DES Lynam is curious about the whole Mayor of Wetwang thing. Carol Vorderman mentioned it, he admits - but he didn't quite understand what it was all about. I explain. His predecessor as Countdown host, the late and much lamented Richard Whitely, had been honorary Mayor of the Yorkshire village of Wetwang.

Was it an honour that Des would be interested in, now he had taken over the Countdown job?

"I don't think so," says the housewives' favourite. "Richard was a Yorkshireman. I'm not."

Des, who claims to be a Countdown fan, admits filling Richard Whiteley's boots will be a tough job. The show's format will remain the same, he says - but naturally his style will be quite different.

"I admired Richard. He had a vivid presenting style - but it's not something I would ever try to copy, because you can't. I will do it my way."

His way will probably involve flirting gently - all twinkle-eyed, laid-back charm - with the female contestants on the show; and probably with Carol Vorderman too. In his recently-published autobiography I Should Have Been At Work he describes a BAFTA awards ceremony she was at. She "stole the show with a turquoise dress she was very nearly wearing that night," he writes. "She was sex on legs."

In his earlier days, Des - who's now 63 - had a bit of a reputation as a ladies' man. You can see why, reading his book. He even made it to No 1 in the Observer Sport Monthly's all-time great sporting kiss and tell stories.

He'd been divorced for five years, the magazine wrote (he married and divorced early) when his eye was taken, in 1979, by model Caroline Cossey. Cossey, however, had a secret - she had once been a man called Barry. "He was the most wonderful, passionate kisser," Cossey reportedly told the tabloids. Des is reported to have said in reply: "Unless I was absolutely psychotic, I don't ever remember making love to her."

He recalls the incident with wit and affection in his book. He'd been struck by Caroline's cleavage on seeing her for the first time, and thought to himself he'd "better arrange a closer look at that".

He pursued her for a date - and the second time they went out together tried to get her into bed "but she would have none of it." He was then tipped off that she was not quite all she seemed.

They remained friends, however, he insists, until Caroline brought out a book which implied "that there was rather more to the friendship than there was". There then follows one of the best lines in the book. "I remarked at the time that when I first asked her out I had followed my usual practice of not asking to see a lady's birth certificate."

There is plenty of deadpan humour in the book - as you'd expect from the man who once greeted viewers tuning in for a daytime England match during the 1998 World Cup Finals with the immortal words "shouldn't you be at work?"

He recalls his childhood in Ireland, and his father - who he'd never seen - returning from the war when the young Des was nearly four. The stranger picked him up and kissed him on the cheek. "This was an invasion of privacy," Des writes. "And he was paying a rather undue amount of attention to my mother as well. I cried my eyes out."

The book covers the family's move to Brighton after the war, his upbringing there, his first job as a banker, and his break into radio.

Over the next 30 years, he covered almost every major sporting event going including Ali's Rumble in the Jungle, and countless Olympics, World Cups and European championships.

Out of them all, the event that perhaps sticks most clearly in his mind, he tells me, is the terrorist murder of several members of the Israeli national team at the 1972 Munich Olympics. He was the sports reporter on duty the morning it happened - and ended up becoming a news correspondent for the day.

He handled himself so well that when he returned from the games he was hauled before the head of BBC Radio News, who told him he should "stop messing about with sport and join the news team". They would send him off round the world covering proper stories.

"Like wars?" he asked. "It's not for me, thank you very much."

He has never regretted that decision, he says - just as he has never regretted switching to ITV in 1999. He loves sport, and thinks that in many ways the whole of human life is there. "I've never tired of sport. It is war - without the violence."

It's that passionate love for what he does, as much as that famous 1998 World Cup quip, that gave him the title for his book.

The last line sums it up.

He likes to be busy, he writes. But "despite all that, it is still not a proper job and I continue to have the distinct feeling that, really and truly, I should have been at work."

Des will be signing copies of his book at Borders, York, at 5pm on Thursday, October 27

Updated: 10:49 Saturday, October 22, 2005