Usually, words tumbled out of Brian. One-liners, quotes from Sinatra, exchanges with Michael Parkinson or David Frost that could captivate a television audience. Speeches that inspired footballers to win European Cups and dark threats that would chill your blood. Franz Carr taps me on the shoulder and says: “Hang on a second, son. Sit down and shut up, this is something different.” This book will tell you more about the real Brian Clough (and his family, both immediate and extended) than you'll find in any other biopic and it certainly reinforced my growing admiration of the man, as I read and watched more about him over the years since my initial ‘encounter’. Craig tells the story with real passion and pride without missing out any of the imperfections in Brian's character. He was, after all, only human...wasn't he? I'd like to say he's not the Messiah, but the more I read about him… But Craig Bromfield seems a decent person – a gentle, empathic man who made a terrible mistake and has paid for it since. Four years ago, he gave up his thriving business and returned to England to finish the book he started in 2005. He completed it with the help of sports journalist Tim Rich.

Even now, I struggle with what happened. There are days when it hits me more. Days when I just sit there and wonder who I am. Am I the person I have grown into, who I think is predominantly good, or is that a mask? Underneath it all, am I still that scruffy little kid?" They said he had just done it for publicity and it would not be happening again." But they were wrong. I broke down in the office and could not stop crying for 10 to 15 minutes. I was angry with myself for not fixing it. It left me with such a hole. I have had a fantastic life since meeting Brian but nothing can follow that. It is heart-breaking that he has gone. I was crushed." There were two points in the book that really got to me. Chapter 16 entitled The Longest Day – I saw the date ‘15 April 1989’ and knew instinctively it wouldn’t be a easy chapter to read. Blomfield’s account is one of disbelief and bewilderment as the events unfolded. Then I felt very emotional as the book came to a close. As Clough left the club he loved, as Blomfield’s misdemeanours came to light, as Clough left this world.The Clough's did nothing wrong and nothing to deserve what I did. But what rhey did for me should be known. Nowadays, he says, the only true happiness he gets is from following Nigel Clough around the country, watching whichever team he’s managing. Now Nigel is at Mansfield, with Simon alongside him as chief scout. He doesn’t talk to the Cloughs when he goes to the matches; he doesn’t even tell them he is there. “Brian used to say, ‘You’re either loyal or you’re not’ and for a while I was not. The only way I can show him I’m loyal now is by following Nigel. I love any club he goes to. I immerse myself in it.” Soon enough, he was sitting in the dugout with Clough as Forest won two more League Cups. “Imagine what it’s like for someone to come from where I came from and suddenly be in the dressing room at Wembley on Cup final day, and to be surrounded by heroes,” Craig says. “I had goosebumps. The players made me feel like I was part of the team. I felt like a little king.” How do you follow life with Brian Clough? I thought I wanted success, money, a great house, and none of it’s filled the hole Craig also witnessed Clough’s descent into alcoholism, accelerated by his experience of the Hillsborough tragedy (Forest were playing Liverpool the day dangerous overcrowding in two terrace “pens” led to 97 Liverpool fans being killed). “I saw someone I loved deeply start to decline. But if anything he became even more protective with me.” In 1993 Forest were relegated and Clough retired. He was only 58 but he looked like an old man, his eyes dulled and distant, his cheeks reddened and blotched by alcohol.

To do that I had to be honest about the life I had before I met them. If I then went on to hide what I did the whole book would be a lie. This isn't about what people think of me. It'a about what people think of them. Whatever consequences or criticism I face, I deserve.It was the catalyst for this book. "I started writing it as a thank-you letter to Mrs Clough and it just transformed." He asked permission to write it, but knows they are a private family. "A lot of people have said things that did not need to be said. I hope that I haven't. Life with the Cloughs in the Derbyshire village of Quarndon was idyllic with occasional reminders of the fame that once saw Clough called out by Muhammad Ali. "Underneath it all he was normal. He travelled normally, he cooked for us. He treated us like sons."

If you know a Forest fan aged 30 or older, buy them it for Xmas. If you know a football fan, buy them it for Xmas. If you know someone who thinks they are in a rut and life will never change for 'someone like them' buy them it for Xmas.....you get the idea..... The boys would be sent out begging, telling strangers they had to walk 12 miles to see their grandmother because they didn’t have the bus fare. At the same time, their parents brought them up to be polite and respectful (partly because it enabled them to manipulate strangers better). Clough knew nothing of this. “I didn’t tell him how bad life was,” Craig says. “I never told him Dad was a drug dealer.” It is easy to see why Clough would feel empathy with the waifs who turned up that day in Seaburn but it does not explain everything that followed. Why did he do it? In simple terms, it seems that Clough, a North East native, just enjoyed their company. Brian has a rifle for shooting pheasants, although it has yet to be fired at anything. Now, he threatens to use it on those milling around outside. For those few days, he retreated totally into himself. He was as quiet and as alone as I ever saw him. Those days will be the start of his being dragged down by alcohol. It is a study in society. The haves and have nots. It's a story of love and what it means to have it or not have it as a child. It's a story of belonging, escape, believing in magic and miracles and fate and whether you can ever truly escape where you are created.Oh, but most of all, you will fall in love with the family behind the man you all thought you knew. It's a love letter, an IOU for emotional kindness given and an apology all in one.