IT'S 100 miles from York to Liverpool FC's Anfield fortress, but it's just a heart-beat away for York's most avid Reds fan Paul Willey.

To say Paul is dedicated to all things LFC is as big an understatement as declaring Liverpool skipper Steven Gerrard to be not a bad player.

Every waking moment, Paul is consumed by England's most successful club, Britain's biggest performers on the European stage. His absolute Anfield ardour is such that he confessed to The Press how his sporting passion had indeed cost him his marriage after seven years.

"She just could not compete with my love for Liverpool," he sighed. Ironically, his ex-wife lives right next door to his three-bedroomed semi-detached home in York and Paul said they are now the best of friends.

That perhaps they were not always so cordial is due to Paul's footballing mistress. His former partner is still a regular at the house - she feeds Paul's cat when he is on his many pilgrimages - the last most memorable being that glory night in Istanbul in 2005 when Liverpool lifted the European Cup for a record-breaking fifth time.

The house, appropriately named Anfield 2' - there can only be one Anfield, can't there - is crammed to the coving, festooned from floor to fanlight and cocooned from room to room in memorabilia of the Mersey maestros.

It is a red, white and gold-lined shrine to the mighty Reds.

There are enough items in the glittering glow of football adulation to provide each fan in the planned new Liverpool home to house 60,000-plus fans. From badges to scarves to shirts to mugs to pictures to autographs to key-rings to programmes to pennants to books to dvds to banners to flags to trophies, he's got them. Phew.

Paul has even commissioned a trophy-maker in Chester to make full-scale replicas of the FA Cup and the prize known to all Liverpool fans as the trophy with the big ears', the European Cup.

Even the grass in Paul's backyard is grown from seed brought from the firm that supplies Anfield with its baize-like playing surface.

How this son of York became so bedazzled by the all-red conquering legions has a bizarre origin.

He explained that when he was nine years old in 1976 he found a discarded Liverpool key-ring in the car-park of the then Presto store in Acomb.

"I was hooked. That year I also attended my first Liverpool match. It was against Middlesbrough.

"From then there was only one team for me," recalled the man, who is also a regular columnist for The Press.

Since then, even if he only has a half-share in an LFC season-ticket with his cousin, he has not missed a match at Anfield in the last 16 years as well as attending many an away foray aided by an understanding' with his employers, the City of York Council, with whom he is a street-cleaning supervisor.

"I just cannot stop myself collecting stuff. The club means everything to me. They are my club," declared Paul, who has even more ambitious plans for his temple, sorry home, once Anfield falls under the wrecking-ball.

He explained: "I've asked Liverpool if I could buy a row of seats, which I'll put out in the back-garden; some bricks, so I can rebuild the front wall; and a turnstile, which I'd like to put in my front room. That would be brilliant if I can get those pieces of history from Anfield."

What Paul already has, and continues to augment at his weekly pilgrimages to watch the Reds, is a top of the Kop sanctuary dedicated to his favourite team.

And it is one which he has already bequeathed to the official Liverpool FC museum which will have a new home when the new stadium is built.

"I've just started now on the one room left in the house - my bedroom - but I am running out of space."


Fact-file of a York Red

Name: Paul Willey.

Born: York.

Age: 39.

Occupation: City of York Council supervisor for city centre street cleaning teams and columnist for The Press.

Current favourite player: Jamie Carragher - "he gives his heart and soul to the club every game".

All-time favourite player: Peter Beardsley - "he was such a brilliant attacker".

His favourite Liverpool possession: A Liverpool mug and piggy-bank bought for him by his parents in Christmas 1976, the year his Reds-lined passion started to kick in.