He may have mumbled, but Gazza thanked me. Rare glory for a ghost!

I got a huge bunch of flowers while in hospital, in the George and Mary Ward at the Royal Free, which came from David Beckham. His signature on the card was very clear. How thoughtful of him. I made sure the whole ward read it. It did improve my stock. Up until then, most of the patients had marked me down as a right moaner.

First of all, hospitals have this new thing called patientline, new since the last time i was in the royal free, which was 1979. It’s an individual phone, tv and radio system, very dinky, which hangs over each bed. Very handy, if bloody expensive. I seemed to be pouring £2 tv cards into it all the time - and still failed to get any football. They have some cable channels, most of which i’ve never heard of, but no sky sports.

The radio part is free, oh so generous, but it turned out not to provide Radio 5 Live. Isn’t that daft? Such a popular, professional channel, combining news and sport, all very slick, perfect for lying in bed, moaning, yet they don’t have it.

In my ward, I seemed mostly to be surrounded by these really old blokes who had had knee or hip replacements. On close examination, they turned out to be, well, around my own age, ie, not at all old. They were slumped most of the day, with no interest in vital things like football scores. Or they just lay there, snoring. After a hip or knee op, you have to lie on your back, not your side, which is how most people sleep. Hence all the horrendous snoring. Not from me, of course. Neither an oldie nor a snorer let me be.

Then I realised I was never going to make that big do at the Grosvenor House hotel for the British Book Awards, where the very excellent book about Gazza was on the shortlist for the sports book of the year. I’d got my ticket and was looking forward to getting drunk at the publisher’s expense, though not, of course, in front of Gazza. He’s not had a drink for two years.

In my fantasy world, I’d intended to be up and about, no bother, once the op was over. I never expected the pain and the swelling to be so hellish and to last for so long. But then I did have a total knee replacement. It’s a huge thing, made of plastic stuff and silvery-looking steel, which I saw before they put it in. My weight must now be up by about half a stone, carrying it around.

However, I did manage to see the hour-long TV prog, introduced by Richard and Judy, and devoted to the book awards, on Channel 4. And Gazza did win. In his acceptance speech, which most people on the ward could hardly understand, as he did mumble, he clearly mentioned my name. Oh yes he did. You deaf, or what? He thanked me for helping him write the book. Which was nice.

How life has moved on for ghost-writers. At one time, they didn’t get their name mentioned anywhere. Sometimes they never even got to meet the person they were writing about.

In 1978, during the World Cup finals in Argentina, at the time of Ally’s Tartan Army, when Scotland got there but England didn’t, there was a hack on the Sun who wrote a ghosted daily column as if written by one of the Scottish stars. Yet during the whole of the World Cup, he never met or spoke to him once. The hack made it all up while the star took the money, not caring what appeared under his name.

There were one or two blokes on my ward who’d been slightly cynical about my flowers from the Blessed David, but when I explained about the Gazza book, and that I really did know him, that’s how you do these books, they were quite impressed. I came out of the hospital with my head held quite high, even if I was trailing my bloody left leg behind me, still moaning.

Late flash: Just faxed this column across, as I don’t have e-mail, can’t trust the post, and pigeons are just so slow. P Wilby, the ed, then rang to welcome me back, asked about my knee and if I got the flowers OK.

Oh, God, it was he who sent them. Not Becks. Bastard. Not a word to George and Mary . . .

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