is the correct title. And if we pronounced Dirk Kuyt correctly, we'd run the risk of offending every member of the parish, given it sounds uncannily like a swear word Tony Soprano has only ever used once on the telly.
I know the BBC have a pronunciation guide, but crikey, if we stuck to the official pronunciations on Soccer Saturday, the viewers wouldn't have a clue who we were talking about half the time. Anyone who can understand former Evertonian and ex-panellist Peter Reid's scouse dialect would probably have a distinct advantage, however.
‘I Feel Good!’
For those of you unfamiliar with the Hartlepool United squad – and shame on you for not knowing – James Brown is a hotshot striker and a hell of a good player at Victoria Park. Being a bit of a music fan myself – and a pretty appalling karaoke singer to boot - I figured it might be an idea to pay my respects to his goalscoring feats with a rendition of his namesake's hit single ‘I Feel Good’ every time he hit the back of the net. It was funny for us, but I'd imagine Mr Brown must be absolutely sick of hearing about me terrorizing the nation's dogs with my tuneless singing. It's got to the stage where everybody on the panel looks forward to James Brown scoring. The boys even join in sometimes, but we often have to apologize to the sound crew afterwards.
I did take the joke too far on one occasion when, at the 2007/08 PFA Awards, I was asked to host the ceremony. Among a crowd of football stars and dignitaries, I knew there was a big Hartlepool contingent in attendance so I began singing ‘I feeeeeeeeeel gooooood!’ by way of an introduction. My vocal gymnastics were followed by a crashing silence. Clearly, people were thinking, ‘What the hell is he doing?’ God knows what a watching Fabio Capello must have thought. I'm not sure whether he left in disgust or not, but in one small enclave in a faraway corner, a dozen Hartlepool players were going absolutely mental, so it was worth it.
Then along came the doll. You may have seen it - a two-foot-high James Brown replica that sings and dances to the tune of ‘I Feel Good’ and was given its debut on the show on the opening day of the 2008/09 season. I'd just been to open a children's centre in Hartlepool and a guy had waited outside for three hours to give it to me. As he handed it over he said, ‘Please have this for the show and use it when James Brown scores. It'll put a smile back on the face of football.’ Anyway, when I turned it on and it started singing ‘I feeeeeel good!’ I laughed my cap off.
I'd kept this doll completely to myself through the pre-season of 2008/09, but I was determined to use it on the show. Lo and behold on the first day of the campaign, Hartlepool's James Brown scored and the doll made its first appearance. Alan McInally looked completely bewildered as I put it on the desk. But then moments later, James Brown scored again! I remember saying, ‘How sick are you going to be of this by the end of the season?’
The only problem was that James Brown suddenly stopped scoring for Hartlepool. I put the doll in mothballs in a Sainsbury's carrier bag behind my bed. When he hit the back of the net again, the doll was at home and we had to rely on my vocal chords, which felt a bit second-best, it has to be said.
‘It looks like Jelleyman's Thrown A Wobbly!’
I'd noticed Mansfield's Gareth Jelleyman in a match report one week and thought, ‘What a name! Wouldn't it be great if he was sent off one week.’ I wouldn't wish misfortune on any player, but there was clearly a great gag to be made about him ‘throwing a wobbly’. Jelleyman was also a defender, so I figured he was likely to score a red card during the course of a season, but when I looked through his records, blow me if he hadn't been sent off once in six seasons. Worse, or better depending on your point of view, he'd only picked up nine yellow cards in his entire career. Regardless, I had him in my mind just in case.
Then, it happened. In 2005/06, Mansfield Town were winning at home against Cheltenham by a couple of goals. At the end of the afternoon, when the results were coming in, when there's a furious flurry of goals on-screen and when there isn't the time for joking around, up pops the glorious news in red letters at the bottom of the screen: ‘Off: Gareth Jelleyman’. I thought, ‘Yessss! You beauty!’ I dropped everything. ‘Bugger the scores,’ I thought. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Gareth Jelleyman's been sent off! It looks like he's thrown a wobbly!’
It was a cheap gag, but I'd waited a long time for that one to come up. Normally I won't plan the gags in advance, but this time it came to me and seemed to make perfect sense. In a strange twist, Gareth was sent off about three months later, so we had a reprise of the gag. I do hope I wasn't responsible for his bad behaviour.
‘He's scored a rocket!’
Used whenever Ayr's Ryan Stevenson scores and a reference to George Stephenson's Rocket steam engine. (Yes, I know – a bit of artistic licence taken with the spelling of the surname.) Ryan scored 17 during the 2007/08 season, so there were plenty of trains during the year. Which is more than can be said for much of the country.
‘One size Fitz Hall’
One of our earlier jokes, which focused on QPR player Fitz Hall. In fact, this gag didn't come from us and it had been mentioned earlier in the press, but we were the first to use it on national TV. Apparently it was something that everybody in the dressing room called him. People would ask, ‘Why is he called One Size?’ His teammates would respond, ‘Well, because One Size Fitz Hall’. It was a lovely gag and it just ran and ran and ran. A bit like One Size himself.
‘Fuck!’
One of the rare moments I lost my cool on camera. During the 2007/08 season I actually swore under my breath when I'd thought, wrongly of course, that the cameras weren't on me. The trouble stemmed from a match between Hartlepool and Barnet – it's always the ones nearest to you that cause you the most trouble, isn't it? We were in the middle of a very good run, unbeaten in 23 games in fact, and the last team to beat us were Barnet away.
Anyway, the day before the game I'd spoken to a few of the Hartlepool boys on the phone and they'd told me that Barnet were the worst team they had played all season. In fact, one player actually said, ‘How they beat us when we played them, we'll never know.’ Of course, in typical Hartlepool fashion, we went one down on the day. Luckily we managed to equalize in the 80th minute, and I was just about to go to the reporter at Barnet for news of this fantastic goal when I heard something in my earpiece. It wasn't meant for me, but in the background a doom-laden voice shouted, ‘There's been another goal! it's Barnet two, Hartlepool one.’ Imagine my frustration. I now had to throw over to the match reporter with the words, ‘it's not just news of one goal, but two at Underhill.’
Thinking that the screen would have changed to the match statistics, I mouthed the word ‘Fuck’ under my breath, not knowing I was still flashed across telly screens in electrical goods shops up and down the country. On Monday morning I was busted. I took a phone call from the producer asking me if I'd sworn on TV. Vic Wakeling had even received word that I'd lost my cool. I was completely taken aback. The tape was checked and my blunder was discovered. There weren't any complaints – it was hardly a repeat of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross's misdemeanours of 2008 – and I was only showing a bit of passion after all, but the footage was plastered all over YouTube. Of course, one should be professional about these things, and it won't happen again, I promise. Unless we lose to ‘the worst team we've played all season’. Again.
‘How did Agger do-do-do?’
This is a personal tribute to Liverpool player Daniel Agger and 1980s pop group Black Lace, who released the single ‘Agadoo’. Sadly, he'd been out of
