Hunter Davies

He also wrote a humorous column in Punch and has contributed to other satirical magazines such as New Statesman and The Spectator, as well as writing numerous other books, including his most famous work, the footballing classic The Glory Game, a biography of guidebook author and illustrator Alfred Wainwright, poet William Wordsworth and of course, his own, recently-written and appropriately-titled autobiography; The Beatles, Football and Me.

The book that has made him the most headlines in recent times however, has been the record-breaking £5 million book deal given to Wayne Rooney for his autobiography, for which Davies was signed up as a ghost writer, in spite of his public scoffing of size of the payout in his New Statesman column: "Did the young Mozart get a five-book deal for £5m when he was only 20?' he wondered in a New Statesman column. 'Or Shakespeare? No chance. He was still hanging around the back alleys on his council estate in Stratford-upon-Avon, though he had met and married Anne Hathaway by then - without getting a penny from Hello! for the wedding."

His own autobiography, The Beatles, Football and Me is a comic recollection of his own extraordinary life, from growing up on a Carlisle council estate in the 1950s, through university to his days in Fleet Street, his enduring obsession with football and memorabilia, and the many fascinating people he has met during the course of his work, not least his wife and teenage sweetheart Margaret Forster, herself a novelist.

The Beatles, Football and Me is priced £18.99, and is available from all good bookshops now.