IT’S real Roy of the Rovers stuff.

At the risk of offending more mature Guardian readers, it is only this week I learned of the career of Alf Tupper.

‘The Tough of the Track’ as he was known, Alf Tupper was a welder-cum- runner who regularly defied the odds to see off the competition of his ‘snobbish’ university-bound rivals.

Tupper was the Roy Race of the athletics world, although his comic career pre-dated that of Race with the eternal ‘hard as nails’ underdog first featuring in the Rover in 1949.

Race’s Melchester Rovers career was launched in the Tiger in 1954.

While I’m pretty familiar with Roy Race – I own the Mel Park hero’s 'autobiography',– Alf Tupper’s existence has only just been brought to my attention by guys I run with.

It’s hard to find a great deal of information on Tupper and the original comics he appeared in, but the Greystone favourite enjoyed a comeback in Athletics Weekly ahead of 2014's London Marathon.

He lived on a diet of fish and chips, worked as a millwright at Greystone Aviation Factory, as a plumber for Charlie Chipping or as a self-employed welder – depending in which decade you were reading either the Rover or the Victor – and lived with his Aunt Meg in Anchor Alley before moving to Ike Smith’s welding shop.

There, beneath the railway arches, he slept on a mattress by his work bench.

A unique take on Alf Tupper...

My running friends reflect fondly on how Tupper would finish work late on the cobbled streets of Greystone and dash down to London to race at White City or Crystal Palace – often missing his train or performing some heroics en route.

There, after collecting his fish and chips, the Greystone Harrier would beat off stiff competition from the Amateur Athletic Association and proclaim ‘I ran em’ all’.

While Race was banging in goals for Melchester with Blackie Gray, getting kidnapped or crashing his helicopter, Tupper was coming from a lap down to take a last-gasp victory while breaching class boundaries.

With Tupper and Race now making fleeting appearances, and understandably so following 40- year stints at the top of their sports, perhaps it’s time for a new hero.

I’ll get my sketchbook...

So, who did Roy Race marry in 1976?

Last week I asked you who beat Wales in the 1991 Rugby Union World Cup.

It was Western Samoa,16-13, prompting the line 'thank heavens Wales weren’t playing the whole of Samoa.'