IT may be too early for the Christmas 24 movie channel on Sky and we are yet to see what John Lewis have come up up with for their festive advert this year but Christmas is certainly on its way.

Mince pies in the supermarkets in October is a giveaway but so is the avalanche of sporting autobiographies ready to hit the shelves.

Where once a sportsman or woman would release the story of their life after their careers were well and truly over, now they like to get the ghost writers putting pen to paper far earlier.

And, unlike those life stories of days gone by, the modern trend is to be as explosive as you can and upset as many of your peers in the process.

Much like the pop chart battle we used to have for Christmas number one before Simon Cowell and his X-Factor machine decided they would take over that pole position race, the clamour for books to be the bestseller is keenly-contested.

A year ago and all bets were off when Sir Alex Ferguson told ‘his story’ following his retirement from management.

This autumn, however, there is a different battle going on about who can upset the most people with Roy Keane and Kevin Pietersen going toe-to-toe this week.

Quite why two wealthy men feel the need to act like school playground tell-tales is beyond me.

Make it warts and all to sell your story, fine, but some of the stuff we have been hearing about in advance of their books going on sale smacks of just having a pop for the sake of it.

Poor old Rio Ferdinand must be wondering if anyone will buy his other than for use as a door stop as his attempt at publicity is overshadowed by Keano and KP.

Those books will undoubtedly sell well with all the sensationalism we would normally associate with the tabloid press but most of us will be fed up of the tales by the time all the best bits have been serialised in the national newspapers.

Take Pietersen as an example. There has hardly been a chat show, news programme or radio show he has not been on this week giving his book the hard sell. But we have found out so much about the content that we probably do not need to go and fork out for it now.

I expect the former England cricketer does not care, after all he has already had the publicity he craved.

Keane, too, is never short of an opinion but the juicy bits of his new book have already been revealed.

I like a good life story, one that is honest and revealing rather than just a vehicle for a pop at those who have done likewise with you in the past.

But nowadays it is all a bit ‘samey’. I think I’ll stick to putting the Shoot annual on my Christmas list.