James has been a headline-writer's dream, prefixed "Calamity" with tedious regularity. His is the game's most unfortunate surname since Alan Dicks managed Bristol City in the 1970s. When the Ashton Gate crowd wanted him out, you couldn't help but chuckle.
There have been a few laughs at James's expense down the years, but at 36 he is playing better than ever, and it will be ageism gone mad if he is not in Tel Aviv for the resumption of Euro 2008 qualifying in four weeks. Whether he should be the country's No 1 again is open to debate, but on his form all season he has to be in the top three. He smiles at the suggestion and says: "I wouldn't say I expect to be back in the squad, but of course I hope to be. I'm playing better club football now than I ever did when I was picked for England."
Older and wiser, James is grateful still to be around, challenging for an international recall. He had it all, goalkeeper for Liverpool and England, only to let it slip through sybaritic hands. In his twenties he was an Armani model, flown to and from Milan by private jet before the fashionistas had heard of David Beckham. He admits he became "a big-headed twat", owned seven houses at the same time while underachieving for club and country and went through a high-profile, near-ruinous divorce before finally seeing the error of his ways just in time for one last hurrah.
These days he is much more interested in the self-help Malawi charity that bears his name than gambling with his old cards partner, Michael Owen. We renewed old acquaintance on Friday at Portsmouth's Wellington training ground - an appropriate name if ever there was one for a mudheap on which James slipped and turned an ankle, curtailing his morning's work and necessitating treatment that continued yesterday. "I'll be okay," he said, determined to play at Blackburn this afternoon, when he aims to equal David Seaman's Premiership record of 141 clean sheets.
The insalubrious surroundings of the work-base that Pompey rent from King Edward VI School is a far cry from Liverpool's state-of-the-art Melwood facility, but the new, down-to-earth "Jamo", as he is known, is loving it back in "the real world".
Well, football's version of it, anyway, replete with Hummers and Porsches outside. Settling his 6ft 5in frame amid plastic cups and half-finished apple crumble, and slipping one of his young sons a £20 note to go and occupy himself elsewhere, James glanced around and said: "This reminds me of Watford [his first club] in a lot of ways. Sitting here in the canteen, with the players, coaching staff and other workers, all intermingled, is nice. I like to feel a real part of any club I'm at, to get heavily involved. The only place I haven't is [Aston] Villa, where I didn't feel that bond."
At the rest - Watford, Liverpool, West Ham and Manchester City - he felt he "belonged", and he said he would have stayed at West Ham had they not been relegated and needed to sell him for financial reasons. Leaving City for Portsmouth last summer was hardly a case of moving to a bigger club. Why did he do it? He was looking, he said, for a long-term contract, more than the additional 12 months Stuart Pearce had in mind, and was attracted by the three years that Harry Redknapp offered.
"I asked Sol [Campbell] why he'd come here from Arsenal. If it had just been for a pay-day and he'd sold out, I'd have understood, but that wasn't for me. Sol said he'd signed because Harry had sold him the club and that it was a good place to work hard and try to do well. He said he'd come to have a good crack at it, and that helped make up my mind.
"For me, it wasn't about money, good though that is. It was about fulfilment. At City I'd lost my England place and I felt I needed a new challenge to get it back. I left on good terms - so much so that City are organising a hire car for me to get back to see the kids [he has four] in London after the Blackburn game."
James and Portsmouth got off to a flying start together, keeping clean sheets in their first five Premiership games. "We deserved that and we deserve where we are in the table," he said. "The annoying thing is that I'm sitting here, one off David Seaman's record, when really I should be three or four past it. We've given away some silly goals."
That brought us to his England career. First capped against Mexico at Wembley in March 1997, he established himself as Seaman's successor early in 2003, and played 19 of 20 internationals, including the finals of Euro 2004, but then made a calamitous start to the World Cup qualifying series in Austria in September 2004. The day before, he had agreed to an interview in which he spoke of his maturity and improved consistency. Laughing at the memory, he said: "Speaking to you was the kiss of death." England, 1-0 up at the interval, disintegrated and were fortunate to draw 2-2. James was blamed for both goals, the first a free kick he would have saved nine times out of 10, the second "when I dived over a shot from the edge of the box and it went under my hands. It was poor".
Sven-Göran Eriksson maintained after the game that the goalkeeper was not the sole culprit and would not be dropped for the second of the back-to-back qualifiers, away to Poland the next Wednesday. He was. Of a disheartening experience, James said: "Sven told me on the day of the game the political climate wasn't conducive to any more mistakes. It wasn't good for either of us. It pissed me off, but at least he sat me down and told me what was going on. It was up to me to get my place back."
James did, seven matches later, only to lose it again after another personal disaster in Denmark. On for Paul Robinson at half-time, he was at the wrong end of a 4-1 defeat, of which he said: "It was a schoolboy error. They had stopped Sven's 11 substitutions at half-time, and when I didn't start I switched off. It wasn't like I tossed the game off completely, but I didn't go through my usual mental rehearsal. I knew Robbo was going to play and I thought I'd sit on the bench, watch the match and then go home, but all of a sudden it was, 'You're going on', and I wasn't prepared. I went on and played like somebody who wasn't ready."
Again he fought back and had 45 minutes immediately before the World Cup, against Jamaica in June last year. "It was my toughest game, mentally. Coming on as sub at half-time, it was just like Denmark again - even worse, because I was under such scrutiny. This time it went all right and we won 6-0." All right or not, it was his last cap.
The interview had gone well up to now. Time to grasp the nettle. He had been the Liverpool and England goalkeeper - where did it go wrong? "With both teams we underachieved," he said. "Liverpool especially. My move came too early. I'd had two seasons at Watford and my appreciation of football wasn't what it should have been. Liverpool were just some team up north. I knew nothing of their intrinsic value. I didn't understand what playing for them was all about. I got straight into the first team because Bruce [Grob-belaar] was away with Zimbabwe, but I didn't appreciate it and my attitude was as dodgy as my form.
"To be fair, I wasn't the only one. I would argue until the cows come home that our side then [in the late 1990s] were the equal of Manchester United in terms of ability, but discipline and hunger made them better. You could see the difference when we joined up with England. The United boys would be a close little group, you couldn't infiltrate their gang. The Liverpool contingent were 'the lads', mates with everyone. That unity was the thing. They took off while we fell by the wayside. It was a case of collective responsibility. It was our team that failed, rather than any individual."
They were dubbed the "Spice Boys" - a label to which Jamie Redknapp, among others, takes great exception. James begs to differ. "Had we done what we were capable of doing, they could have called us anything. If you live up to it, a tag is a good thing. The Spice Girls were successful. If we had been, the Spice Boys thing would have been a positive, not a negative. There were distractions at that time and we fell prey to them. Football was going through big changes. With the advent of the Premier League and all that Sky TV money, wages started going through the roof. Footballers were on magazine covers and were celebrities, and Manchester United handled it better than we did. Ryan Giggs, and the way he was protected, was a prime example."
James was portrayed as the worst of the big shots at Anfield. One story claimed that he asked the manager, Roy Evans, how much he would be fined for missing training and got out his chequebook to pay in advance.
"Rubbish," he said. "I was approached to do a photo-shoot for Armani and asked the gaffer for permission. I flew out to Seville one night and flew back the next day, so I didn't miss any training. The second time I went, for a catwalk job in Milan, I did the same thing and Armani laid on a private jet to get me back at the required time. I asked for permission both times and it was never an issue. If the gaffer had said no, I wouldn't have gone.
"For me, it was massive in terms of exposure because no footballer had done it before. I did it for the experience, not for money. I got less than a week's wages. The biggest effect it had was to make me big-headed. It didn't impact on my football but it did as a person. I was suddenly big time: 'Look at me, I'm an Armani model, I'm a geezer'. I started going to nightclubs, I became a big-headed twat."
While he was in mea culpa mode, what about another tale, that his ghastly experience with England in Vienna was down to gambling losses incurred the previous night? "Rubbish. On trips we do have a lot of free time, and me and Michael Owen spend it playing brag. On this occasion we'd played for hours and the press got wind of it. There were phone calls saying, 'We've heard you've lost four weeks' wages'. We laughed about that. The cost just about covered room service - teas and fruit salad. Of course I play cards, but not to excess. I've seen teams fall apart through gambling, but for me a bad trip was a £70 loss. More than that isn't a good idea. It doesn't help team spirit, that's for sure."
Enough of the past, what of the future? "I'm always striving for more," James said. "I want David Seaman's record and I want to play for England again." Form, not age, ought to be the overriding criterion (Dino Zoff was a World Cup winner at 40) and therefore he should.
Spotlight on David James
- James started his long and eventful career at Watford, before spending seven years with Liverpool and then playing for Aston Villa, West Ham United and Manchester City n He joined Portsmouth last year
- Often brilliant, he was nicknamed 'Calamity' James for his tendency to make high-pro? le mistakes, several while on England duty. Nevertheless, James won 34 caps, and many believe that, at 36 years of age, he is still a better keeper than Tottenham's Paul Robinson, currently England's No1
- During a rough spell at Liverpool, he once blamed his loss of form on spending too much time playing computer games n Has a reputation as one of the best penalty-stoppers in English football and can equal David Seaman's record of 141 Premiership clean sheets at Ewood today
- Once suffered a back injury while reaching for a TV remote control n He is a talented artist and has painted several of his teammates
- Harry Redknapp, Portsmouth's veteran manager, rates James as the best goalkeeper he has ever worked with