“I’ve felt the first chill of winter, I fear that it’s just around the corner for me…”
IT was with these words that readers were left four years ago. For the many who read The Boy on the Shed, the bestseller from Lisburn man and former Newcastle United footballer Paul Ferris, they proved hard to shift.
When such a level of emotional investment is demanded throughout, it can be hard to walk away not knowing. For the author, though, those words reflected not only his frame of mind but his fear for what was to come.
When The Boy on the Shed hit the shelves in February 2018, Ferris was in the middle of another journey having been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Just 51, and coming only three years after suffering a heart attack, it was a devastating blow.
His latest book The Magic in the Tin - a brutally honest account of that cancer battle - was already under way while he smiled and shook hands with strangers to promote The Boy on the Shed.
Never could he have imagined the runaway success it would become.
A sport story, but not a sport story, Ferris was the wonderkid plucked from the football fields of Lisburn by Newcastle in 1981, eventually becoming - at 16 and 294 days - the youngest player ever to don the famous black and white jersey.
Once a series of hamstring and knee injuries brought his playing days to a premature end, he retrained as a physiotherapist and returned to St James’s Park, working during the Kevin Keegan era and then the reigns of Kenny Dalglish, Ruud Gullit, Graeme Souness and Bobby Robson.
Yet, for all the dressing room tales and juicy anecdotes – particularly about his short-lived stint on Alan Shearer’s Newcastle backroom team – it was as far from a conventional footballer’s autobiography as you could get. Therein lay its genius.
Away from the football yarns was a soulful story of a young man trying to find his way amid the madness, the bond with wife Geraldine and the deep loving relationship between Bernadette Ferris and her son at the centre of it all from beginning to end.
Backboned by brilliant writing, The Boy on the Shed won book of the year awards from The Sunday Times, The Times and the Telegraph, and was shortlisted for the prestigious William Hill sports book of the year award, while plans for a film are still being thrashed out.
Even now, four years on, Ferris finds it hard to comprehend the book’s success.
“Honestly, people think you’re being bashful when you say this, but I genuinely had no idea how anybody would respond to it, or whether it would even get a publisher.
“I’m not the most confident person in the world anyway… even this book, I was writing it sometimes and asking Geraldine ‘does this sound okay?’ The biggest thing with The Boy on the Shed was the response it got, and the connections I’ve made with people.”
A deeply personal account of a dark, often desperate time, The Magic in the Tin deals with a heavier subject matter. No detail is spared along the way.
“It was harder to write than The Boy on the Shed, without doubt,” he says.
“There was times writing it where I just felt sadness – for Geraldine, for the kids, for what’s gone. I thought it might be cathartic, but in a way you’re trying to write away your pain because you’re talking about saying goodbye, without being too dramatic about it.
“You’re opening up to your kids and your family and everybody else who doesn’t really know what’s going on inside your head. You make yourself quite vulnerable in that way, with the world we live in, because there’s some very personal, not very ‘manly’ stuff in there.”
Typically, though, such searing honesty is handled with a light touch – and moments of real humour - as Ferris brings that rollercoaster road to life.
“I felt like I had to deliver the laughter to deliver the pain. There’s some of those moments you’re thinking ‘should I really be laughing at this?’ because it is pretty bleak at times.
“I spent my whole life being fairly introverted, not really opening up to people. I hope with The Boy on the Shed, and now with this, you’re showing a bit of humanity. Most people have the same fears and the same hopes… maybe there’s men reading that thinking ‘thank God that’s not me’, or who are going through something similar.
“But you’re always thinking of those closest to you. I was writing stuff that was really personal and I read a chapter to my son Eoin and asked ‘does that embarrass you?’ And he said ‘that’s your story dad, that’s what’s happening to you, just write it’.”
And where the mother-son relationship was the beating heart of The Boy on the Shed, the arrival of granddaughter Isla provided a welcome shaft of light during the darkest of days in The Magic in the Tin – the little girl ultimately providing the inspiration for the title of the book.
For Ferris, it offered perspective when it was needed most, too. Life has changed, but still there is so much to live for.
“Before the heart attack, I thought I was Superman, and I wanted to be Superman for my kids. I remember after that trying to talk to my eldest boy one day about life in general, and getting emotional because I just felt like… you don’t want your kids to worry, or to see you as weak.
“I spent my whole life with the fear of my mother passing away, and I didn’t want my kids to have that fear. I know though they do have it, I can’t avoid that, but we still do brilliant things as a family.
“I’m not blind to my health issues, but the heart attack didn’t kill me and the prostate cancer hasn’t killed me. I’m more aware of my mortality than I ever was, but I try and fight against that and get on with life. I’m still here.
“I’ve got an amazing granddaughter who features prominently… if you asked her she thinks this book is her book.
“And in many ways it is.”
* The Magic in the Tin: One Man’s Journey Through Prostate Cancer by Paul Ferris is published by Bloomsbury, £16.99. Available in hardback, eBook and audiobook
