Roy of the Rovers

'Collins has pitched his biography well: he notes the risibility of the plot twists and Roy's unlikely longevity as a player, but he constantly reminds us of the affection among his vast young audience' Daily Telegraph Roy of the Rovers was the greatest football who never lived: the ageless blond star of Melchester Rovers, who led them from his debut in Tiger magazine in 1954, all the way through his own Roy of the Rovers comic from the mid-seventies, first as player, then as manager, to the mid-nineties, via innumerable league titles and FA Cup wins, and in the face of endless tribulation and disaster, be it earthquakes devouring the pitch, terrorist kidnappings or a foreign bus crash wiping out most of the side. But his spirit lives on to the extent that nowadays even young Steven Gerrard confesses to "a Roy of the Rovers moment".
Now Mick Collins has written the life story of the great man - both a chronicle of his frankly superhuman career and the fantastic adventures that befell him (increasingly unbelievable as the decades went on, as members of Spandau Ballet were signed for Melchester and Roy lost a foot in a helicopter crash), and the inside story of how the comic was put together. Every middle-aged man of a certain youth will want a copy. Mick Collins's previous book for Aurum was the acclaimed All-Round Genius, about the forgotten virtuoso Max Woosnam. He writes on football and rugby for the Daily Telegraph and hosts a weekly radio sports show on BBC London. He lives in South-east London.