Please, give us some pundit-free football coverage – The Keswick Reminder

Nobbut Laiking, by Ross Brewster

It is so simple. The answer to all the tedious waffle being spouted by the experts during the European Championships.

Let’s have a pundit-free football channel. Ditch all those overpaid ex-players, forget the worry about diversity and equality, and give it to us plain and simple — just pure football.

I don’t blame Wayne Rooney for bunking off less than half-way through the tournament after suddenly remembering he had a team to manage in Plymouth.

I reckon some of the pundits had run out steam long before the end of the group stages. Not that they had much of interest to impart.

A lot of familiar voices have disappeared from the commentary rosters since last season. I only wish one of those that remained could stop saying “at this moment in time”, all the time.

I think the BBC edge the boredom stakes, although I’m backing ITV to equalise before full-time is called.

Why is it that television has the most annoying voices when there are so many far better on the good old wireless?

Cuppa load of this

Perhaps the continentals are a bit less serious with their football punditry at the Euros.

German TV had Bastian Schweinsteiger, one of the host nation’s best known old boys, doing the comments on the touchline before one of the games.

With a microphone in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, Schweinsteiger proceeded in all innocence to begin delivering his match summary into the coffee.

He continued until the presenter pointed out his mistake and a hand appeared stage left to grab the hot cup.

Dangers of heading the ball

He has been my footballing hero since I was a schoolboy, but times are a bit tough these days for Hugh McIlmoyle.

Co-incidentally I have just been reading a new book by a journalistic friend, Mike Amos, which deals with the disturbing incidence of dementia among former footballers. The outcome, distinguished medics agree, of excessive heading in younger days.

The book, No Brainer, is the story of Bill Gates, once a centre half with Middlesbrough, later a millionaire businessman and philanthropist, whose latter years were spent suffering from a cruel illness that condemns its victims to a state of mental darkness.

Hugh McIlmoyle, who once strode the pastures of Brunton Park like a prince, was at one time a team-mate of Gates. He now has what has become known as “the footballers’ disease”.

I had the pleasure of meeting my hero when I worked as a football writer. I sometimes bumped into him in Carlisle, or at the races or doing some hospitality work for his old club. Always a most popular figure.

Hugh didn’t seem to age much. But sadly all that heading balls must have taken its toll. He is now in a care home near Leicester, where his football career began. He still gets taken once a week to participate in a walking football group. No headers allowed.

Football has been slow to recognise the danger. The FA declined to engage with the Bill Gates book. How could headers, an integral part of the game, be restricted. Or banned altogether from youth football.

The evidence is growing. Ex-professionals are five times more susceptible to developing the disease than the general population. But dementia is not limited to ex-professionals and the old. It does not discriminate.

No contact sport is perfectly safe. But at least now so much more is known about the connection with football and rugby. It’s sad that such a heavy price has been paid by the likes of Bill Gates and Hugh McIlmoyle, who played the game with such joy, for increasing our knowledge of the risks.

No laughing matter for BBC director of comedy

My sympathies lie with the BBC’s director of comedy Jon Petrie in a real-life W1A moment during a Q and A session at the Comedy Showhome.

W1A was the brilliantly observant series about life at the Beeb. Had they known it was going to represent the organisation as a woke shambles they might not have been so keen to invite Hugh Bonneville and pals into the inner sanctum.

Mr Petrie was stunned into silence when a journalist asked if he liked Mrs Brown’s Boys, and would he watch it unless he had to.

The questioner suggested taking that as a “no”. I think I would have been more forceful declaring this vulgar, unfunny series without doubt the worst thing on the box.

I’m probably upsetting lots of readers who are great fans of cross-dressing family matriarch Brendan O’Carroll’s character.

The show is coming up to its 50th episode, so maybe I’m missing something.

However viewing numbers suggest not. At its viewing peak in 2013 Mrs Brown attracted 11.4 million. Since then audiences have steadily declined. For the 2023 Christmas special there were 3.67 million viewers.

I certainly enjoy repeats of Father Ted, a very different whimsical Irish comedy. Such a shame the early demise of actor Dermot Morgan, who played Ted, meant no more episodes were made.

The mayhem as a dozen priests found themselves trapped in the lingerie department of a major store before Ted led them to safety. Now that was a comedy classic.