Not afraid to print and be damned

The author became close to Chris Vincent, who accused Grobbelaar of match-fixing, prompting the ex-Liverpool goalkeeper to sing at him: "Who you gonna call? Ghostwriters!"

He was far from impressed by Ms Wolf, who recently caused a storm by complaining she was harassed at university by respected US academic Harold Bloom.

And while editor of satirical magazine Punch, he authorised staff to root through the bins of Andrew Neil, then editor of the Sunday Times, and derided his penchant for men's make-up products.

David, 45, thrives on the public profile his provocative writings have given him - though he says he became a "hate figure" to many after penning a staunch defence of men's rights.

The father-of-three, who lives in Aldingbourne, near Chichester, recently wrote Foul Play, about the 1997 trial of footballers Grobbelaar, John Fashanu and Hans Segers.

All three were cleared of allegations of match-rigging, though £85,000 libel damages Grobbelaar won from The Sun newspaper were reduced on appeal to £1.

The goalkeeper, who has a home in Rudgwick, near Horsham, was ordered to pay The Sun £1 million in costs after losing an appeal in November 2002.

In 1997 Grobbelaar and Segers were each given a suspended six-month ban and £10,000 fine by the Football Association after they admitted breaching FA rules on betting.

David shot to fame - and in some quarters, infamy - with his first book, Not Guilty: In Defence Of The Modern Man, published ten years ago.

He said: "It came after an Eighties period of real right-on-ness. I didn't recognise myself or any guys I knew in the pictures being painted of men as violent, oppressive, potential-rapist bastards.

"In fact, I resented the fact women could be as bigoted as they were accusing men of being.

"When I started looking at the academic research on the subject I found this hateful picture of men had no more basis in reality than any other kind of prejudice."

He cited studies showing boys under-performed at school compared with girls, domestic violence against men went under-reported and cases of predominantly-male cancers were rising.

He said: "Income remained the one measure by which men were clearly better off than women, yet while men do most of the earning, women do most of the spending.

"Clearly there are cultures in which women are oppressed. But the white, British or American middle classes are not among them.

"Saying all this got me in terrible trouble. Funnily enough I got more criticism from men trying to prove how right-on they were."

He was invited to take part in a Sunday Times-organised conference on feminism, where he came face to face with Andrew Neil and Naomi Wolf.

While her books have criticised male shallowness and obsession with "the beauty myth", he was surprised when she took a liking to his Jasper Conran waistcoat, a Christmas present from wife Clare.

According to David: "Ms Wolf came up to me, fluttered her eyelashes, pouted prettily, looked at me with her huge soulful eyes and gently ran a perfectly manicured fingernail down my chest. 'Gee,' she purred, 'I love your vest'.

"I gave the polite laugh of a clueless Englishman who has no idea how to handle a powerful American feminist seductress. I now realise I was in fact suppressing profound feelings of shame, violation and abuse.

"Clearly I was the victim of a long-unreported act of sexual oppression."

Fellow feminists have recently lined up to criticise Ms Wolf for accusing Professor Bloom two decades after the harassment allegedly took place.

David said: "She had just written this book about how oppressive it was to be beautiful, yet I found she was trying really hard to behave like a little prom queen.

"If I had touched her back and started complimenting her on her clothes she might have been really offended.

"Of course, I didn't really feel violated or offended by her touching me. But it seems there's a kind of competitive victimhood going on with people like Naomi Wolf. She has made a career out of complaining. It seems to me very little bad has happened to her.

"She was born beautiful and clever and she has written books which have made her an absolutely ridiculous amount of wealth. Some people, some women, have real problems. To whinge on about someone once putting his hand on your thigh - well, get a life."

David managed to get through the conference unscathed - something he put down to his use of humour to disarm potential critics.

He told a story of a female friend who dated a New Yorker who, in the height of passion, promised her: "I'm only here to serve you."

He said: "They all laughed because the last thing they wanted was a man grovelling to them at that point in the proceedings.

"I also pointed to the law changes in America which meant it counted as rape if a woman was drunk when she had sex, because she couldn't give consent.

"I asked, 'How many people in this room have never made love when they're p***ed?'.

"I discovered if you told jokes and made it reasonably funny, laughter is an admission of truth. It's very difficult for people to claim later they found something disgusting and un-PC. We ended up having a terrific old time.

"In fact, the person who abused me most was Andrew Neil, who was chairing the debate. Mind you, he had his reasons."

As editor of Punch, David had been interested by a Sunday Times article about rubbish stolen from outside the homes of Hollywood stars. He authorised staff to collect the refuse from outside Mr Neil's South Kensington home.

He said: "We found in his rubbish bags very large amounts of Clinique fake tan for men, which we had a bit of fun with.

"He was very sporting about it at the time. He realised we were just turning the tables on what he had done.

"But when I was on the panel and he had me at his mercy he got in a few little verbal jabs. I thought, fair enough, that's payback."

David benefited from a different kind of payback after publishing Foul Play.

The book was nominated for the William Hill Sports Book Of The Year 2003 prize.

David received £850 for finishing runner-up, which he bet as a lump sum on his beloved West Ham, of the First Division, knocking Premiership Wolves out of the FA Cup in January.

He said: "It's not like me to bet so much in one go, so I dilly-dallied when the odds were 100-30 and finally settled for 21-10. At least I doubled my money when they won 3-1."

Foul Play is published by Bantam Press, priced £12.99.