Fifty to sixty years ago, comics such as the Victor, Hornet, Wizard, Hotspur, Rover, abounded with magnificent stories of sporting heroes of an unusual sort.

They had a receptive market, selling at their peak more than 400,000 copies a week, with stories written by the likes of George MacDonald Fraser, who went on to write the Flashman series of novels, and Gilbert Dalton, reputedly more prolific than Charles Dickens.

They created characters such as Alf Tupper, the ‘tough of the track’, a mechanic and ace distance runner whose diet consisted of fish and chips and tea.

Another variation on this rough-and-ready working-class character was Bernard Briggs, who drove about on a motorcycle with a converted bath tub as a sidecar. His sport was tennis. His racket had a fish handle and he trained by whacking the dirt out of carpets draped over a washing line.

For spiritual uplift there was the mysterious William Wilson, the bare-footed runner in the black tracksuit who lived alone in a cave on the moors, probably in Derbyshire, and who ran a mile in three minutes and bowled out Australia single-handed twice in the same day, bowling so fast that he smashed bats, stumps and, on occasion, a sightscreen.

Wilson was the embodiment of the Corinthian spirit at a time when cricket still had the division of gentleman amateurs, well-heeled men who had their own money, and players, the professionals who played for a wage.

Roy Race, who featured in Tiger, was the blond-haired skipper of glamourous Melchester Rovers. He was a dashing figure. With his inside forward goal-scoring partner ‘Blackie’ Gray, he netted scores of goals every season and never retaliated if provoked by unscrupulous defenders. Think of Gary Lineker with charisma.

Race was in vogue at the end of the weekly minimum and maximum wage for professional footballers – £7 in the summer, £10 in the season. Imagine offering that to Robin Van Persie.

Facially, the Melchester Rovers superstar resembled George Eastham, the Arsenal centre-forward who challenged the wage system in court and won.

But there was another centre-forward that I grew to love, whose unorthodox exploits made him a cross between Len Shackleton, the Bradford-born ‘Clown Prince of Soccer’, and Brian Clough. His name was Wally Brand and he was known as the ‘Ball of Fire’ because he had red hair and was stockily built.

This is how that D C Thomson Comics character in Hotspur is remembered on one website: “Brand was naturally a trouble-maker, one of those who rankled with authority by his ‘plain-speaking’ and won few England caps because of his ‘attitude’..”

Compare that with the following description of former larger-than-life Bradford City goal-scorer, Bobby Campbell by Paul Firth, a former circuit judge and lifelong City supporter:- “This, then, is the story of a man who has now had the same job for just over 20 years, in sharp contrast with one spell of just over six years, in which he managed to play for seven different clubs (two of them twice each) on three different continents.

“It is also the story of a one-time very bad lad who now regrets a few of the things he did in his impetuous youth, including jumping a little too quickly when he accepted an offer from one particularly famous club.

“Most of all, it is the story of a good old-fashioned centre-forward, who came back from a career-threatening injury at 19 and part-time football at 22 to the World Cup finals by the age of 25, even though he had been banned for life from international football.”

Nearly 25 years ago, Robert McFaul Campbell, a ruggedly-built man from Belfast, decided that at the age of 32, the time had come to give up his career as a professional footballer.

He was Wigan Athletic's top goal-scorer at the time, having bashed in, with feet and forehead, a record 143 goals for Bradford City in two spells which resulted in the club winning promotion twice.

In his autobiography, Determined, former Manchester United and Northern Ireland striker Norman Whiteside recalls catching a glimpse of Bobby Campbell in the stand at an international match against Yugoslavia: “...clutching a burger in one hand and lifting a beer to his mouth with the other.

“It made me smile to think he was on the same money as me, but hey, where would I have rather been? He was a rum turkey, Bobby, a folk hero at Bradford City but always in Billy’s bad books (Billy Bingham, Northern Ireland’s manager at the time) because he bent every rule.

“He didn’t play in Spain (in the 1982 World Cup) and never added to his two caps. If you are ever wondering why Billy turned his back on such a prolific goalscorer, it probably had something to do with Campbell’s parting shot as the plane hit the tarmac at Heathrow when we got back. ‘Hey, Billy’, he shouted as we taxied off the runway, ‘You can’t effing send me home now!’’’ In the words of the title of Paul Firth’s forthcoming biography: They Don’t Make Them Like Him Any More. Just as well, you might say.

But as a player, Bobby Campbell was the real deal. Seeing him bustle in from the edge of the penalty area to blast in a corner with his head was as exciting as watching a steam train roar towards a station.

Paul spent many hours taping interviews with the big man. He said: “Some of his features may have altered over the years, but the unique ‘sore throat’ voice was unchanged as he told me story after story, often with a chuckle, sometimes with a raucous laugh, occasionally with a touch of sadness.

“The voice and the still-strong Belfast accent might mean you have to listen carefully for a few minutes until you attune yourself to how he speaks, but it is well worth the effort. In no time at all he’s off on some sort of reminiscence.

“It might be about a football match or a night out. It might be about some coach’s odd training methods or how one of his team-mates has carved out a new career. But it’s always entertaining, always worth listening to and usually has a twist in the tail.

“He’s a natural storyteller and you really can’t do better than just sit back, sip your drink and listen.

“Football, the old heads will tell you, has lost all its characters. There certainly aren’t many around today like Bobby Campbell. There couldn’t be. Their managers and their agents wouldn’t allow them, to be like Bobby, because the publicity they would attract would soon rebound on both the player and the club.

“It took a lot of years and a few sackings for the Bobby Campbell character to be reformed and it had a lot of reforming to do. But it certainly was worth the wait, especially for those of us who saw Campbell play game after game and score goal after goal.

“In his playing days, he will tell you, he liked to weigh in at around 13st 10lbs. If he got up to 14st, he would take remedial action. Back then he knew that any injury that prevented him from training had to be addressed by curtailing his lifestyle.

“Reduced intake of food and alcohol was required. In the years since he gave up putting his body through such rigours Campbell has put on a stone or three. Golf is his sport these days...What he takes in, be it food or drinks, is these days more likely to be determined by a recent diagnosis of diabetes..”

Paul’s book will be released on October 10, during An Evening with Bobby Campbell, in the Bantams Bar at Valley Parade . Entry is £2 through the Friends of Bradford City website, or £12 which includes a copy of the book.