Shelley Webb is a TV presenter, writer, and sports journalist and author of the book "Footballer's Wives Tell Their Tales".

She married former England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 footballer

Football (soccer)

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...

 Neil Webb

Neil Webb

Neil John Webb is an English former footballer and television pundit. He played as a midfielder and defender between 1980 and 1997 notably for Portsmouth, Nottingham Forest and Manchester United...

, and the couple had two children Luke

Luke Webb

Luke Webb is an English footballer who most recently played for Hereford United as a midfielder.He signed for Arsenal at the age of 11 and progressed through the various youth teams. He was a regular for Arsenal U18s with 20 appearances and 2 goals in the 2004-05 season...

 and Josh, who today are both young professional footballers.

When Neil moved back to Nottingham Forest

Nottingham Forest F.C.

Nottingham Forest Football Club is an English Association Football club based in West Bridgford, Nottingham, that plays in the Football League Championship...

 from Manchester United

Manchester United F.C.

Manchester United Football Club is an English professional football club, based in Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, that plays in the Premier League. Founded as Newton Heath LYR Football Club in 1878, the club changed its name to Manchester United in 1902 and moved to Old Trafford in 1910.The 1958...

 for his second spell in 1992, Shelley wanted to develop her own career.
Having trained as a journalist before her marriage she started out in the local Nottingham Evening Post

Nottingham Evening Post

The Nottingham Post is an English tabloid newspaper which serves Nottingham, Nottinghamshire and parts of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire....

 newspaper as an occasional sports writer, and then progressed to TV presenting. This led to her being interviewed about her role as a footballer's wife, and subsequently she wrote the book "Footballer's Wives Tell Their Tales" in 1998, the year she and Neil split up.

Her "Footballer's Wives" looked at the reality of being a modern footballer's wife. Based on interviews with fourteen wives the book set out to show that not all women associated with footballers were "Malibu drinking, white stiletto wearing bimbos". It showed that the lives of footballers wives varied greatly, and highlighted the positive aspects, as well as the negative, of being a "footballer's wife".

Although bearing the same title the later, 2002 ITV

ITV

ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...

 series "Footballer's Wives" wasn't inspired by Webb's book and didn't draw from it.