talk to you about their club, which is great because it sometimes gives me the inside track on what the fans think about various issues affecting them and I can use the info for Soccer Saturday or Goals on Sunday.
You might get one or two idiots who say, ‘You hate our club and never say anything nice about us.’ I only say what I see: if a club does well, I shout it from the rooftops; if it’s not so good, then I say so. Thankfully those people are in the minority, but they’re wrong. I don’t hate any team. I don’t support any particular one either, but they don’t seem to take any notice when I tell them that. Leeds fans think I should be more like Jeff when he talks about Hartlepool, because I used to support Leeds as a kid. My old school-mate Steve Gibson, the Middlesbrough chairman, used to think when I was talking about Boro on the TV I was more against them than for them! Yes, they are my home-town club and he is my big pal, but I’m really 100 per cent unbiased. Unlike Matt Le Tissier, who wears Southampton socks under his Soccer Saturday desk when he’s working.
When we returned from Japan, we were all aware of just how popular Soccer Saturday had become. It also dawned on me that my vocabulary was quite limited and I should have made more of my time at St Thomas’s School in Middlesbrough. Still, I decided to play up to the ‘Unbelievable, Jeff’ saying from then on, as did Jeff. On New Year’s Day during the 2003–04 season, I remember, I was commentating on the game between Manchester United and Wolves. Of course, I shouted ‘Unbelievable, Jeff!’ in my report. When the producers flipped back to the studio, Jeff looked into the camera, his face deadpan. ‘There you have it,’ he said. ‘Chris Kamara, the first unbelievable of 2004.’
Each year it has become customary to film a Soccer Saturday Christmas Special, which is always light-hearted and great fun to record. A few years ago, we had an athletics challenge in the style of Superstars. If you’re too young to remember the original, it was a programme made in the 1980s where sportsmen from various fields competed in a mini-Olympics competition. The events included running, swimming and cycling. I remember Kevin Keegan spectacularly left his bike during one heat and injured himself quite badly. Thank God he was wearing a helmet … or maybe he wasn’t – it could have been his hair. I think Bryan Robson had a bash too and came away unscathed: not bad for a bloke who could break his collarbone on A Question of Sport with ease.
Our competition was just as chaotic. When I jumped into the swimming pool, I was wearing children’s luminous plastic armbands and splashed around pretending to be struggling. A concerned Alan McInally immediately dived in to help me to the side of the pool. Much to the lads’ annoyance, when the race started for real I powered forward like Michael Phelps in top form, leaving Rodney Marsh, Charlie Nicholas, Jeff Stelling and Matt Le Tissier in my wake. McInally won the race, but I am sure he jumped the gun!
Much later, for the 2009 special, the programme was a cookery-themed competition called Making a Meal of it. We had pinched the format from Ready, Steady, Cook – the programme presented by Ainsley Harriot on the Beeb – and the producers threw Alan McInally, Matt Le Tissier, Phil Thompson and me into a fancy kitchen to see who could cook the best festive dish.
On the day we were working with superstar Italian cook Gino D’Acampo, who had recently finished first in I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here. Gino was on hand to taste the dishes as we cooked them. He had just spent two weeks eating rats, bugs and kangaroo’s testicles in the Australian jungle, but even he couldn’t stomach the delicacy I had to offer. Maybe my offering did taste worse than kangaroo’s knackers, but to be honest I have no idea and no intention of finding out by comparing them.
It didn’t help that we were nicknamed ‘The Chef-chenkos’ for the show. For those of you unfamiliar with cheap puns, the name came from Andriy Shevchenko, the former AC Milan and Chelsea striker, and it proved spot-on. When it came to our Italian cuisine, we were sharp, lethal and too hot to handle. Our English dishes were flat, cold and pretty wide of the mark.
I opted to make a turkey curry. I can tell you it’s a traditional dish, passed through several generations of Kammys… So – if you’re reading this, Delia Smith, I’m really, really sorry – come on, turkeys, let’s be having you.
Sounds great so far, right? Well, Gino reckoned it was the worst thing he had ever tasted. Our judges for the day, A-list restaurant owner Aldo Zilli and Jeff, awarded me only one point, which was amazing because Jeff will eat just about anything, especially if he’s had a glass of wine or three. The competition was eventually won by Alan McInally, who made a knockout fish supper with black pudding. He had really taken to the challenge, mainly because ‘The Big Man’ (as he’s nicknamed) had just scored himself a new girlfriend. He’d been seriously working on his culinary techniques as he wined and dined her. Judging by my work that day, the Kammy romancing skills clearly weren’t up to scratch because people thought I was taking the mickey.
To be fair, I first cooked the dish at home with Mrs Kammy, and it was lovely. I thought I was on to a winner, but when we got to the studio kitchen, we were told that we only had 20 minutes in the kitchen each. I was worried. The Kammy Curry took over an hour to make. The producers said it would be fine, and our sous-chefs would do the work for us in advance. I was messing around, thinking that I already had the finished product in the bag and I only had to add the final ingredients.
‘Sit back and relax, pal,’ I said to Gino as I tightened my apron strings. ‘You’re going to learn something here.’
I don’t think he could believe what he was hearing. He began shouting at me. ‘What sort of stock are you cooking with?’
I shrugged my shoulders.
‘What do you mean you don’t know what stock it is?’ said Gino in disbelief. ‘Every chef worth his salt knows what stock he’s using. What is it, Kammy?’
I couldn’t help myself. ‘Laughing stock.’
He was impressed and giggled out loud. Gino wasn’t wowed by my cooking, though. He took one taste of the Kammy Curry and pulled a face at the camera. ‘I am not eating this,’ he said. ‘Oh my God, it tastes like sheet.’
This wasn’t the first curry disaster I had caused either. When I was a young player at Pompey, my dad virtually lived off his home-made African curries at home. It wasn’t unusual for him to make one and leave it in a pot for me to reheat when I got home. He lived in Middlesbrough with my mam, and when I got back from the south coast it was always a little taste of heaven.
One night during my first close-season break back in the Boro, an old school-mate Denis Alderson and I came back from a heavy night out in the town and put the pot of curry on the stove. We both fell asleep on the sofa. As we drifted in and out of consciousness, the pan caught fire and a small blaze started. Thankfully mam smelt the fumes and came down to rescue us. It was a close shave. Definitely the hottest curry Middlesbrough had ever known – so hot it nearly set fire to the street!
My stint as a ‘Chef-chenko’ was nowhere near as dangerous, though I have to say, Gino was right. The Kammy Curry – OK, the Kammy-kazi curry if you like – did taste like ‘sheet’. I’m just pleased I didn’t poison anyone! It would have left a bad taste in their mouths.
UNBELIEVABLE, JEFF!
This is probably as good a time as any to tell you about another famous phrase and explain the title of the book. When I claimed that Spurs were ‘fighting like beavers’ in 2007, the jokes came flying in. It happened during a north London derby at White Hart Lane and I have no excuses at all. It was a total blunder. I distinctly remember it was the first half of the game, Spurs were a goal ahead, but Arsenal had them well pinned back in their penalty area. The studio
