"I arrived too late for training and then started the match like a sleepwalker — not on cloud nine, but in the clouds. 2-6, 2-6. Then I finally woke up on the Wimbledon centre court.

"Good morning, you Brits," Becker says in his autobiography with excerpts from the book published by the Bild daily.

Titled Hang on a Moment and to go on sale in November, the book is already attracting plenty of attention in Germany, even without the massive advertising campaign accompanying it — ranging from the excerpts in Bild to several TV appearances.

The three-time Wimbledon champion has seen plenty of ups and downs in his career and life, but Germans have always been gripped by the redhead who shot to stardom with his first Wimbledon crown aged 17.

"Tennis star reveals all in book," was one headline this week. But Robert Luebenoff, an ex-tennis journalist from Munich who is now Becker's spokesman and put Becker's words to paper, said that no one is treated unfairly or humiliated.

There are, in fact, no spicy details from Becker's sex life — which also separates his book from recent others by German so-called celebrities, or footballer Stefan Effenberg.

"But the book should appeal to many people. Of course Boris Becker is still a man of the masses," Luebenoff said.

Becker, whose romances have been reported ever since his first love for a Hamburg student, said he could "not understand" why the public was interested in his love life, even if he was "free" after his divorce from Barbara Becker to do all the things that other men just dreamed of.

"I don't even talk to my men friends about what my last girlfriend was like in bed, so I certainly would not do so in public. The book will comprise stories about me, not about other people."

Instead, Becker reveals how he needed sleeping tablets and whisky to master his gruelling life on the international tennis circuit after a poor 1987 season.

"I looked for a remedy for each problem.

”Two hours of forehand training for a weak forehand, 100 serves for a weak serve ... There were tablets against the sleeplessness, some others against the pain. Women, whisky or both were good to fight the loneliness," he said.

He talks about his marriage with Barbara and their two sons Noah and Elias, his problems with the German tax authorities but also his briefest of flings with Russian model in the broom cupboard of a London restaurant which resulted in an illegitimate daughter, Anna.

"I wrote the book for my three children. So that they get the truth, black on white. Little Anna will for instance hear why her last name is not Becker," he said.

"Of course the book also served a therapeutical cause," he added.

The London affair gripped the British media as much as the German, and British readers will also in the future be able to read up on what Boris has to say.

After all, the book is eventually to go on sale in some 50 countries - from the United States to China.

In addition, two Hollywood studios are allegedly interested in the film rights - with the now 35-year-old Becker playing himself.