Known to BBC Radio Ulster listeners as Rigsy, the Co Down man penned his first novel during the most stressful period of his life.
The book – Lottie The Raven – is based around the misadventures of a young female footballer from Belfast.
His inspiration was the Belfast Ravens women’s football team he set up with his wife Lisa and he brings colour to the book, which is aimed at football fans of all ages but primarily nine to 14-year-olds, by drawing on his own schoolboy mishaps.
David, who grew up in Newcastle and has been living in east Belfast for most of his adult life, said: “I always wanted to write a book, I’ve been writing all my life.
“In the entertainment industry, especially my side of the thing with music, you always have to be doing 10 things.
“I have to be DJing, broadcasting, writing, I was in a band, doing whatever is going.
“Contrary to how I might come across I’m not the most confident. The only thing I ever really had real confidence in was writing, it comes very naturally.”
He continued: “My sister Karen published her memoir (Tell Me Why You Fled). It’s a very different book to mine, she works relocating refugees. Stuart Bailie (fellow music broadcaster) published his book the year before. I thought, ‘you know, I need to write a book’.
“Because of my involvement with the Belfast Ravens I thought of writing about women’s football.
“The idea was there but I didn’t write anything until last summer when things started to get out of control.
“I left Across the Line, I left my job at the Limelight, our house was getting renovated so I was living with my parents and Lisa was pregnant. It was a difficult pregnancy for a number of reasons.
“I was in Newcastle and I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. It was proper sink or swim territory.
“I sat in my mum and dad’s front room and started with a some notes I’d written a month previously – here’s a character, a teenage footballer, she socially awkward, silly things happen to her. I sat down and wrote the thing – 60,000 words from start to finish in four days.
“From one chapter to the next I had no idea what would happen. I just wanted to make sure the characters were strong.”
The first chapter begins with Lottie, 14, trying to impress a boy with a strong sliding tackle only for her trajectory to take her through pile of dog mess.
David said: “Every single thing that happens to Lottie, God help her, is something that happened to me.
“I see Lottie as a junior Larry David (the socially awkward star of HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm).”
David said: “I was really socially awkward, especially in my mid teens. I was bullied quite badly but I brought a lot of it on myself, I sort of stood up to them but in the worst possible way, like a red rag to a bull.
“No one took my aside and told me how to deal with bullies without making it worse.
“I hated school, hated it. Lottie is a much stronger character than I ever was.
“My awkward teenage years was half of it, the other half was football, I put the two together and got the story.”
Having written the book David spoke to Shirley-Anne McMillan, an author from his neck of the woods: “She was so encouraging. She said I needed to do something with it. Typically me, I did nothing.
“I got the house sorted, got my career back on track, had a child. It wasn’t like I was on the brink of despair but I needed to shed a skin.
“Then lockdown began, Shirley got back in touch asking about the book, my family were on at me about this novel I’d gone mental about for a week.
“I got it out again and began editing. The process of finishing it was really hard going. Because I wrote it so fast there was lots of stuff that was inconsistent.
“Also from the focus groups it transpires it was for a much younger audience than I’d anticipated so I had to tone down some of the language.”
Although Rigsy is best known as a music presenter, he’s kept music largely out of the book: “There’s not a lot of music in it apart from Lottie’s dad who she deems to have an awful taste in music – Basement Jaxx, The Prodigy – what my generation deem to be very cool.”
As well as giving birth to baby Lottie, David’s wife Lisa was also key in giving life to Belfast Ravens.
The club came about after David bullied his wife into entering a female team into a charity soccer tournament he organises called Roccer: “The girls really enjoyed it and wanted to know where they could play football.
“I said they should do it themselves. I agreed to coach them, and typically me, I decided to ruin the craic for everybody and attempt to really blow this out of the water, to do this properly.
“We started playing 11-a-side friendlies, the girls just dove into it. They got bitten by the same bug that had got me 30 years previously, playing competitive football.
“We entered the NIWFA and played our first season last year in Division Four.
“We started a second team, coached by Louise Sexton. Both teams were raring to go this April but with Covid it didn’t get started.
“They’re planning to do a version of the divisions starting in a couple of weeks and running until October. There will be no promotions and relegation.”
The Northern Ireland Women’s Football League has been running since 1977 when it began with three divisions of six teams. NIWFA has now expanded to its present size of 45 teams with approximately 1,200 players competing in six divisions from April to September.
David said Belfast Ravens is one of a small number of places were adult females with no footballing experience can get their kicks.
He said: “The biggest problem I found and the reason that we started the Ravens was if you’re an adult female who wants to play football but has never played before there’s nowhere to go.
“If you’re a guy who’s never played football you can rock up to a five-a-side and join in no matter what your level of ability.
“There’s loads of women’s football teams which is brilliant, but if you go to any of them they’re all girls who’ve been reared playing football. Through no fault of their own they mightn’t be that welcoming to beginners.
“With the Ravens we always want to bring on complete beginners, then they can bring the new ones under their wing. They will not feel out of place.
“It’s very wholesome to be involved with something like that where you have these women who have never played before getting started.
“I’m really proud that our team has that. Lisa should be proud too, without her there would be no team. It’s a pretty special club – the atmosphere and energy around it, you could live off it.”
David himself returned to football later in life as something of a beginner: “When I was a wee lad I played for a team in Newcastle, Tullybrannigan Rovers, on a Sunday behind the BP garage on the Dundrum Road.
“I never got picked for the school team. I was always a football obsessive but I was never ever good enough.
“I didn’t play for about 20 years then just started playing again when I was 35 when I joined Newtown Forest.
“What I lacked in ability I make up for in relentless enthusiasm, leaving everything on the pitch. I’m completely hooked again.”
Of the growth in women’s football, the Glentoran, Northern Ireland and Manchester United fan said: “There’s such a buzz around it. You see people are starting to take it seriously. You’ll always have people who say it’s not as good as the men’s game and will be a bit dismissive of it, although mostly that’s not football fans.
“Because the women’s game is that little bit slower, a bit more concise, a little bit less gung ho, the women tend to come across better. That’s been my experience.”
Belfast Ravens have a few local celebrities in their ranks including comedian Emer Maguire and Emma Vardy, Ireland correspondent for the BBC.
David said: “Emma always gets a second look from people, they know they know her from somewhere but can’t put their finger on it.”
The team also has an interesting motto.
“Our motto is the Latin for ‘Never Say Sorry’... except it isn’t,” said David.
“I just stuck it into Google translate and turned out with complete gobbledygook so I put it on the crest.
“We had this problem with the girls at the start that they’d be tackling someone and then saying ‘sorry, are you alright?’. We needed to be a lot less forgiving and not be afraid to call out a team mate who’s made a mistake.”
He said: “Women’s football is just the same as men’s in that you will get teams who intimidate the opposition, they’re shouting, they’re tough, they will bully you. You have to be tough, you have to be confident. This is football, not women’s football, this is football.
“There was a team we played recently, they said some nasty things to our players but it was never personal, just the same type of stuff I hear when I play football.
“I’m not going to turn around and say you shouldn’t speak to a woman like that because firstly it’s not my place to do that and secondly it’s football.”
Lottie The Raven will be available to buy in October via www.lottietheraven.com
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The Ravens logo says 'Never Say Sorry' in Latin, or at least it's supposed to Photo: con