Peter Corrigan: The ghost of a chance of a riveting read

A spokesman for HarperCollins, who agreed last week to pay a £3 million advance for David Beckham's autobiography, confidently predicted that it would be the publishing event of 2003. English literature must be in a worse state than we thought if it's going to be that bad a year.

On the other hand, the publishers may know something we don't, because they have yet to announce the identity of the ghost writer. Perhaps they are basing their confidence on the quality of the poor wretch who's going to have to hammer the words out. At that sort of money, you can't rule anyone out.

Don't be surprised if the name of Irvine Welsh crops up. It's about time he did something lighthearted. For all we know, Nick Hornby might be tempted to tackle a few problems that real football writers face; like how to get blood out of a stone. And you can almost picture the scene in the Beckhams' lounge as Martin Amis outlines the approach he intends to take...

Meanwhile, the usual crop of career ghost-writers who would die for the chance of a sure-fire winner are probably wondering even now how many piercings they need before presenting themselves for the interview.

It is a profession that calls for sacrifice even more than it used to be, because the profile of ghost-writing is getting higher and higher. I have long earned part of my living in this shady fashion, and I am not ashamed of it, but we have reached the era when the description should be declared obsolete. There was a time when "ghost" was an accurate word, because we didn't exist in human form. Our names did not appear even in small type at the bottom of the page. Nowadays, the scribe has more prominence, and the new word is "collaborator". That's a misnomer, too. The sports star usually collaborates with his writer in much the same way that the lord of the manor collaborates with the peasant who is muck-spreading down the bottom field.

However, some collaborate more than others. Eamon Dunphy wrote Roy Keane's controversial blockbuster and has been in the limelight almost as much as Keane. Eamon is a very forceful and talented character, but I doubt he would put words in Keane's mouth. I will, however, concede that they may be like a wrestling tag team. When Roy's tired of beating shit out of someone, Eamon comes into the ring and finishes it off.

Either way, the book has caused an amazing rumpus and has even had rival sports columnists scratching each other's eyes out. Advance orders are such that the publishers have increased the initial print run to 200,000. Whether or not Keane's admissions concerning his feud with Alf-Inge Haaland land him in trouble, I do wonder if sports people who are still active should be allowed this latitude in their revelations.

I ghosted a book for that highly talented and versatile England footballer Martin Peters a year or so after the 1966 World Cup triumph. He devoted one chapter to a denunciation of a rival player as, to coin a phrase from memory, "a pernicious little tyrant".

Ron Greenwood, his manager at West Ham, refused to allow that chapter to be published. We were extremely miffed at the time, but I wonder if the football authorities have relinquished that sort of control at the game's eventual peril.

I am sure Beckham hasn't any such confessions, but whoever does his writing for him can expect a thankless and exhausting task. The job requires lengthy interrogations, and even then the writer is invariably left with huge gaps that require dramatic padding at short notice.

Many are the phone calls that take the following pattern: "When you were in the tunnel waiting to step out at Wembley for the FA Cup Final did your stomach feel as if 10,000 butterflies were trying to blast their way out, and did the roar of the crowd send the blood rushing through your veins like a flash flood?"

"Yeah, something like that."

Thankfully, sportsmen never seem to object to ghost writers waxing poetically in their name. One of my favourite rugby players was the Cardiff and Wales scrum-half Terry Holmes, and I might be doing him a great disservice, but I can't really picture him mouthing the following extract from his book My Life in Rugby.

He thus describes the Yorkshire village he moved to when he joined Bradford Northern: "...hemmed in by meadows and pasture, you seem to be in another world, gentler and softer, just like the landscape.

"The hedgerows hum and buzz with wildlife, there are quaint styles in ageless dry-stone walls, thickets of bramble and blackthorn, meadowsweet and ragwort, and little clumps of trees like sentries against the rolling backdrop of the hills."

But I contend that the finest example of a ghost writer taking what we might call artistic licence to extreme came in the introductory paragraph of a football match report in the News of the World in the late 1960s, just after the USSR had quelled a rebellion in Czechoslovakia.

It read: "At a snow-strewn Anfield last night, that mighty mean-machine called Liverpool crushed the puny FA Cup third- round resistance of poor Sunderland just as ruthlessly, relentlessly and remorselessly as those Russian tanks which rolled through Prague last week, writes Tom Finney."

These are just harmless examples of ghost writers breaking under the strain. You should, of course, hold back the natural instinct to create the vivid tapestry and attempt to let the prose carry the authentic voice of the subject. But it ain't half hard at times.

The Lennon lessons

Unless you live in Northern Ireland and have a full awareness of the perilous emotions at large, it is facile to make judgements about the decision to proceed with their home international against Cyprus on Wednesday after the death threat to Neil Lennon.

Lennon, who was appointed captain for the game, decided quite rightly not to take the risk of defying the threat from Loyalist terrorists. His first crime was to be a Catholic, his second was to move from Leicester to Celtic last year – which earned him a booing when he last played for his country – and his third was to be made captain.

Some have said that his withdrawal from the team a few hours before the kick-off at Windsor Park should have been accompanied by the cancellation of the game by the Irish Football Association.

That's a far easier decision to make in hindsight than it was at the time. Without the instinctive determination that the show goes on, the province would have shut down years ago. And it is impossible not to admire the eloquent courage of the IFA's president, Jim Boyce, in denouncing the situation and expressing his determination not to let the moronic element prevail.

Perhaps the starkest facet of the episode is that we have become so inured to bombs and bullets that someone being killed on some other sectarian pretext on Wednesday would have passed almost unnoticed.

The involvement of football captured the headlines, and those responsible are probably delighted with the result of their threat. What happens now? Do the other lot threaten a Protestant player next time Northern Ireland play? Their history of escalation in these matters suggests that move is almost inevitable, so while we might sympathise with the decision to proceed on Wednesday, the IFA are still left with a problem.

They cannot allow outside forces, however lethal, to dictate who they should or should not select. With European Championship qualifying ties coming up they should inform Uefa that they are not in a position to guarantee anyone's safety until they receive firm assurances from the factions that no further threats will be issued.

It is not a stance they should take alone. They need moral and financial support from the other home associations. Lennon deserves no less, and while his retirement from international football is completely understandable we should all look forward to him pulling on his country's colours once more.