FEW have summed up the signifcance of football quite as brilliantly as the legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly.

Once, he was asked on a TV chat show if football was more important than life or death to him and the answer that came back was stunningly brilliant in its simplicity.

"Listen," he quipped. "It's more important than that."

It's not often I'd speak of anything Merseyside-related - well, at least not without first splashing around some holy water to cleanse me of my sins - but those five words perfectly encapsulate what the beautiful game means to me.

Where football is involved, I become a completely different person, undergoing an Incredible Hulk-like transformation into some kind of raging beast.

By day, mild mannered local journalist, but when he gets to the football he becomes super-pillock.

This isn't even something that's come on with old age, it's not as if I've got more cantankerous and irritable with the passing years.

From a young age, I've always been insufferable come 3pm on a Saturday afternoon (or 5.15pm on a Saturday evening, or 4pm on a Sunday afternoon, or anytime Sky Sports choose to televise matches in their unstoppable bid to corrupt and destroy football).

Manchester United have always been my vice, I've been hooked since going to see my first game - against Oxford United of all people - back in 1988.

There's something that happened when I went out with my uncle to take my place in the Stretford End Paddock for the first time that is now completely irreversible.

It got so bad at one point I think my mum and dad considered disowning me. I can remember being dragged out on a shopping trip to Manchester one Saturday when United were away at Sheffield Wednesday in the mid-1990s.

I refused to get out of the car and instead sat in Kendal's car park in the city centre for the full 90 minutes, listening to it on the radio. The only problem was, United lost.

With nobody else in sight to vent my frustrations on, I decided instead to take it out on my dad's car stereo and with one well-aimed swipe, the CD player was out of action for weeks.

I'm the same when I play as well. Although my 11-a-side days are long gone, I do enjoy a regular game of the six-a-side variety.

Let's get one thing straight, I was never the most skilful player but I was quite handy in the full form of the game because I did a good job as the all-action midfielder and had a decent long-range pass on me.

The only problem is, those skills don't translate particularly well to the small-sided version of the game. So instead, I end up running around like a nutcase trying to tackle anything that moves.

Inevitably, this ends up winding up one of the opposition and for a while, I don't think a week went by when i didn't offer someone out on the football pitch.

Not being the biggest or most muscular of chaps, this soon becomes a problem and once my friends had to step in to prevent me from needing reconstructive surgery after I confronted an opponent that can only be described as a brick outhouse.

Once the game's over though, I quickly snap back to normal and barely remember anything that went on out on the pitch. It's just plain weird.

So if you ever meet me you'll be fine, just as long as you don't talk to me about the game last night.