBC in Hull he went back to the Hull Daily Mail in the spring of 1994 as a sub, becoming business editor in June 1995.

Three years later he went to work for PA Sport where he stayed for nearly 11 years before setting up his freelance media and PR consultancy business in June 2009.

Phil continued: “Kissing The Badge resulted from discussions I had with a contact at Bloomsbury, who I worked with while at PA on book projects for the main English and Scottish Leagues and the Professional Footballers’ Association.

“While I’ve worked on books before this is the first one I’ve done under my own name. You won’t see my name on the cover though – it’s on the first inside page. We took the view that caricatures of Eric Cantona, John Terry and David Seaman would do a better job of selling the book.

“I can honestly say if I hadn’t written it I would definitely have bought it. I found the whole project fascinating – although I only had a month to do the bulk of the work so we could get it out in time for the summer holidays and the new season.

“It’s a warts-and-all thing and I reckon overall it shows that sometimes the Premier League isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but sometimes it certainly is.”

Kissing The Badge: How Much Do You Know About 20 Years in the Premier League? is available on Amazon.