“Your first book is Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby, about an obsessive Arsenal fan. Isn’t it a bit depressing? It’s not depressing! It’s very funny and was also almost the book that started this all off. Actually, the book that started it all off was Pete Davies’s All Played Out. That came out in 1990, and has been called the John the Baptist to Nick Hornby’s Jesus. Because when Pete Davies’s book did well, publishers realised there was a literate football fan audience out there, and then Nick Hornby came and proved it with a vengeance in 1992.” (Five Books – Simon Kuper)