From an interview with Nick Hornby in ELLE, April 1998:
He's a celebrated author and spokesperson for modern man, but Charlotte Moore remembers Nick Hornby as a teacher and the idol of every girl in her school. Fifteen years on, she meets him again./.../

I can safely say Mr Hornby was our school heart-throb./.../ Today, outside the front door of Nick Hornby's one-bedroom office flat on Highbury Hill, North London, a minute from his beloved Arsenal ground, I am wondering whether perhaps he might remember Anna, and if he does, whether he will blush when I tell him about the ridiculous crush she had on him, and how strange it is that I feel like I'm waiting to be ticked off outside the headmaster's office. /.../

Standing there in the flesh in blue jeans (again, but not as trendily dark as his early 80s version) and a green cord shirt with the sleeves rolled up (like he's just finished the washing up or something), he isn't glamorous at all, he doesn't even come close. The sad thing is that he probably looks more like a teacher than he ever did when he "was" a teacher.

First things first, he remembers his manners and makes a cup of tea which he serves in an Arsenal mug. 'Sugar? No. Good. There isn't any,' he mumbles. If it wasn't for the framed "Fever Pitch" movie posters on the wall, you would think you'd walked onto the film set. For anyone who hasn't seen it, think shabby sofa, dodgy glass coffee table, books in piles everywhere and CDs strewn on the stained carpet. A 'woman's touch' is definitely lacking./.../

Becoming a teacher was the only career decision that I'd made, both going into it and coming out of it. I knew I wasn't going to play for Arsenal, I knew I wasn't going to be a rock star, the only thing left was writing. But back then I didn't think it was a realisable ambition.'

He left Parkside and Cambridge after two years to write a book. 'My parents were very worried, and they continued to worry for some years, but I knew I'd never write if I got too settled. I'd get used to the money. I'd get a mortgage and that would be it,' he says. 'I'm not very pushy. I needed something to kick start me.' If you've read "Fever Pitch", his autobiography about life viewed through the prism of football, or "High Fidelity", his first novel whose hero owns a record shop and has trouble with women and getting his life together, this will hardly come as a surprise. Nick Hornby has validated the art of not doing much, out of caring more about the footie results than interests rates.

Looking at him now, shunted up at the edge of the sofa and hearing him talk about his son, you'd hardly recognise him as the new lad he's sometimes referred to as. 'I think Tony Parsons invented the idea of a "new lad" and it basically meant any male who knew about feminism but when on boozing and wenching regardless. I don't think that's me at all.' It's true, the phenomenon of Nick Hornby aka new lad is very hard to swallow. It was only when I was forced by my Arsenal-supporting husband to the film of "Fever Pitch" that I clicked that he was the Mr Hornby I knew and loved. I'd snobbishly decided that "Fever Pitch" was a boring football book and Hornby a champion of the kind of lager-swilling bloke I despised. So I never read it.

Thankfully, just as at school when I was twelve and liked Mr Hornby because he was quiet and soft and a bit of a laugh, this is exactly how he comes across today. [ELLE UK, April 98]

From an interview with Nick Hornby, September 1999:
Hornby's memoir, Fever Pitch, which charted his club's fortunes and his own emotional vicissitudes, established football writing as a lucrative literary genre. While other writers, such as Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie, are now eager to pen their own football tomes, Hornby has let it be known that he considers it all slightly passé.

After the phenomenal success of Fever Pitch in 1992, Hornby went on to write two bestselling novels, High Fidelity and About a Boy. While Hornby's imitators have rushed to publish their own confessional football books, Hornby has decided to leave the sport on the sidelines. "He is weary of it," said Caroline Dawnay, Hornby's agent, last week. "I don't think he is bored by football, but he would prefer to be thought of as a serious novelist."

Hornby's decision to steer clear of the subject has been welcomed by both football fans and other writers. Greg Williams, whose novel Football Crazy is due to be published this year, said: "After Fever Pitch, I would hear fans going to Arsenal matches actually talking about the book, which was a great achievement. /.../

Fever Pitch has sold more than 700,000 copies and has been made into a film starring Colin Firth. Its vivid depiction of Hornby's endearing but obsessive fixation on Arsenal helped give the sport a new cultural cachet and also highlighted its importance in Britain. "Fever Pitch hallowed and directed everybody's sense of football as a religion," said Dawnay. "It also legitimised women's response to football and as a result of that there are many more women watching the sport."

The success of the book also meant more literary figures were eager to write about football. /.../Such outpourings in praise of football have prompted many fans to argue that the world literary figures should perhaps leave the sport alone. "There's no objection to them writing about the sport, but they are not saying anything that is remotely new," said William Ainslie, 30, an Arsenal fan. For Hornby, the decision to stay away from football writing is unlikely to affect his career or his bank balance. The film rights to About a Boy have been sold for £1.8m.