ROY RACE ROLLS BACK THE YEARS

Roy Race will be well known to some of us oldies but the concept of the children's weekly comic has now died a death with the onset of Internet and such like. The Tiger comic was fronted by the weekly stories of Roy and his team from 1954 until1976. The comic strip about the happenings of a famous footballer, then survived for further years as the "Roy of the Rovers" comic, then parodied in "Shoot" magazine and finally in the Match of the Day magazine until 1993. So in The Times on Saturday I was delighted to read a two page spread celebrating the famous Melchester Rover whose weekly stories and annual albums many of us enjoyed in the for thirty years at least, before we finally grew up. Roy was a legendary centre forward who played for one club for 38 years and scored 481 goals, winning ten league titles, eleven FA Cups and three European Cups. Roy made occasional appearances for England. He also survived five kidnappings (including one on the morning of the Cup Final that he was meant to be playing in), assassination attempts, a helicopter crash, a terrorist attack and two earthquakes. At last, his own story "The Official Autobiography of Roy of the Rovers" is published this coming week, by Century and £16.99. I bet Blackie Gray, Tubby Morton and the rest of the squad will be considering giving their own views of Roy's life, once Roy reveals his dark secrets. Surely he is too nice to do that to his mates.They don't write them like they used to.