MAY 1970. The morning of a championship game between Surrey and Yorkshire. It's 6am, and through the hazy South London air, a small figure can be seen trying to scramble over the Oval gates. Dickie Bird, then an embryonic umpire, now a national institution and publishing phenomenon, is early.

A passing copper asks Dickie what he thinks he's playing at. Dickie reply depends on which book you read. He either tells him that he is there to umpire his first match (My Autobiography, published in 1997 by Hodder & Stoughton), or, perhaps more plausibly that he is getting his ball back (That's Out!, first published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1985, but repackaged this year for public consumption with some pictorial additions). Take your pick, and embellish as appropriate. Just don't feel guilty. Because Dickie's based his latest career as a writer on a bit of exaggeration here, a little decoration there. Oh, and the odd repetition. The same stories (see facing page) appear repeatedly, with slight variations, throughout the Bird oeuvre, which also includes Free as a Bird, David Hopps's biography (published in 1996 and less fawning than most), and Brian Scovell's Dickie (also 1996), in which everyone has a Bird-related tale of their own.

It's remarkable enough that so many books have been written about a man who has spent most of his time off the field wishing he was on it, and most of his time on the field rejecting lbw shouts and falling over. And it stretches credibility that one of those books, My Autobiography, has so far sold over 800,000 copies – a world record for any sports book. The previous mark was around half a million for Ian Botham's autobiography. Always said Botham lacked colour.

Yet for all its tales of mobile phones and rubber snakes, Dickie's magnum opus isn't exactly a literary rainbow itself. But Keith Lodge, childhood friend, ghost writer of My Autobiography and currently sports editor of the Barnsley Chronicle, insists the well-trodden anecdotes do form a major part of the allure: `He tells such a good tale,' says Lodge. `He's always involved in one controversy after another. It means he has a wider appeal, beyond cricketing circles.'

 Roddy Bloomfield, who edited that book and is currently editing the latest volume to roll off the Dickie production line, White Cap and Bails, agrees. `Dickie has a fan-base that stretches well past normal cricket enthusiasts,' he says. `I went to a restaurant in Dolphin Square with Dickie to choose some photos before the book came out. There were 34 people there, and 17 of then came across to our table during the meal.' Bloomfield pauses, then adds with a hint of admiration and a touch of envy, `Half of them were women.'

Now Dickie and women are two words you rarely see together in the same book, let alone sentence. There's his dutiful sister Marjorie, who does everything for him bar signal no-ball. And then there was a – seemingly nameless –South African girl in the 1960s whom Dickie came perilously close to marrying, before deciding that cricketus interruptus would be more than any man deserved. But in general, for Dickie, women have always been those people who make the tea at 3.40pm. The chapter in My Autobiography entitled `Bowling the Maidens Over' (groan) lasts ten pages, eight of which are dedicated to the women's game. And in That's Out!, the chapter called `With the ladies' conjures up images of Dickie in hid tuxedo, reclining against a bar with a havana in one hand and a martini in the other, but covers all of five pages – and without a dalliance in sight.

At the Bird table: Dickie signs copies of `From the Pavillon End', later republished as `That's Out!.

It's possible, just possible, that Dickie represents the ultimate challenge for women: it's not quite question of taming the best – more like persuading him that life has more to offer than middle-and-leg. Than again, maybe Dickie just needs mothering. Lodge points out that at his book-signings there are always `queues of old ladies.' Apparently they like his stories. Whatever the reason, women have been lapping him up in their thousands.   

 David Hopps is less convinced by the widespread-appeal argument. `The great sales of Dickie Bird's book,' he says, `symbolise the nature of cricket's audience at the moment: romanticised and elderly.' Hopps calls My Autobiography`One of the publishing feats of the century', but can offer no more than Dickie's treasure trove of anecdotal gems, the quality of his umpiring and his affability as reasons for his literary success.

Ah yes, his affability. Dickie may be an eccentric bachelor, who according to his sister lives like a `recluse' in Barnsley, but he is an extremely popular one. Even so, when the figure of 800,000 came through, weren't there calls for a recount? Bloomfield claims he was fairly confident the autobiography would do well. `I had to be when I persuaded my publishers wanted it too.' He admits, though, to being `surprised by the fact that it beat all other books by much'. Lodge feels the same: `Previous books by Dickie had sold quite well. But neither Dickie nor I envisaged that it would be quite so much.'

According to Bloomfield, none of the success would have occurred if it hadn't been for the fact that Dickie was an outstanding umpire. `People just wouldn't have put up with it', he says. And Lodge points to the fact that, unlike Alex Ferguson's recent autobiographical outburst, Dickie didn't have a harsh word to say about anyone. Then again, if nice people who were good at their jobs were guaranteed to write best-sellers, my old dinner-lady would have retired long ago.

`People will be saying we can't do it again. But a good book sells seven to ten thousand. We don't gava to do it again'

`It's the way he tells em': Curtly Ambrose consoles Kenny Benjamin, who has just been warned for intimidatory bowling

Perhaps we're secretly fascinated by a man who can admit, without the slightest trace of irony, that `cricket is my wife'. Perhaps we'd all like to own up to an interest that has entered the realm of obsession, but we don't for fear of looking stupid (see Dickie's video, A Bird's Eye View of Cricket, in which he treats us to his peacock impression – all it sounds like is Dickie making a silly noise). And perhaps we admire his candour. As Hopps puts it in Free as a Bird, `There is no side to him, no threat, no hidden agenda.' Dickie is like his autobiography: an open book. It's not a challenging read. Paradoxically, that may be the biggest reason for its success.

So how long can Birdmania last? Won't his latest offering, White Cap and Bails, be one regurgitation too many of what Hopps calls `well-loved, but slightly hoary anecdotes'? Bloomfield bridles at the suggestion of overkill: `People will be saying we can't do it again. But a good book sells seven to ten thousand – we don't have to do it again.' And Lodge, who is ghosting the book, points out that there will be new tales. `There'll be a different slant,' he promises `It'll be about experiences on the county circuit.' Which is probably just as well. Because, if attendances at Championship games are anything to go by, there'll be no-one around to verify the stories.

Same old stories Dickie's favourite anecdotes

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