Have you ever been interested in relocating to the U.S. for a couple of years somewhere down the line to write a book?

There's a part of me that feels it's sort of cheating. The sort of book where you go and research something and then regurgitate it onto the page doesn't seem like proper writing to me. I'd be wondering what had come from me if I took myself somewhere and said, "Right, I'm going to live in Memphis, look at Memphis and write about Memphis people." There's people who have been living in Memphis for the past 50 years and they're not going to be interested in what I think of Memphis having lived there for three months. In terms of urban environments, let's say I went to San Francisco. I'd end up writing the same sort of book except the places would be different. Names of streets would be different and so on.

In "About a Boy" you explored a "typical male" reaction to children and the concept of fatherhood. Yet you seem very comfortable with your own role as a father.

Anyone who has a kid, at some point in every day, for one minute, says, "Fucking hell! I wish I lived in this penthouse with my CDs in perfect order and no one to piss around with my Bang & Olufson!" And writing a book is taking that flash of fantasy and expanding on it. In the course of a day you have a million contradictory thoughts. You look at a woman and think, For this second I do not want to be married. All that stuff happens all the time and can take you anywhere, and all that stuff is certainly true about being a parent.

Has fatherhood influenced your writing?

My experience with Danny is so different that I don't think that has properly influenced my writing yet. [Danny is autistic.]

Does writing force you to analyze yourself as a person?

Well with the type of books that they are, contemporary, I think it's very hard to write about things like drugs or hooligans without finding a bit of yourself in there.

Is writing books therapeutic for you?

Well, I have therapy as well, so [laughs] ... I had therapy a couple of years before I wrote "Fever Pitch," and it was the first time I'd ever talked about football in a way other than it being football. I used to go on Mondays, and every Monday I'd sit down and be asked, "How was your weekend?" And I'd reply, "Oh it was crap, 'cause we lost 2-1." It was just a crap joke because I didn't know what else to say. After about a year she [the therapist] said, "Why do you always do that, the joke about the weekend?" And she just started asking me about it. It had never occurred to me that there was any sort of meaning connected at all. And I was amazed at the time scale of when she pointed out I was getting interested in football relative to my parents getting divorced and things like that. So I don't think the book was therapy but is was certainly a product of it.

Your first book dealt with very personal subjects.

When I saw ["Fever Pitch"] in print for the first time I thought, God, I've exposed myself here! You look at it and think, Why did I want to go and write all this stuff about me? It struck me as a very peculiar thing to have done.

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With the restaurant all but empty, save for a handsome chap and two rather stunning women at the table behind us, it was time for Hornby to go home and continue working on his fourth book. The working title: "How to Be Good."

"It's at an early stage and it's narrated by a woman," Hornby said quickly before thanking me for lunch and striding purposefully out of the restaurant.

But then I saw him stop, turn abruptly and head speedily back inside, head down. He looked a bit stern and it was actually a little worrying. He came right up to me, stopped and looked up from under his eyebrows before gesturing over his shoulder at the occupied table.

"Giles Grimandi," he whispered, having recognized the Arsenal defender moments earlier. He winked and quickly strode back out.

Even Nick Hornby couldn't have written a better ending.

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