When I was with the England national team, I remember having serious doubts about Graham Taylor doing a TV documentary.

It meant a camera crew being at every game and get-togethers for about a year.

Graham said he'd be the best judge of that, so I had to let it drop.

When the actual programme came out, I was tempted to watch it from behind my settee.

I didn't come out of it too badly, but poor old Phil Neal had his leg pulled for quite a while afterwards and Graham himself came in for much criticism.

The point being that, with the many hours of footage taken, a completely different story could have been told from the stuff on the cutting-room floor.

Film-makers look for the contentious and argumentative views to make the headlines to get more viewers. They are not usually too concerned about the game in general.

It's the same where books are concerned.

Many people in our business who have been around a long time could certainly write interesting and humorous books about their careers.

Unfortunately, publishers often demand sensational items to enable them to get serialisation rights in newspapers to encourage the man in the street to want to read more.

So when I was contacted a few months ago by legendary Fleet Street writer Peter Batt, I was a little wary when he said he was doing a biography of our own Mick Channon.

When I saw that our own Daily Echo was serialising Mick's book, I thought I might have to get behind the settee again to read it.

Most modern-day supporters would probably be amazed at Mick's revelations of his early days and even some of the older generation would be quite surprised too - unless they happened to frequent some of the local hostelries apart from the one behind The Dell on a Sunday lunchtime.

When I was appointed in 1973, the chairman George Reader and director Sir George Meyrick took me aside after a while and stressed that the dressing room had to be sorted out - that some sort of discipline had to be put in place and that the image of the club had to be improved.

I wasn't sure what they meant, but it didn't take me long to find out. While I haven't said anything over the years, Mick has now explained what was going on.

Bill Shankly had christened the club the Ale House Brawlers and Mick admitted that the players enjoyed the nickname, saying: "The rascals did their worst to live down to it."

He said that when he joined the club he couldn't believe how many of the first team turned up for training nursing hangovers.

In the book, Mick says he "was entering a veritable academy in the art of getting drunk".

Win, lose or draw, the Ale House lads made a ritual of their Sunday lunchtime sessions together in a local boozer.

Professional football demands a level of fitness and dedication which requires a lot of denial.

And, while not making all this an excuse for the team being relegated in my first season (we were actually the first team to be third bottom and have to go down with more points than the club had stayed up with in most of their previous six years in the top flight), but there was a lot of sorting out to do.

Some of the seniors, who had been used to a certain way of life, didn't take too kindly to the training.

Team spirit was difficult to obtain and I often used to ask myself what I had got myself into.

On the first morning I took over from Ted, he said he would welcome the players back after the summer break then hand over to me.

After saying he hoped they'd had a good holiday etc, he finished up with the immortal words: "This year Lawrie will be working you in the afternoons in pre-season, so please don't come back after lunch smelling of beer."

I thought he was joking but it didn't get many laughs, and Mick's book has confirmed what the attitude of some of the players was.

Thankfully, the directors knew what was happening and supported me after relegation.

The rest is history.

Mick had a brilliant football career and he would be the first to admit that he learned a lot from some of those old pros, many of whom were good players who didn't look after themselves properly.

What makes Mick stand out more than any other ex-pro is that he went on to become England's number one racehorse trainer last year.

He has yet to win a classic, but he never thought he'd win an FA Cup winner's medal.

So I'm sure a classic is not too far away.