Living in a big city, seeing footballers in town is not an irregular occurance, whereas seeing a film star or rock star would be both rare and exciting. I genuinely don't think traffic would stop in Manchester for Wayne Rooney. It doesn't stop in Newcastle for Shearer / Gazza or Liverpool for Gerrard / Torres...etc

Not quite, mostly because "soccer" stars are a long way down the celebrity food chain in the US.

Interesting point about footballers accessibility.

I'm a rugby man myself but applying a similar approach I can actually get up and fairly personal to the players on a weekly basis by just turning up at the ground. We dont get that sort of access to musicians and actors.

There are also just so many of them, I have no idea what the average squad size is in the premiership but if we worked on 30 thats 600 superstars some of whom are in small(ish) towns.

On a different point, and treading a careful line, JT certainly had his team of professionals. If I read between the lines of the judgement correctly he had in place one of the dreaded super injunctions to prevent his pecadillos becoming UK knowledge.

As an aside one of my mates got a text from Saudi on Tuesday tipping him off to the scandal so it was just us who didnt know.

This is what happened when Barcelona arrived in Tenerife for a run-of-the-mill Spanish-league match a couple of weeks ago. This is the away team we're talking about, remember.

I can't imagine Brangelina getting upwards of 5,000 people to turn out in the hope of glimpsing them trundling a baggage trolley for thirty yards, and I doubt even Madonna sees scenes like this very often these days.

...that it is cheaper for tabloid newspapers to send a showbiz reporter to "Slaggers" in Romford to follow married footballers with no security guards rather than to the Sunset Strip?

And trust me, half yearly Royalty statements, for all but a few, rarely equate to £10k a week in earnings, let alone £140k a week

There must be hundreds of footballers earning £10k a week or more

And in the days of Jordan, Big Brother and WAGS, lots of girls/young women want to be a bit rich and famous, and shacking up with a footballer is a route to achieving that

This is a great point. I'm not sure that footballers are bigger stars than rock or movie stars necessarily. It's that we don't really know anything about footballers vs. other celebrities. The idea of being a movie star or a rock star has been devalued by TMZ and CBB. Once you've seen these celebrities doing anything other than what they're paid to, a little of the mystery rubs off. On the other hand, the very top tier of footballers that Heppers has in mind perform feats that we can't simply perform ourselves. Similarly, we can't really imagine what these taciturn men do in their private lives. Hence, they incur a greater deal of fascination.

now than ever before. You don't have to do anything other than behave like one it seems. There are more media outlets (tv stations, newspapers, magazines) than ever before and they need stuff to put in. Footballers have a discernible talent in a activity that many people enjoy. So they are a better class of celeb than someone who goes to parties for a living or sees a breast enlargement operation as a tax deductible career expense.

There are still very few celebrities that have a genuine global fame and there are some that are footballers - Beckham, Kaka, Ronaldo for instance. But most of the massive global celebs are still movie stars and rock stars.

Which is good - because it means I can say George Graham is wrong. Which is nice.

The media have become far more interested since the advent of the Beckhams or the Redknapps or any other wife or girlfriend you can mention.

Now they're seen as glamorous couples on a par with film stars. It would seem their private lives, whether as a couple or individually are so colourful that they have everyone fascinated, wondering which direction this soap opera is going in next.

top of the tree. Despite earning lots of cash, football players and WAGS occupy the world of soap stars. They are one of us; civilians who got lucky. Meanwhile someone like Tom Cruise is from another planet (and, in his case, Tom believes that too). Being projected as 30 foot images does that to people. They may be less known here, but Bollywood stars have the same effect in most Asian and N African countries. That said a PA by Amitabh Bachchan would literally stop the traffic in most UK cities...

but very few of seem interesting or intriguing in the way that many rock and movie stars are. There's no "there" there. I've just finished Peter Biskind's "Star", the biography of Warren Beatty. I can't imagine anything similar being written about a footballer.

Macca can still draw a crowd wherever he goes, and he takes time to indulge the public. And he doesn't score many own goals!

appear to have simply conglomerated into one big stereotype; very rarely will you see one with any significant personality- especially amongst the younger ones. In 'Four Four Two' their 'The Boys a Bit Special' feature usually has the following questions and answers: Favourite music? R&B; Favourite woman? Megan Fox? Car? Porsche Turbo XXX Speedshagger; What will you be doing in five years time? Hopefully playing for England (or in the Premiership if they're in one of the lower divisions).

For every footballer who likes to spunk his cash up the wall on fast cars, fast women and fast food there are the ones who manage to stay out of the limelight despite being amongst the best in the country. Jamie Carragher, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs are just three who manage to avoid being in the public eye besides on the back-pages; and I think they're appreciated all the more for it.

While visiting a Belgian old folks' home recently, talk turned to football, and not one of those I met had heard of Beckham, Rooney and their ilk.

Every single one, however, knew of Georges Simenon, the creator of Maigret.