THIS column is dedicated to the gentleman who took time away from his family on Christmas Day 2013 to email me at great length to tell me I was not funny.
Indeed, it is dedicated to the 22 others who did precisely the same thing.
This column will be about a particular subject and will not attempt to make anyone laugh. This reminds me of the time when a fearsome editor paused outside his office - curiously called the Wolf's Lair - and informed me: "Hugh, your column on Saturday was very, very funny."
"Geez, it wasn't meant to be," was my stuttering response.
No, this week it is straight to the point, address an issue, illuminate it for the readers. It is all business.
"I want to write something serious this week," I told the editor. "Make it your resignation letter," he said, handing me a pen.
This column, though, will be about something else. I have just finished reading a book. It was extraordinary.
First, a disclosure. It was published by the company of a mate of mine and I could be accused of scratching his back. So I will even up the praise for the book with observations of the man. He may publish great works but he likes watching bikes go down a hill, has the attention span of a distracted gnat and, most damningly, a friend who supports Falkirk.
These attributes, one would presuppose, would make him the last man to publish a great fitba' book. Well, Nigel Farage would probably be the last man to publish a great football book. Or even read a book. But I digress.
But my mate has launched Pep Confidential on to the English-speaking market and it has caused some waves. Its brilliance is not in its lyrical wonder. It lies, instead, in its execution and its access.
This is a book that has access all areas to Pep Guardiola, a fascinating, football obsessive. It has two compelling strands.
First, the author, Marti Perarnau, is on the training ground while Pep goes through his routines with the players, he is in the restaurant when the former Barcelona coach is chomping on his marinated salmon and he is in the corner when Bayern Munich coaches ask him what team he would pick for a Champions League final.
It has the sort of physical proximity only previously achieved by The Glory Game. Written by Hunter Davies, this was an inside account of Tottenham Hotspur. But it was assembled in the early seventies and was about Tottenham Hotspur.
Pep Confidential, in contrast, is written about a team that has just won the Champions League and has been constructed in a era when every utterance from footballer or coach is passed through a PR machine to ensure it reaches the very acme of banality.
Perarnau is dealing with the top of the game that is beyond the sight and hearing of the ordinary mortal.
The second fascinating strand is the level of detail. Guardiola is to detail what Frank Sinatra was to songs about American cities.
It is his trademark and it runs through the book with a gathering momentum. It builds to a torrent of information about the players and their way of working that threatens to overwhelm the reader. The discussion of 3-2-4-1 or 4-1-2-3 reminds me of my struggles with my PIN number on dark nights in front of the ATM.
Yet the lingering impression is how life is conducted within a top football team with if not the best coach in the world then certainly the most obsessive and hard-working. This is a football book which is purely about football and how it works. It is also a football book that is not about football at all.
It has as its focus an intelligent, insightful man who by personal inclination and public circumstance been thrust into the most glaring scrutiny. It is therefore a book about how people work, how they interact and how they react to physical and psychological strain.
It is also about success. But, crucially, it is about failure. Though there is nary a mention of critical emails to Pep on Christmas Day.
Pep Confidential, by Marti Perarnau, is published by BackPage Press at £14.99
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