When Brendan Gallagher wrote a feature on theTelegraph's sports pages about his favorite sporting comic heroes, the response from readers was unprecedented: hundreds of e-mails from nostalgic readers. Now he has turned his research and enthusiasm into a unique celebration of these prodigious characters. He devotes separate chapters to the three greatest heroes: Wilson of the Wizard; Alf Tupper, the "Tough of the Track;" and Roy of the Rovers. Then he covers the best of the rest, includingnbsp;men like Skid Solo, Johnny Cougar, and Raven on the Wing. He also tells the story of the remarkable Gilbert Dalton, author of the Wilson stories, a writing machine who wrote millions of words in his lifetime and whose productivity put Dickens to shame, and has talked to the BBC's Stewart Storey for a modern (and entirely serious) analysis of some of Wilson's most amazing feats (like a three-minute mile). Here, then, are such truly extraordinary feats as bowling out Australia twice in a day with 120mph deliveries in a 1953 Ashes Test, a professional soccer player still playing in the top flight at the age of around 75, not to mention running 20 miles cross-country innbsp;two hours to warn the Duke of Wellington of Napoleon's advance.