I can't remember a time when football wasn't taken very seriously. I think it goes back to the time when Peter Dimmock used to introduce Grandstand. In those days, they didn't have the technology for actually showing sport, so they used to fill the half hour with posh gits in suits talking bollocks in a very self important fashion.

It was a bit like the Radio 4 Today programme, only not so light hearted.

A sports programme with no sport in it. Only the English would have stood for it. Its wonder they didn't make us queue up in our own houses to see it.