Saturday 28th October 2006

I was watching the brilliant Gillette Soccer Saturday this afternoon, the programme that airs during the afternoon’s football matches but doesn’t show the games, just three ex-Pros watching the matches on monitors and telling you what’s going on. It sounds like the worst programme in the world but is endlessly fascinating and funny. The fact it runs from noon until about 6pm, live, is also an astonishing achievement. And in those six hours you don’t see a ball kicked. It’s essentially a radio show on the TV.

It’s a bit of a boys-own-club, but not in too blokey a way. The ex-pros like Charlie Nicholas, Matt Le Tissier, and Phil ‘The Nose’ Thompson just make fun of each other and have a laugh, whilst the incomparable Jeff Stelling holds the whole thing together. And how. This man is a marvel. He’s the only person to have every football statistic in his head and not be annoying. He’s almost modest about it, and presents with such humour and charm it’s impossible not to like him. He’ll do all his work to camera, and then in the background you might hear Charlie Nicholas scream “Oh! Goal!� but you don’t know which way it’s gone until they go over to him and he explains what’s happening on his monitor. But because the ex-pro’s are nearly always watching a team they used to play for they are incredibly bias – and it’s great to listen to them as, essentially, fans rather than pundits.

There was a good exchange today. Some of the pundits are actually at the matches, and so it cuts over to them for intermittent reports (although they are positioned so you can’t see any of the action on the pitch, only the fans, because they’re not licensed to show matches live). The best is Chris Kamara. Everyone loves Chris. There isn’t a game he can’t be enthusiastic about. He just stares, wide eyed, into the camera breathlessly explaining how Stoke have won a corner. He’s fantastic.

So the good exchange today, sorry. Jeff was talking about a player who was trying to get fit in the gym and then said “When was the last time you were in the gym, Alan McInally?� before cutting to the big frame of hard man Alan standing at some game or other, microphone in hand.

“This morning, actually.� He retorted.

“Dropping the girlfriend off, were you?� asked Jeff.

This got howls of laughter from everyone in the studio, which lasted about a minute, and is typical of the banter. It’s the best programme on TV.

I think the best line Jeff’s come out with was when mentioning a lowly team called T.N.S. Solutions had won an important match. Obviously T.N.S. Solutions are a team made up of the employees of a company with that name, but Jeff’s comment “They’ll be dancing on the streets of T.N.S. Solutions tonight� was both brilliant and a sly dig at the corporate nature of the game.

Anyway today my team, Super Fulham, were drawing 0-0 with Wigan with only quarter of an hour to play and I needed to go and get a shower. But I am superstitious about leaving the sofa because when I do a goal is always scored against us. This is something of a ritual for me. But I did need to get ready and so took the risk. Showered, I made my way back downstairs for the final scores to see that Wigan had scored, and we had lost 0-1. The time of the goal would have corresponded directly with me having a shower. Curse the universe for being so impossible to explain whilst being utterly predictable. I am never leaving my seat during Gillette Soccer Saturday again.

I was going to have an easy night in but T-A selfishly rung and reminded me that we were out for her birthday drinks tonight. So that was that scuppered. Home in the early hours, drunk as a skunk. I am going to have to arrange two or three quiet nights in a week from now on and stick to them. Can’t have tomorrow off either, going to Newcastle. My Mum rung a couple of weeks ago and said I need to slow it down a bit and she’s right, it makes for unproductive mornings. Perhaps I will learn some self-control when I’m 30? Surely it’s wrong to be sensible in your twenties?

Hey, at least it’s not causing me to get a bit over weight…. Oh.

God bless Gillette Soccer Saturday. If only football matches could be played 24/7, and this programme ran continually with the host and pundits being kept awake with heroin, my life would be a whole lot less complex.

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