British slang definition: “ A minger is a male or female who fell out of the ugly tree at birth and hit every branch on the way down.”

R.B.N Bookmark is a realist. He claims that any advantages of being born to strict, hardworking Irish immigrants were outweighed by being born small and ginger. A life long Manchester United fan, his birth 5 weeks prior to the tragic Munich air disaster, left him certain he had missed the best team United would ever have.

A Minger’s Tale traces his humble beginnings from the back streets of Manchester through to a train platform in Peterborough having reached his mid-twenties after spending an hedonistic week in a POW camp in East Anglia. Throughout his book, this ‘boyography’ details the richness, and at times oddness of growing up in Manchester when chances of success are stacked against you. Not really helping him fit in are the secondhand Hawaiian shirts given to the family by his aunt in Honolulu combined with a bright, red mullet. He doesn’t exactly blend in.

With a wry mix of humour and startling truth, Bookmark lets us all relive our childhoods. That is if we were born in Manchester, in the 1960’s and was described as a “water rat with a ginger top” at birth….