‘My dream is to see you at Wembley,’ my father would mutter from the settee every Cup Final, looking up despondently at the empty trophy cabinet (I told him not to build it). I would just roll my eyes and carry on reading my Agatha Christie. Boy I used to love whodunnits as a kid. In fact, much to my dad’s despair, it was always a brand new Agatha Christie or Ruth Rendell book that would have me squealing in excitement on a Christmas morning, not the football boots or the new ‘Kevin Keegan’s Soccer Skills’ annual. Oh no, screw Kevin Keegan, there’s been a murder in a library and I’m only 180 pages away from finding out the killer.

To the few people who don’t know, I come from good footballing stock; my footballing pedigree is second to none, I’ll have you know. My father was football manager of the town I was growing up in, Northampton Town Football Club. My grandad had played for Newcastle United and West Brom. And there were various uncles and cousins who at some point had played professionally or flirted with the idea. So there was a lot of expectation when I, a new Carr boy, was born.

You could almost sense the disappointment when I didn’t drop kick my way out of the womb, do a sliding tackle on the placenta, and start chanting ‘Who are ya? Who are ya?’ to my parents. Oh dear, how could I tell them there’d been ‘an accident’? Basically I couldn’t, so I spent my teenage years with everyone assuming I was going to become Georgie Best. Being cross-examined by my Dad’s old professional footballer friends was a traumatic experience. I’d be frozen mute because once they heard this voice, or saw me move any part of my body, they would realise how unbelievably camp I was, and the questioning would stop with an abrupt ‘oh’ and an anxious look towards my father. The questions would always be the same anyway. ‘Does he play, Graham?’ ‘What position is he going to be?’ ‘Is he reading an Agatha Christie?’