When reporter Rhys Griffiths sat down to speak to one Kent Sunday league referee about his foray into the world of novel-writing, he had little idea the wild ride which lay ahead.

Defending murder suspects at the Old Bailey, turning down work with the New York mafia, training with the 1966 Italian World Cup squad, meeting Martin Luther King and the Yorkshire Ripper - the stranger-than-fiction life of Benjamin Vincenzo Rosario Conlon has all the makings of a page-turner...

If it is said to be possible to dine out on one anecdote for life, then Ben Conlon is surely sorted for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Talking over coffee in the dining room of his unremarkable home in Hamstreet, near Ashford, the 75-year-old Anglo-Italian grandfather's story barrels on from one remarkable recollection to the next at a pace that leaves you feeling dizzy.

"Have I told you about the mafia?" he asks casually.

The only response is to laugh and invite him to continue.

In little more than half an hour we've already flown through numerous tales that would otherwise merit hours of conversation, and by now the best strategy is to just sit back and take it all in.

"When I first got admitted to the New York bar in 1982, I was staying with an adopted aunt of mine in Ridgewood, New Jersey," he explains.

"Anyhow, I got introduced to a guy who was an attorney for one of the mafia fraternities.

"All the Americans have got these fancy Italian names but they don't speak a word of Italian.

"They were gob-smacked when they knew I was English - 'what the **** is a barrister' - because I had English but I spoke the Neapolitan dialect and everything.

"I then got invited out to a meal, to a restaurant which was down on the East Side, near the docks and the warehouses.

"We went to a door in this warehouse and knocked on the door, and a guy opens it, we go upstairs and you wouldn't believe the restaurant that was in there - it was all mob, they were treating me like... whoa man!

"I had been offered $250,000 a year if I went and did their work for them. I declined, because I didn't want to feel obliged to them."

Expelled from Gateshead Grammar School in July 1965 with just two O-levels, little could teenage Ben Conlon have imagined a life that would lead to practising law on both sides of the Atlantic.

But adventures would present themselves to the football-mad youngster a lot closer to home the summer after he was booted out of school for a kick-about on the roof.

The World Cup was being held in England, and the Italian squad would be based in the North East for games played at Sunderland and Middlesbrough.

They would need interpreters, and Benny - as he was known as a boy - was in the right place at the right time.

Born in Newcastle to an Italian war bride in 1948, he had lived for a period in Naples as a young boy and was a fluent Italian speaker as a result.

"It was an incredible experience," he says of the opportunity to become the youngest interpreter at the tournament.

"My mother originally got it through the Italian consulate, but she couldn't do it and she recommended me in particular because I was doing a lot of football at the time and they wanted somebody to stick with the team.

"Well I could train with them and that, which is what I did. I was just 18 at the time."

With Cold War politics in the air, and the teams from both North Korea and the Soviet Union drawn in the Italian's group, the presence of the security services was never far away.

"We were all vetted by MI5," he recalls.

"We were operating out of Monkwearmouth College in Sunderland. I had to go down to what was then the GPO telephone exchange to do some of the translations.

"We were told by MI5 'if you hear any conversations, you have got to let us know' and we were briefed every morning and debriefed about what was said."

Possessing a bright mind, thoughts of training as doctor, but little in the way of formal qualification, he took a job working as a junior technician in a zoology lab at the University of Newcastle.

It was here, in 1967, he would get the chance to meet one of the most famous men of the age.

Dr Martin Luther King was an iconic leader of the civil rights movement in the United States, and he was invited to the banks of the Tyne to receive an honorary degree from the university.

"I was a junior technician working there - I had my own lab and everything," Mr Conlon says.

"So I came down, they wanted us all there.

"He came and got his honorary doctorate, made his speech, and that speech which he is famous for he made it for the first time in Newcastle university, in the Armstrong Building.

"So he comes in with all his glad rags on, they award him the degree, and he came out and he shook my hand and started chatting to us. That was it really."

After leaving the university, Mr Conlon joined Northumberland police and served in the Wallsend area of Newcastle while also passing his A-levels.

The chance to read law at Newcastle polytechnic then arose, putting him on the path to being called to the Bar at Gray's Inn in November 1975 and beginning his practice as a barrister.

He says performing in court was his "fix" and he would go on to be the lead barrister in cases at the Old Bailey in London.

On one occasion he had the chance to meet with Peter Sutcliffe - the notorious serial killer more commonly known as the Yorkshire Ripper - who was awaiting trial at the Bailey.

"My pupil master, who is the guy you do your apprenticeship with, I did it with a guy called Jim Chadwin.

"Because of my police experience and background, I was doing what's known as junior work to a QC, and we did cases together.

"He got to do the Ripper trial, so he invited me and a colleague of mine down there and we met with Michael Havers, who was the Attorney-General, and another couple of guys.

"They were all talking about the fact that he was prepared to accept the plea, to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

"But the judge was being difficult, and he said he felt that there was public interest so he was going to go to trial and they had to prove this.

"So Jim says to me 'do you want to come down to the cells and we'll talk to him about it?'

"So we went down to the cells and met the Ripper, and we explained to him what the deal was, what was going to happen. There was no deal.

"He was a very non-person, you wouldn't think... he had this bushy sort of hair and this moustache, but he looked real pale."

The conversation continues in this fashion throughout, pin-balling from one incredible anecdote to another over the course of an hour and more.

There are tangents left unexplored, cases brought up suddenly and passed over just as quickly, to the point where it is hard to pin down the timeline and you are left wondering how one man can have fit so much in to one lifetime.

"They start with 'you're useless, ref' and I'm like, 'fine, OK'..."

But we are here to talk about the books he has been writing, which all draw heavily on real-life experiences.

Mr Conlon's wife Loraine explains how she encouraged him to put pen to paper, partly because she wants his six sons to know more about the tale of their father's remarkable story.

The book which brought us here is called The Valletta and tells of an Italian doctor who enlists and serves on a hospital ship during the Second World War, eventually coming as a prisoner of war to England where he meets his wife.

Another story he has written is based around the OJ Simpson trial, which Mr Conlon remembers well from his time living and practising law in the United States.

Today law is less of a feature in his life. Instead he fills his time with his writing, work in film and television as a supporting artist, and refereeing amateur football on pitches across east Kent.

"I've been a qualified referee since 2004," says our veteran of more than 1,200 matches with the whistle.

"They start with 'you're useless, ref' and I'm like, 'fine, OK'.

"And 'hey, I've got a question for you ref' and and I'm sorry, I don't answer questions, I'm here to manage the game, not to have a debate with you.

"I won't have arguments with people, that's it."

Refereeing is certainly a tough gig, but then if you have had the guts to turn down an offer from the mafia then it is probably just a walk in the park.

The Valletta is out now via Olympia Publishers