Jelleyman’s Thrown a Wobbly: Saturday Afternoons in Front of the Telly

1 A Short History Of Nearly Everything (To Do With Soccer Saturday) *

Part I

‘You're not even watching football on the telly. You're watching a programme on the telly, where four blokes are watching football … on the telly!’

Stop for a moment and see yourself meeting someone who has never seen Soccer Saturday before. This is difficult I know, but perhaps suspend your disbelief by picturing them as Martians or new Chelsea fans. Then, with this alien concept in mind, imagine explaining the basic idea of the show to these unfortunate souls. Believe me: it's not as easy as it sounds.

You will, of course, start by explaining that this football programme doesn't show any real, actual football. There are no goals, shots or near misses on the telly, so it's a bit like watching Derby County. You'll explain that the closest things to action are the replays of last week's goals in three hours of football analysis, discussion and general messing about that precedes the 90 minutes of match drama on a Saturday afternoon. And that the real drama takes place as the latest scores and events stream onto the TV screen on a computerized videprinter, while four men of varying ‘expertise’ – all of them former professional footballers – sit in front of TV screens displaying their designated matches, pull on headphones, and relay the afternoon's action with a series of gasps, groans, girly yelps and ‘Oh, oh, no, oh, ooooohs!’

You'll probably confuse your enthralled audience further by adding that the roll-call of experts includes a former football playboy (‘Champagne’ Charlie Nicholas), a one-eyed Liverpool fan and former England captain (Phil ‘Thommo’ Thompson), a former Southampton legend who dated an Australian soap legend (Matt ‘Le Tiss’ Le Tissier), and a controversial midfielder who once shared a house with Gazza and could be considered as a football equivalent to Amy Winehouse (Paul ‘Merse’ Merson).

But hang on a second! Curtail their confusion by explaining that this car crash of information, goals, bookings, red cards, referee blunders and substitutions is held together by ‘Jeff's masterful handling of the latest football results’ (GQ magazine, apparently – many thanks), as somehow, drawing all this together with a relatively calm head and a prayer to the TV gods, I perch on a precarious chair at the end of a desk as ‘anchorman’, with some notes and a dossier of information by way of reference while making some semblance of order from the chaos going on around the country.

Sounds strange when explained this way, doesn't it? But bizarrely, in this format, Soccer Saturday has drawn a cult following of fans, which is probably unsurprising given that, between the hours of three o'clock and four forty-five on a Saturday afternoon, it is the only place to receive a continual stream of match-related stats, facts and trivia, without suffering whatever it is Peter Schmeichel is waffling on about on BBC One. And if you haven't got a satellite dish, or even a cheap digital package from the local supermarket (shame on you), then you may have seen my mug gurning from a TV in your local Dixons as you've traipsed around the shops and peered at the half-time scores. This, if you are uninitiated to the programme (and if that's the case, I can only assume that you've been bought this book as a badly-planned present from a none-too-popular auntie), is Soccer Saturday. Hopefully you'll enjoy the show, and thanks for watching.

Part II

Calling The Oracle

How the Soccer Saturday concept came about now requires a back story of desperate measures, ill-conceived ideas, boozy escapades and Mark Lawrenson's unusual taste in waistcoats. Though by way of a full explanation, it's probably best if I take you back to a time before Sky Sports, when, in the olden days, there was only Ceefax or, if you were really unlucky, Oracle, to deliver live football scores on the telly. For anyone reading this under the age of 25, you may want to imagine Ceefax as a low-tech internet. Visualize a text-based service on your telly, only in colours more garish than a Norwich City away kit and with none of the speed or convenience of broadband, no pictures, no movies and certainly none of the mucky films. Instead, think graphics so big your granny could read them without her NHS specs, delivering the bare bones of a news story all served at a snail's pace. Forget high-speed connections: if you wanted live football results on a Saturday afternoon, you were probably sitting in front of the telly waiting for the system to scroll through 23 screens of information (the old First Division down to the Scottish lower leagues) with each page turning over every 45 seconds. It was a painful business.

Of course, you could have listened to the radio for results, but this presented another minor headache. In the good old days, the major stations would only focus on the biggest matches of the afternoon, with the odd result from the old Second Division thrown in. So there you were, driving home, listening out for the Crystal Palace versus Grimsby score in Division Two, and instead you're having to listen to a live commentary of Sheffield Wednesday versus Nottingham Forest (like I say, it was a long time ago) in the old Division One. Smart alecs might claim that local radio delivered the more specialized commentary services, but it was unlikely that Hull City's local station would pay much lip service to anyone interested in the scores away from their former stadium, Boothferry Park, so if you had a passing interest in anything happening further up the table, you were in trouble.

Something, clearly, had to give. And that something was dignity …

Part III

The Big Bang, Crash, Wallop Theory

To anyone with a bit of media savvy, there was clearly a huge audience requiring a wide range of football info in one place, delivered by a dashing anchorman at fast speeds. Somehow, we arrived at the show we all know and love today, though it hasn't always been called Soccer Saturday, a football show without any live football to watch. Its predecessor was Sports Saturday, a sports show without any sport to watch. This was originally presented by Paul Dempsey, a rather charming man who has now gone to the dark side of Setanta, I believe. Not that I ever watch it, mind. Anyway, my job was to appear on the show once every three weeks as a reserve anchorman, which was a blessing because Sports Saturday was a hideous show and would really only pay lip service to football.

When we did mention ‘the beautiful game’, former Liverpool defender Mark Lawrenson was invited onto the programme as our football expert. For whatever reason, ‘Lawro’ would usually wear the worst waistcoats you had ever seen. At times it was hard not to imagine that he'd dressed in the dark. In his garish fashions, he would talk in the studio for 20 minutes and discuss the day's big games. Then at four thirty - because there seemed to be an unwritten rule on TV at that time that the football scores should start to appear at four thirty - the results would trickle in.

It was a pretty shoddy service, because nobody had kept in touch with the scores throughout the afternoon. If you were a viewer, you had no idea what was going on in any of the games. If you were a presenter, it was highly possible that you were just as confused. It really was a mind-boggling format. Meanwhile, Sky in those days had very little in the way of live sport, apart from the football on a Sunday, which was their big selling point. As a result we would fill Sports Saturday with absolute twaddle or unique features. In fact, some of the so-called ‘features’ I would have to present are burned in my memory.

For example, one afternoon somebody had the bright idea of inviting a synchronized swimming team into the studio. The brief was for the team of a dozen girls to work through their competitive routines, complete with swimming caps, nose pegs, the works. Thankfully we were without water, which for safety reasons would have proved disastrous, but the movements and routines were just as disorientating. For anyone in the studio it was like watching the back four of any team managed by Kevin Keegan as they paraded around the floor inelegantly, waving their arms around and pretending to swim. Anyone actually viewing from the safety of their sofas must have thought, ‘What the bloody hell is this?’ I must admit, I remember shifting uncomfortably in my seat and thinking, ‘What the bloody hell is this?’ myself.

Later, we ran a feature on the Junior Darts Challenge, which killed a bit of time. We covered the UK Strongman Challenge and the quest for Britain's Best Lady Driver, which was obviously a very short item. During the World Cup we had nothing in the way of live coverage because the TV rights had been cornered by ITV and the Beeb. Instead we laid out a cloth Subbuteo pitch on the studio table and for an hour and half – a full 90 minutes! – fellow easy-on-the-eye presenter Suzanne Dando and I flicked a little plastic ball around, recreating the live match on the other channel.

How anyone could have taken this concept seriously was beyond me. In fact, I remember during the early salvos of our ‘match’, I actually knelt down and crushed one of Suzanne Dando's players beyond repair. Somewhat embarrassingly, the producer went absolutely crazy off-camera. I later crushed another with my hand. It was a completely innocent accident, but I received a bollocking for not taking our little game seriously. But how could you? It was a bit like Fred Truman's 1970s show, Indoor League, a programme that focused on pub sports in a studio built to look like a pub. Sadly – or maybe brilliantly, however you wanted to look at it – Sports Saturday was much, much worse. I think if the programme existed now, it would probably have built a cult following.

I remember one Christmas - and I don't know how we got away with this, what with the rules and regulations that govern TV these days - we took a delivery from the Harrods warehouse, which was conveniently located next to the Sky studios. Very kindly, the store had couriered over a box of toys, all of which would be available from Harrods during the festive season at a very reasonable price, or so we were told. Given our desperate need to fill airtime, we decided to spend a couple of hours on Sports Saturday trying out every toy. We even invited former England cricketer Alan Lamb and current panellist Phil Thompson into the studio. Their kids were brought along to try out all the shiny gadgets and, presumably, add some much-needed maturity to the event.

‘Harrodsgate’ was blatant product placement and probably the lowest point of my broadcasting career, particularly when a Velcro hat appeared from one of the boxes. By all accounts it was one of the must-have toys of the year. It worked on the frankly absurd principle of hurling fuzzy balls onto targets marked on the hat. If a ball stuck, the triumphant thrower would score points. It seemed a stupid concept, but in a moment of TV gold, I donned the hat as former cricket legend and upstanding member of his local community Alan Lamb and various members of the studio crew threw balls at my head. It wasn't a particularly glorious image.

Elsewhere, everything was done on the cheap. Different guests would come in to lend their expertise to different sporting events. We used to drag jockeys into the studio for interviews, even though Sky had no horse racing coverage to speak of. Ex-football managers like Brian Horton would show up for two 20-minute windows (before the kick-off and after the final whistle) and stay for the duration of the show. I don't know what sort of fees were on offer, but it couldn't have been enough.

Outside broadcasts would take a particularly surreal turn. Alan Lamb and I were once invited to St Moritz in Switzerland where a yearly horse-racing-on-ice event is held by the locals (believe me, I wish I were making this up). Naturally, we weren't going to pass up a free trip to the Swiss Alps, especially when we discovered there was a local cricket team who were planning on playing cricket-on-ice, too. It was hardly the Winter Olympics, but it promised to be a bit of a giggle.

It wasn't until we got to the train that our usually organized party became embroiled in some minor chaos. It was the bloody slow train from Zurich up into the mountains. Everybody got bored and started to drink. Then we did what any right-thinking, slightly tipsy sports nut would do: we started a cricket match in the corridor of the train carriage. Typically, as with all things Sports Saturday, we didn't have a bat, stumps or ball, so we made do with bags, a brolly and tomatoes. After four overs, the train was splattered in red and resembled a scene from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Only a Velcro hat could have lowered the tone.

It came as no surprise when the Swiss train officials took a dim view of our behaviour. We were informed by a particularly disgruntled guard that the police would be waiting for us on our arrival in St Moritz. I remember thinking, ‘This will not look good.’ By the time we'd arrived everyone had been on their knees cleaning the train. It was spotless and the police were not required, so we'd got off scot-free, which was a relief. Better still, this marked the beginnings of Soccer Saturday as we now know it.

Part IV

1997-98 BC (Before Chris Kamara)

I suppose, after the silly clothes, absurd reports and drunken misdemeanours, it was unsurprising that the show would change. And when some bright spark - I can't remember who exactly, it's been lost in the annals of time - had the idea of plonking four slightly overweight, ex-professional footballers in front of four tellies to report on matches the paying public couldn't see, we seemed to strike gold. It happened in one season, in 1998, and with the show's name changed to Soccer Saturday, we were suddenly working on a more football-based programme, which was a blessing because it would mean no more Velcro hats - or tomato-splattered train carriages. Even better, it seemed to capture the public's imagination, though nobody - not even me -really believed the concept had staying power. Who would want to watch four blokes watching football on the telly in a studio? Nevertheless, I began my role as anchorman on the nation's surrealist football magazine show.

Almost immediately it appeared to be good fun. In those days, Soccer Saturday started at two o'clock in the afternoon. We'd have an hour-long discussion with a panel, including Clive Allen and Mark Lawrenson, George Best, Rodney Marsh and Frank McLintock. It was principally the same idea as the show's current format, but at three o'clock we might move from football for a brief while to look at the horse racing or rugby. As more and more people began to discover that this was the only place to receive a comprehensive round-up of the day's football events, as and when they happened, the viewing figures began to increase.

Soccer Saturday began to develop into a word-of-mouth success – Sky never really promoted the show and some of our popularity came from the comedy of the afternoon. One idea at this point was for the panel to magically disappear from the studio desk at three o'clock. Each panellist would then sit in a little voice booth in another corner of the building to present telephone reports from their respective games. Why they couldn't stay on the panel and deliver their reports from there was beyond me. And why any right-thinking individual would believe that Frank McLintock had travelled from Middlesex to St James' Park to report on his game in the space of 10 minutes would require a massive leap of imagination.

This surreal situation was given an even stranger twist when our pundits piped their reports into the studio. As I introduced a new match, a picture of Rodney Marsh's face, say, would appear on the telly with his name underneath as he recalled the action at Highbury. Despite their close proximity, the phone lines would sometimes go down and we would lose contact, meaning the studio would be thrown into chaos. It was even less technologically-advanced than ‘Andy Townsend's Tactics Truck’ on ITV, and slightly more embarrassing. But only slightly.