Acclaimed as one of the most talented footballers of his generation, Stan Collymore became the most expensive player in Britain when he moved from Nottingham Forest to Liverpool in 1995. What happened to him? Did he blow it? Stan doesn't think so. 'I didn't under achieve. I overachieved. I had a great career.'

But by the age of 28, he had booked himself into The Priory to treat his depression, close to self-destruction and unable to get his head around playing at all. Along the way, he had been the centre-forward no one knew how to manage, the goalscorer nobody wanted to congratulate, a reluctant public figure in a tabloid society that saw his name make the front pages as often as the back, especially after he lashed out at his then celebrity girlfriend, Ulrika Jonsson.

Retired from football in 2001 and finding a new niche for himself in the commentary box, Stan then proved he did care passionately about the game, and at a stroke he had more in common with the rest of the nation.

But the contradictions remain. Here was a man, who had a steady stream of women falling at his feet, shamed by his voyeurism in a Cannock car park; a star with everything who was once discovered tightening a built around his neck by his wife; a loving dad of two whose own father walked out of the marital home and who Stan continues to block from his memory to this day; the footballer who abstains from drink and drugs yet who needs therapy for depression and sex addiction.

This is Stan Collymore's own life story; the truth about his flawed character and personal demons, telling it like you have never seen before.