Graham Gooch was once moved to ask Ian Botham: "Who writes your script?", after seeing the all-rounder snap up a wicket with his first ball to mark a come-back to Test cricket. That wondrous sense of timing has clearly not left him. A new autobiography was all but completed when it was announced that Botham was to become Sir Beefy, to recognise the thousands of miles he covered to raise £10m for leukaemia research.

There was just enough time to add a postscript to give this remarkable sporting adventure a fitting and fresh climax.

"Well, you just couldn't plan that," he chuckled, during a visit to Oxford book stores to promote his new book Head On. If the knighthood is long overdue, the same cannot be said of a new Botham autobiography. For it does not seem all that long ago since he gave us My Autobiography: Don't Tell Kath.

But why not? In the depths of winter, can there be an English cricket fan who doesn't feel some warm glow when presented with Botham's Ashes memories. And as the dust jacket says, Beefy really is cricket's equivalent to George Best.

Now the similarities with the late Manchester United legend look like extending to numerous volumes, charting genius on the pitch and tabloid notoriety off it. It turns out that Beefy and Best knew and liked each other. "We played football on quite a few occasions. I think in many ways the way we played sport was similar. We enjoyed it and liked to entertain. There was a bit of anti-establishment and school humour in there. Yes, there are a lot of parallels, but I would like to live a bit longer."

Sir Ian disclosed that it was Best's book Blessed that inspired him to have another go at telling his life story.

"When you write the first book, I think it is very much matter of fact," he told me between signing sessions. "You know, 'we got off the plane, we did this, we did that'. Then I read Bestie's last book. I thought: 'George, you got it right here.' It was like a walk through his life, through his eyes. And that's what I've tried to do."

Sir Ian insists that he has never been one to look backwards. His guiding principles in life have been 'Beefy knows best' and 'Whether it's right or wrong, it's happened, so move on.' But he does allow himself to reflect on the price of fame for his family. If the first book was subtitled Don't Tell Kath, this one reads like a long apology, as he readily accepts blame for the boorish behaviour and betrayals. The worst is left to last, when he sets out in the final pages the agony caused when an Australian waitress called Kylie sold the story of their two-year affair. The story broke just after his grand-daughter had been born. "My son Liam told me that if he hadn't been holding the baby at the time, he would have flattened me," Sir Ian recalled.

"It is in because it is something that happened. So there's no point in saying it didn't. Kath was amazed how honest I have been in the book.

"I now realise the sacrifices that had to be made, and not just by Kath, but the whole family. I spend as much time as I can with my grandchildren, possibly because of the time I didn't spend with my own children.

"But if you are ambitious, in order to get where you want to get, you have to be guilty of many offences like selfishness, narrow-mindedness and tunnel vision. But without those 'qualities', you would not get anywhere in sport. No one was going to say, 'Now it's your turn Ian'. It doesn't work that way. You have to fight your way in."

His own fight to stay at the top became altogether harder after a visit to the Parks in Oxford on a freezing April day in 1980 to play for Somerset against the students. After failing to warm up he felt a twinge in his back.

"From that spring day in Oxford onwards, I was always in pain when I was bowling. Some days it barely hurt at all; on some, it was agony."

He is typically dismissive about the competition, which these days he will face in Borders and Waterstone's rather than Lords and Old Trafford.

"I know some guys write autobiographies while they are still playing. God knows what they write about. They can't say anything because they've signed a contract."

But what about the recently departed England coach Duncan Fletcher's book, with its claims that Beefy led Freddie Flintoff astray by taking him out on benders before one-day internationals in Australia.

"Duncan who?" says Sir Ian, eyes narrowing. "I couldn't care less. I'm not going to give him any publicity whatsoever."

He will soon be publicising more walks for leukaemia research, though, with plans advanced for next autumn. "When we started, there was a 20 per cent survival rate. Now it is 80 per cent. Yes I am proud of that." No doubt about it, it surely has been quite a walk.

Head On is published by Ebury Press at £18.99.