As one of Canada's pre-eminent newspaper and magazine journalists, Allan Fotheringham has met everybody from Bobby Kennedy and Pierre Trudeau to The Beatles and Nelson Mandela. Born in Hearne, Saskatchewan, in 1932, Allan Fotheringham has had a distinguished career. Dubbed "Dr. Foth," Fotheringham graduated from the University of British Columbia and has worked for numerous news organizations, including the Vancouver Sun, Southam News, The Financial Post, Sun Media, the Globe and Mail, and most notably as a long-time columnist for Maclean's. His career has taken him to many places on almost every continent as a correspondent and allowed him to meet many renowned personalities, from Robert F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Brian Mulroney to The Beatles, Pierre Trudeau, and Nelson Mandela. For ten years he was a panellist on the popular CBC-TV show Front Page Challenge, and he's won many awards, including the National Magazine Award for Humour, a National Newspaper Award for Column Writing, and the Bruce Hutchinson Life Achievement Award. Time once described Allan Fotheringham as "Canada's most consistently controversial newspaper columnist ... a tangier critic of complacency has rarely appeared in a Canadian newspaper."
"There's a good deal about the fundamentals of the business: booze and sex."
Shane McCune, The Globe and Mail
"Fotheringham did not [write] history but some of his stuff certainly influenced history [such as] his wickedly cruel, colorful but accurate saga of Joe Clark's botched world tour shortly after he won the Conservative Party leadership in 1976. The Foth's description of lost underwear, walking into bayonets and inane conversation with peasants created a devastating first impression..."
Literary Review of Canada
"Fotheringham is a storyteller, a dancer, a lover of women. He lunches well, dines better, and remembers every detail. You could toss 'Who's Who' off the CN Tower, and not drop as many names as he does in this book... An agreeable way to spend a few hours."
