It is late by the time Craig Bellamy gets back to his rented apartment. He opens the door and shows me in. The sitting room is spartan. No pictures, no decorations, no fuss, no mess. Clear, clean surfaces, two sofas, a flat-screen television on the wall.
‘I’d offer you tea or coffee or some food,’ Bellamy says cheerfully, as he stares out at the red tail lights of the Manchester traffic crawling through the darkness below, ‘but I haven’t got anything.’
Bellamy lives at the Burnley training ground. That’s his home in the North. This is just somewhere to sleep.