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

Somehow, the show survived in this guise for a little while until a producer called Andrew ‘Buzz’ Hornet suddenly struck upon the idea of Soccer Saturday in its modern format. It was blindingly obvious really: rather than moving the panel into phone booths, why not place them in front of TVs on a visible panel so they could relay the match action more visually? With a studio facelift, we were away, and the current format of Soccer Saturday was in place. TV viewers were now watching a programme where four men watched live football on the telly. Almost immediately we realized it was a great idea.

I remember thinking the show had made its mark when I stumbled across a magazine interview with actress Patsy Kensit. In it, she began detailing the ins and outs of her marriage to Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher and described his surreal behaviour on a Saturday afternoon. This didn't involve hell-raising lager binges in his local pub, or hotel-trashing drug orgies. Instead, Liam's strangest act was when his wife found him watching Sky Sports on the telly, as four experts in ill-fitting suits watched football … on the telly. Apparently, she couldn't get her head around it, which was weird because I imagine she'd probably seen some very strange things in the Gallagher household at that time.

‘That's where Liam sits on Saturday afternoon,’ she explained to the journalist. ‘He is mesmerized by that mad programme on Sky where everyone is watching football on tellies you can't see. Honestly, that is the weirdest show I've ever seen and both my husband and my eldest son are riveted to it.’

She wasn't alone. I think a lot of other people felt the same way about Soccer Saturday at the time. Thinking about it, they probably still do.

* Apologies to Bill Bryson

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