WHEN the Samaritans put the phone down on you, when a mouthful of Prozac cannot induce a smile, when your emotional forecast predicts a sea of clouds with a persistent depression, remember - it could be worse.

You could be a Manchester City fan.

Following City is akin to being struck down by a persistent and destructive illness, City have added a vicious twist to the normal tribulations that beset fans sampling the bitter fare of relegation struggles. For City supporters once supped from FA and European Cup-Winners' Cup and gorged on league championship success.

Now they have been banished from the high table of the premiership and face life in the greasy and rundown canteens of the lower divisions.

There is a further twisting of the knife for the Maine Road foot soldiers. As they troop away from every lost battle, they are cruelly reminded of the glory days by their rivals across the city.

Manchester United Ruined My Life (Headline, #14.99) is Colin Shindler's chronicle of occasional victory and regular defeat.

Shindler, the product of what he describes as a middle-class Jewish ghetto in Manchester, traces his life against a landscape of the rolling ups and downs of Manchester City.

Predictably, there are more downs. Following Manchester City is a vocation which demands sacrifice. City followers are only intermittent participants in the glory game. Some are called but many are frozen by the chilling demise of a great club.

But as Shindler notes: ''What do they know of lost causes, who only trophies know?''

Success breeds excess. A surfeit of camp followers plunder the United megastore. Failure has its own public and private humiliations. As the country queues for a Ryan Giggs duvet, Shindler is grimly aware that buying a City replica shirt poses problems. Georgi Kinkladze is City's sole viable asset. When Shindler buys a shirt, he is informed the shop has run out of Ks and Zs. At Maine Road, you would expect no less. Incompetence is contagious.

Shindler is no purveyor of Hornbyesque whimsy. This book is born of a union between football obsession and Jewish humour - a marriage made in heaven.

He kicks off with a marvellous Bobby Kennedy story which combines bleakness and humour. This heady brew pervades the book.

This is a story of a life set to the music of the terracing. It is how a young boy clung to a football when his mother died with a cruel suddenness. It is how a Cambridge student found a relief from his personal doubts in his certainty of his love for a club.

The great (Lee, Summerbee, Bell), the good (Book, Pardoe, Young) and the useless (see recent City teamsheets) have walk-on parts in what is essentially a private story. There are diversions to Old Trafford cricket ground, even incursions to the enemy territory of Old Trafford football ground, but this is more an exploration of Shindler himself.

The trials of City are but a reflection of times of trouble at the court of Colin. Moments of triumph must be enjoyed to the full. They are as transients as the soccer mercenary.

Shindler was given only four days to savour the championship success as United trumped City by qualifying for a European Cup final they would later win. Even in victory City had been taunted by the success of their glamourous big brother.

Shindler writes with authenticity of the experience of following a club: ''The familiar cold hand of doom gripped my stomach.''

But this is more than a memoir of a life of supporting a club. It is a an invigorating celebration of life itself, though there is an aching darkness that can be glimpsed through the shafts of humour.

Shindler applauds goals and friendships. He celebrates victories and a successful career. But he honestly acknowledges that losses are not confined to the narrow confines of a football pitch.

Shindler lost his mother and was deserted by an uncle who instilled him a love of sport. A lover disappeared down the tunnel while Shindler was concentrating on the game.

He has, however, retained a battered innocence. He may dwell, like the rest of us, on the irrelevant minutiae.

But in the arena of life, in the maelstrom of Maine Road, he has grasped some affirming truths.

He knows that Manchester United did not ruin his life.

He would, however, concede that Manchester City did much to shape and save it.