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This last week, the whole Terry affair got so ludicrous that Sven's ex, Nancy, was inexplicably invited onto Garry 'Partridge' Richardson's Sportsweek on 5live on Sunday morning.
We listened to this in bed (not together, like - not on this occasion) drinking camomile tea, eating a flapjack and shaking the noggin sadly.
Why do producers do this? Do they think they're being clever? Do they really think anyone wants to know if Nancy would have stripped Terry of the captaincy? No. Nonetheless she was asked. Her reply was, in typical Nancy-style, an endless stream of Itanglish - a weird semi-understandable hybrid language. The bits that were decipherable were pointless drivel, of course. Who next Garry? Roland Rat?
For some proper red-hot soccer chat we turned on Sky's Sunday Supplement only to see legendary journalist-cum-furball Martin Samuel sitting there in a capacious red cardigan that looked hot off his granny's knitting needles. He must have been wearing it for a substantial bet and we found it hard to take anything Mr Furry said seriously because of it. Then again, we're very shallow and a little too fond of cardigans.
More interesting and articulate, if less furry than the chuntering cardie, was the splendidly argumentative Gab Marcotti on Sunday's 606. Gab was calling for Arsenal fans to "grow some" and come on to defend Arsene Wenger from calls for him to resign. Marcotti is superb at posing alternative arguments to callers who, almost to a man, are left speechless by the idea that another, more informed view to their own might exist. They invariably leave with their bluster deflated. He has fast become indispensible in this medium, combining genuine depth and breadth of knowledge with an easy, engaging style. He doesn't need the inexplicable presence of the nice enough but largely ineffectual, less well-versed, London Liverpool fan alongside, though.
If 5live really must have a disc jockey presenting a football phone-in then we'd like to suggest the Hairy Cornflake, Dave Lee Travis. It would certainly make as much sense.
That's our plan for the medium-range future of broadcasting: what of the immediate? The sublime plonker that is Danny Dyer seems to be all over this week's satellite TV schedules like a Millwall slag on a Chelsea manor, or somefink, credulously nodding as bull-necked bigger boys tell him tall tales on Danny Dyer's Deadliest Men 2: Living Dangerously, Virgin1, 9pm tonight. And in one of those programmes that really do make you think they must be 'aving a bleeding larf, you cahhnt, a repeat of I Believe In UFOs with Danny Dyer, BBC3, 10.30pm on Friday. Get that up you, Lord Reith, you facckin mug.
A few weeks ago, we caught a bit of A League Action in a pub in Hampstead (and we're sure that we're not the first gentlemen to say that. Boom! Boom!) so if your end is loose tonight at 6pm, tune in to SS1 see what dear old Robert Fowler is up to in Australia (mainly high-calorie snacks, on the evidence of that programme).
Show your beloved a good time on Valentine's Day by settling down to watch Eintracht Frankfurt v SC Freidburg at 4.30pm on ESPN, the only preparation we can think of that will be sufficiently calming before the excitement of the finale of Jamie's Top Top Footballer, Sky One, 8pm. It's down to the last three with the prize of a contract at Inter Milan up for scrumps (presumably before a loan move to crack Lega Pro Seconda Divisione outfit AS Parmigiana).
John Nicholson and Alan Tyers
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