ACCORDING to Steve Bollen, surgeons and goalkeepers share one thing in common.

“All anybody ever remembers you for is the things that go wrong!”

He was talking to former England keeper Ben Foster at the time, while redoing his failed ACL reconstruction that had been done elsewhere.

The sporting great and the good made a beeline for Bradford to seek out Bollen’s expertise.

As the go-to man for knees, the surgeon estimated that he must have performed around 16,000 operations in his specialist trade during his career.

That has now been chronicled in his autobiography, “I’m not like everybody else”, which charts the ups and downs of the man behind the mask tasked with putting some of the most expensive limbs in the country back in business.

I have to be honest, medical memoirs don’t usually float my boat. My interest in hospital matters rarely extends beyond Carry on Matron and the odd episode of Casualty.

But Bollen cuts through the jargon to tell his story – and what an entertaining story it turns out to be.

Some of the early escapades could have been straight out of a script involving Kenneth Williams and Hattie Jacques. It’s fair to say that plenty has changed in the NHS since Bollen was an up-and-coming junior doctor.

Serious opinion on the advance of medical methods and the politics and red tape that so frustrated him are interlaced with amusing yarns, bawdy or otherwise, from a stellar career.

And there is plenty to amuse the sports fan.

As Bollen’s reputation grew, he became a member of both the FA and RFL medical committees and was involved in the introduction of defibrillators pitch-side after Cameroon’s Marc-Vivien Foe died following a cardiac arrest in 2003.

Bollen became president of the British Orthopaedic Sports Trauma Association and at one stage had operated on over a quarter of Sven-Goran Eriksson’s England squad.

He also repaired the knee of current international boss Gareth Southgate during his playing days with Middlesbrough.

“It was immediately apparent he was in a different league to most,” said Bollen, “intelligent, articulate and insightful.

“We had some interesting conversations about the club and particularly the role of managers. I wonder what became of him?”

Bollen also talks about his secret second life as a “rock star” and his passion for music. His band, Never2Late, were involved with the 2015 charity single, “Everywhere we go”, to raise funds for the Bradford Burns Unit on the 30th anniversary of the Valley Parade fire.

Bollen produced the song, which peaked at number three in the “Official Independent Singles Breakers Chart” – eight places above Stormzy, as he recalls. But getting Phil Parkinson’s team involved proved a “logistical nightmare”.

“I had thought orthopaedic surgeons difficult to organise but trying to get footballers in the same place at the same time was an interesting experience.

“Stephen Darby and Andrew Davies helped a lot and I will always be grateful. It would have been even better if they had sung in tune!”

The first professional sports club to approach Bollen to work with them were the Keighley Cougars on a recommendation to their physio.

City soon followed, where he quickly learned that the safest way to recovery was keeping injured players out of sight of managers sometimes too keen to rush them back.

He was also called as an expert witness in Gordon Watson’s landmark case – as the club surgeon of both teams at the time of the incident against Huddersfield in February 1997.

Bollen calculated that the height and angle of Kevin Gray’s challenge that broke Watson’s leg would still have gone over the top of the ball, even if it had been there at the time.

His opinion proved to be a crucial piece of evidence as the City striker was awarded nearly £1 million.

Bollen also worked with the Bulls and sorted the knees of such Odsal greats as Stuart Fielden and Lesley Vainikolo.

His involvement with so many clubs down the years – in Yorkshire alone, as well as City, Huddersfield, Keighley and the Bulls, he was also connected to Leeds United and Rhinos, Huddersfield Giants, Wakefield and Castleford – inevitably meant some lively tales.

He admitted his own “murky” past was put in the shade by some of the goings-on of young footballers.

One story involved two top-level players coming to see him with swelling of the knee and ankle. The problem in the joint turned out to be a secondary effect of a sexually-transmitted infection!

“I’m not like everybody else” is published by Wordzworth.