And god, it's great, isn't it? I remember that even as a kid, Saturday always held that extra special holiday quality from the minute I woke up in the morning to the moment my head hit the pillow in the evening. For years it was the bus to Hartlepool's Victoria Park ground, the short walk to the stadium, the smell of police-horse dung in the street, the whiff of frying onions, the first pint of the day in the local pub (after my 18th birthday of course), the first glimpse of the pitch, the ref's whistle, the shouting and the screaming and the ranting and the raving. Then there was the half-time pie and the half-time queue for the toilet. This was topped off with some more ranting and raving and screaming and shouting, before the shrill of the final whistle and the inevitable, crushing, demoralizing sting of defeat and the slow trudge home.
I wouldn't change it for anything else. Even now, the thrill of sitting in the hot seat in the Soccer Saturday studio is special. From the moment the first dab of make-up and ‘guy-liner’ has been stroked onto my face, through to the final results and post-match interviews, I'm usually on the edge of my seat, reacting to every goal, gaffe, sending-off, penalty decision and moment of high drama. Of course, it's not quite the same as sitting at Victoria Park in the wind and the rain from the North Sea, but it's up there.
And, of course, I get to spend my Saturday afternoons with some pretty impressive figures in football (and Paul Merson), among them Matt Le Tissier, Charlie Nicholas, Phil Thompson, Clive Allen, George Best, Rodney Marsh, Paul Walsh, Alan Mullery, Frank McLintock and Tony Cottee. And let's not forget our roving reporter, cult (yes, cult) hero and giggling moustachioed friend, Chris ‘Kammy’ Kamara. Who wouldn't want to shoulder this cast of football superheroes on a Saturday?
Over the years, the show has picked up quite a following. Hopefully, you're one of the lovely, lovely many who tune in every week. If you're not, the next 200-plus pages are going to be bloody confusing, though you should glean some joy from the nice illustrations. But if you're familiar with the show, hopefully the book will give you a little insight into the madness that goes into making your Saturday afternoons every bit as exciting as mine …
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