John Doyle (critic)

John Doyle (born 1957) is the television critic with Canada's The Globe and Mail newspaper and an author. Doyle also covers major association football (soccer) events for the paper. His writing on soccer has also appeared in The New York Times and The Guardian. He has made many radio and TV appearances commenting on soccer and he has acted as a consultant on soccer projects.

He was born in Nenagh, County Tipperary in Ireland. As a child he moved to Dublin before emigrating to Canada in the 1980s. A writer, he has written a book about his early life in deeply conservative rural Ireland. He was first hired by the Globe to write for Broadcast Week, the paper's weekly television listings, as a columnist. In 2000 he was appointed the Globe's daily television critic.

In April 2004, Doyle penned a column titled "Who's afraid of the big bad Fox? Certainly not us" mocking Fox News. To Doyle's surprise the column was posted on many conservative newsgroups and forums and he was bombarded by complaints. This prompted Doyle to write more columns such as "Fox News. Not here yet, but already hilarious". Doyle has continued penning such columns as "Hell looks an awful lot like the Republican convention".

In 2005, Doyle published his first book, a bestselling memoir: A Great Feast of Light: Growing Up Irish in the Television Age. His book about soccer, The World is a Ball: The Joy, Madness, and Meaning of Soccer (Doubleday Canada) was a national bestseller in Canada on publication in the summer of 2010 and longlisted for the William Hill Irish Sports Book of the Year. It has also been published in the U.S., Ireland, the U.K. and Croatia. Doyle has covered three World Cup and three Euro tournaments and the Women's World Cup.

He has written essays for TV Quarterly (The Journal of The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences) and wrote the introduction to the book Rockburn: The CPAC Interviews (Penumbra Press, 2007). He was profiled in the book A Story To Be Told: Personal Reflections on the Irish Emigrant Experience in Canada (Liffey Press, Dublin, 2008).