Peace, who never met the man, received the news via a phone call to Tokyo when he was two month’s from its completion.

“My dad woke me up and he goes ‘I’ve got some terrible news’ and instantly I thought my mother had died,” he recalls.

“Obviously, I was sorry that Clough had died, but selfishly I thought I was going to have to read a wave of obituaries and find things I should have known before I started writing the book.”

Peace wrote the Damned United assuming Clough would be alive to read it. What he hadn’t been prepared for was the backlash from the manager’s family and former Leeds players.

Midfielder Johnny Giles received an apology in court for any suggestion he had played a part in Clough’s downfall.

“If I was claiming it was the truth, then I can understand people saying ‘No, it didn’t happen’ but I’m not sure what I’m being accused of really,” says Peace.

“What I think it actually comes down to is ownership, somehow people think I’ve stolen a story that was theirs.

“No-one really knows what went on,” he continues.

“Even the people who were there only know what they saw.

“I read through all these books about Brian Clough, and even his two autobiographies contradicted each other, so it was hard to say what was true and what wasn’t.

“It’s not as if there’s anything particularly shocking in the book. It’s not like I made out he was having affairs or taking mountains of cocaine. His language is a bit fruity and he has a smoke and a drink.”

He was also writing about a man who courted publicity, with regular TV appearances and a newspaper column, Peace points out.

“I’m not saying people are fair game or anything callous like that, but when people become public figures they become part of your life when often you don’t want them to be.

“I wish I never had to think about Victoria Beckham again as long as I live, but she’s gonna come up again on the TV or something.”

Despite her ubiquity, Posh will not be appearing in any of Peace’s exercise books, he adds, which is almost a shame because it would be fun to see what he’d make of her.

DAVID PEACE will be talking about the second novel in his Tokyo trilogy, Occupied City, at the University of Chester at 7.30pm tomorrow. Tickets £7.50 from www.chesterfestivals.co.uk

Facts:

AS WELL as writing his own novels, David Peace copies out sentences by authors he admires to improve his own style.

He does this for around two hours a day – with lines from non-fiction as well as poetry and novels.

"I write them out and take them apart by changing the tense," he says.

"One of the things that always amazes me is how you can lose yourself in a book, so often I try and stop myself and say ‘how is this being done?’

"By messing it up, you realise what the things were that worked.

"A lot of painters copy other painters’ works – it’s quite a tradition – and I think this is the same thing."