He is also a lifelong devotee of Everton FC, having grown up less than a mile from Goodison Park, and has loved them then left before returning to them over the course of their modern history of 80s success followed by regular Premier League struggles.

In There’s Gonna Be A Show, the Liverpool comprehensive kid who read Classics at Cambridge University tells how Everton have been the backdrop to his father’s suicide and his own drug addiction; how he reconnected with his home city after getting clean and sober and helped Bill Kenwright buy the club.

Taking as starting point the last game at Goodison Park, sponsored by Hat Trick, and ending with the first game at the new Bramley-Moore Dock stadium, this is a beautifully written memoir of football’s emotional potency and poignancy.