This week, as you might just have noticed, has seen the publication of Spare, the long-awaited/dreaded autobiography of Prince Harry (delete as appropriate).

My own interest in the book has been less about the contents and more about the role of the person writing it. The book was written by ghostwriter JR Moehringer, previously best known for writing Andre Agassi’s Open. Open is a brilliant memoir, one of those ‘lifting the lid’ books that became the standard other sports memoirs tried to follow.

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 I know that myself because when I’m not sat in Salisbury cranking out columns, one of my day jobs for the past decade has been to work as a ghostwriter myself.

Over the years, I’ve worked with everyone from politicians to pop stars, business leaders to Premier League footballers, and soldiers to sporting world champions. It’s a curious job that I fell into by chance: a book came up that required both editing and writing (the celebrity had written some of the story themselves), and because I did both, got the gig. From there, in a word-of-mouth way, one job led to another.

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The process usually begins by meeting the celebrity to see if you’re going to get on. If you don’t, or you get a sense that they’re not really interested in the book (their management pressuring them into it for the money) then it’s better to walk away. Because the job entails sitting down and discussing their life for a long time – usually around thirty to forty hours of interviews.

During the interviews, it’s often the case that the celebrity, having previously said that certain subjects are off limits, proceeds to relax and talk at length about those sensitive topics. You find yourself privy to all sorts of secrets – maybe because you’re a relative stranger they find it easier to unburden themselves to you.

What starts as a publishing project can sometimes turn into something closer to therapy.

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That leaves the ghostwriter in a dilemma. Do you put the juicy stuff in the book as the publisher wants? Or do you have a duty of care towards the celebrity to protect them? It’s one thing to offload in a relaxed interview; it’s quite another to see the same story written down on the page. Once something is down in black and white, I always warn, you can’t take it back.

 I’ve only read bits of the coverage about Harry’s book, but as a ghostwriter, there were a number of stories that did make me wince and wonder whether would have been best left on the cutting room floor.

I just hope that Harry doesn’t look back and regret what he said further down the line.