Packing his collection of football programmes (1,134 of them - football fans are sticklers for statistics), Dave is aghast to be informed that the programmes do not fall into that category.

Dave Roberts has been one of those annoying bike couriers, a security guard, a Civil Servant, a KFC chef who was fired for trying to steal a sample of the secret recipe, and a train driver - all before reaching the age of twenty. After that, he settled for a career in advertising, which was eventually cut short by illness, but not before accidentally winning a Silver Lion at Cannes. He now writes books, which all seem to have a theme in common: obsession ...