1.7 Million Years BC

A week on from Linogate and the world of football is still reeling from the shock that at long last Richard Keys has said something interesting.

Clearly inspired by the work of Steve Coogan, Keys took parody to a new level with his brilliant take on Alan Partridge. All that was missing was the sports blazer as he tried to ingratiate himself with the old pros with his clumsy attempts at lad talk. I now won’t be able to hear the phrase “smash it” without thinking of Jamie Redknapp wriggling uncomfortably in his chair. Tennis commentary will never be the same again.

And as for Andy Gray, never mind the Jurassic banter, what about that reported salary? 1.7 million! As a dish owner I demand a refund. I don’t mind paying for ads with the production values of a Hollywood mini series or subsiding the golf club fees of a generation of grizzled ex players, but to think that all these years Gray has been trousering mega bucks for squiggling on a screen and saying “take a bow son” at the end of every match.

Thank God someone at Sky was thoughtful enough to leave the tape running and to have some more examples of smut handily stored for easy access. Maybe it’s not too much to hope that this could be the start of a general purge of the old guard in punditry. One look at the smug troupe lolling on the sofas on MOTD suggests that their off-air badinage could be similarly damaging in the current climate.

However please draw the line at Motty. I fear there’s things going on inside his head that are best left unexposed.