He died in 1955, “a deeply unhappy, disappointed man, his very life broken by the sport he had loved so passionately” Mike was different. A brilliant winger who could place crosses to head and feet with all the accuracy of David Beckham, he was also a hard man with a fondness for the pre-emptive strike. It was said that opposing full-backs had sleepless nights before facing him. He married Tina, a businessman’s daughter and air stewardess, started a business selling shirts, and assumed the lifestyle of the kipper-tied aristocracy. At Manchester City he was one of the linchpins of a side that for the first time since the 1930s could eclipse their hated rivals For a certain club from the same city looms large here. Shindler’s first book was the memoir Manchester United Ruined My Life, and the succession of mud-slinging one-liners volleyed in their direction suggests that if he intended that book as therapy, it didn’t work.

It must have galled him that Ian McShane, the hero of Lovejoy (which he wrote and produced), is a United fanatic.Shindler, who also wrote the film Buster and lectures in history at Cambridge, handles a sweeping story with ease, though for a book that purports to reach for a wider significance there are too many in-jokes and obscure football allusions. And ­ a common complaint for sports books with aspirations to universality ­ no index.Nicky, proving that nepotism is no problem in football, struggled to find his first club, but fetched up at his father’s alma mater, Swindon ­ and eventually Manchester City, too. He went on to Sunderland, where his star shone for a while, and last month returned to the Premiership with Bolton.Probably more talented than his grandfather, but less so than his father, Nicky is a truly modern footballer, with the requisite appearance in the News of the World ­ although the headline “Soccer Stars in Sex and Drugs Orgy Shame” amounted to a female reporter failing to enlist his services.Now Nicky’s son Samuel has been showing signs of talent. His great-grandmother Dulcie, now in her nineties, is not best pleased. “I hope to God he doesn’t become a footballer,” she says.In the Sixties, Mike had been able to drink Manchester dry with his pal Bestie with hardly a murmur from the press. When Nicky moved to Sunderland, the manager there, Peter Reid, told him: “I hear you like a drink. You keep putting that ball on Niall Quinn’s head and I’m buying.” Who said that English football’s booze culture had buckled under pressure from the pasta tendency?.

Anyone from overseas observing the behaviour of the UK stockmarket during the past month or so could have been forgiven for not realising that anything as major as a general election was taking place. Quick and easy online searches for all yourinvestment needs Anyone from overseas observing the behaviour of the UK stockmarket during the past month or so could have been forgiven for not realising that anything as major as a general election was taking place. They would also have been hard pushed to have noticed any reaction in markets following a second, and historic, landslide victory for Tony Blair (below). You might conclude that that is because people are bored with politics. This is probably a safe assumption, but you would be wrong to assume that the election result will not have an impact upon the world of business and investment in this country.
Four years ago when the Labour government was first elected, they caught the City by surprise with a number of swift and dramatic moves that they clearly felt were better concluded early into their administration.

The Bank of England was removed from the political orbit, a move which, while hedged around with conditions and fallback arrangements (the Chancellor of the Exchequer can over-rule the Monetary Policy Committee if need be) was nevertheless broadly welcomed and has proved a success so far. More controversial was their decision to tax more heavily pension funds, a move accomplished with such stealth that few outside the investment industry and the world of pensions realised it had taken place. But the removal of the ability to reclaim tax on share dividends took away one of the advantages held by these gross funds and delivered several billion of extra tax revenue to the Exchequer. And hardly anybody noticed.This move alone helped ensure that the Chancellor enjoyed the stewardship of strong public finances.