”It’s all been pretty unbelievable,” Mary Pierce exclaims in a radiant burst on a bleak winter afternoon in Paris as she reflects on her starring role in one of the best stories in sport last year. The world number five tells Donald McRae how a new-found faith has helped her step out of the shadow cast by her ambitious father

After a year in which Yelena Isinbayeva dominated her rivals more convincingly than any other world champion in sport, becoming the first woman in history to clear the once-mythical 5m barrier in pole vaulting, her eyes glitter at the prospect of still greater glories and riches in 2006.

”You should have seen me at 16,” Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink sighs with amazement as he begins to describe the desperate and reckless life that almost ruined him. ”One of those bad boys, running with a gang, trying to look cool and act hard. I thought I was a tough guy, stealing or scaring people with my friends. Crazy, huh?”

The chase, for Flavio Briatore, is everything. Whether he is masterminding a third formula-one drivers’ world championship at Renault or attempting to buy Chelsea Football Club with Bernie Ecclestone, the climactic moment always seems hollow in comparison to the build-up. Briatore reveals the secrets of Fernando Alonso’s success to Donald McRae.

”Up close to Ryan Giggs, perched on a sofa that seems small and lost in a vast five-star suite, it’s strangely riveting to watch the unsettling emotions ripple across his familiar billboard face.” Ryan Giggs tells Donald McRae what the Manchester United players are saying about the Chelsea juggernaut.

”He was always hardcore,” Mike Bechet says as he remembers coaching the teenage Kevin Pietersen at Maritzburg College. There is a small echo of awe in Bechet’s voice as he describes a schoolboy cricketer he initially doubted but ultimately exalted. Donald McRae speaks to Pietersen’s mentors about England’s new star.

Arsenal defender Sol Campbell has the imposing aura of a great fighter who no one really knows. Yet in person, alone with him in a bare white-walled room, he soon emerges as the opposite of impassive or mysterious. Campbell tells Donald McRae about the depth of bitter feeling between the Gunners and their northern rivals.

Ahead of Saturday’s highly charged FA Cup clash with the club he left two months ago, Southampton manager Harry Redknapp tells Donald McRae about the pain of his new job. Despite Southampton’s welcome 2-0 defeat of a woeful Liverpool last Saturday, the struggle has merely intensified.

“Memories!” Claudio Ranieri exclaims on his first day back in the city where he was loved so intensely and betrayed so pitilessly. “This is my first lunch in London since I leave Chelsea,” he laughs, “and they send us to a place called Memories! They start playing this sad but beautiful music when I walk through the door. What are they telling me?”

As soon as she walks into the room, it seems ridiculously easy to look up and say ”Oh, hi Delia” as if she’s just popped over for a coffee and a natter about football and a new recipe. I’m tempted, before we get down to the nitty-gritty of deciding whether her beloved Norwich City appear doomed after a mere four games in the Premiership, to offer up Marco Pierre White’s elegant fricassee of sea scallops with ginger and an inky sauce nero as a culinary equivalent of Arsenal.