I hate the bloke, the most overrated man on radio IMO. However I thought to myself that you cannot criticise unless you listen.
My god the blokes got worse. So self indulgent and arrogant. Moaned straight away that he only had an hour then proceeded to waffle on for 11 minutes before the first caller.
Why does he try to be so clever? He's not, he's a prat.
I've now given up.
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Last night was a welcome change from muppets like Lovejoy, and it reminded me how talented a radio person Danny Baker is.
Thankfully Baker can inject some decent humour into the programme which has got to be a good thing.
That's what's good about Baker. It's not about "It was the ref's fault" or "I say sack the manager" phone calls.
The stuff he did like "what's the most dangerous place you've ever played football?" was great when someone rang in about playing on a mine field.
It's different and unpredictable so people who think Jonathan Palace is good obviously aren't going to get it.
However, Chirpy's opinion is very valid too - I was listening last night and good point about moaning about only having an hour and wasting so much of it. Sometimes all that is good about DB is undone by his self-appreciation. He walks a fine line between originality and self-indulgence and I've quite often got fed up and switched off.
No love, no joy
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WSC 250 Dec 07
Helen Chamberlain’s former sidekick has celebrated leaving Soccer AM for 6.06 with a book. Taylor Parkes wants to know why anyone – anyone – thought it was a good idea to expose the presenter’s ego and prejudices across 288 smugly written pages
Soccer AM is a bad memory: hungover mornings in other people’s flats, disturbed by a crew of whooping simpletons, the slurping of pro and ex-pro rectums, cobbled-together comedy that made me long for the glory days of Skinner and Baddiel’s old shit. Yet Tim Lovejoy himself, with his fashionably receding hair and voice oddly reminiscent of Rod Hull’s, I remember only as an averagely blokey TV presenter – in fact, one of the few averagely blokey TV presenters to make me clack my tongue in irritation, rather than buff my Gurkha knife. Other than as a namesake of The Simpsons’ self-serving man of the cloth, he barely registered; just a bland, blond ringmaster in a cocky circus of crap. Almost a surprise, then, to find that his new book is not just tedious in the extreme, it is utterly vile.
Chopped into “chapters” that barely fill a page, in a font size usually associated with books for the partially sighted, Lovejoy on Football is part autobiography, part witless musing, and one more triumph for the crass stupidity rapidly replacing culture in this country. Hopelessly banal and nauseatingly self-assured, smirkingly unfunny, it’s a £300 T-shirt, a piss-you-off ringtone, a YouTube clip of someone drinking their mate’s vomit. Its smugness is a corollary of its vacuity. I hope it makes you sick.
First, it’s clear that being Tim Lovejoy requires a very special blend of arrogance and ignorance. When he’s not listing his media achievements with a breathtaking lack of guile, he’s sneering at those “sad” enough to take an interest in football history, revealing his utter cluelessness about life outside the Premier League (in a section called “Know Your Silverware”, he refers to “League Three”) and making sundry gaffes, major and minor. He names Johan Cruyff as his all-time favourite player, then admits he’s only seen that five-second World Cup clip of the Cruyff turn. Grumbling about footballers’ musical tastes, he complains that “all you’ll hear blasting out of the team dressing room is R&B, rather than what the rest of the country is listening to” – by which he means indie bands. Everywhere there are jaw-dropping illustrations of insularity, self-satisfaction and a startlingly small mind.
There’s something sinister here, too: beamingly positive, thrilled by wealth, too pleased with himself to ask awkward questions, Tim Lovejoy is the football fan Sepp Blatter has been waiting for. Roman Abramovich’s darling young one. Not least for his complacency: his lack of understanding of how football works (and doesn’t work) is best illustrated in a section called “Give Your Chairman A Break”, in which he defends “that Thai bloke at Man City”, and implores us to “look at the Glazers... you would have thought they were nothing but a bunch of Americans intent on buying the club and selling off Old Trafford to Tesco judging by the howl of protests from the fans. Within two seasons though, they had won the title and built a squad the envy of Europe.” Bang your head off the wall at such unreviewable stupidity – Tim’s infantile ideas of shunning “negativity” prod him into precisely the kind of thinking that has had such hugely negative influence on the game. “Look across our national team” – he means England, by the way – “and there isn’t one player who wouldn’t walk into any side in Europe... why is it, before every tournament, we start believing we’re overrated?”
And, surprise: Lovejoy is as wretched a starfucker as could be inferred from his television shows. Everyone in football is Tim’s mate (and here we have pictures to prove it, stars looking confused in his grinning, over-familiar presence, frozen by an arm around the shoulders). He’ll “even watch the occasional game of rugby now, because I’m friends with a lot of the players like Will Greenwood, Matt Dawson, Lawrence Dallaglio and Austin Healy”.
It’s perhaps telling that among the many anecdotes offered here, the most heartwarming (and least surprising) involves Tim getting clattered hard by Neil Ruddock in a charity game; even in this version of the story, there’s nothing to suggest Razor meant it affectionately. Still, our man is blinded by quite astonishing hubris, reprinting a photo of a banner at Anfield reading “LOVEJOY SUCKS BIG FAT COCKS” with a glee that is nothing like self-deprecation. “The hardest thing about leaving Soccer AM,” he says regretfully, “is the thought that I might no longer be influencing the game.” True, it’ll be tough. But who knows? Perhaps the game will struggle on.
It’s not that there was ever a time when football on telly wasn’t in the hands of dimwits, poseurs and blowhards. It’s not that Lovejoy is significantly more objectionable than TV shits of ages past. The point is, in his own mind and that of the powers that be, he’s one of us. He is us. Savour that. God help us.
He never failed to make me cringe with embarrassment, Soccer AM was a insult to ones intelligence IMHO, a missed opportunity if ever there was one.
I would watch it for a few minutes from time to time in morbid curiosity, just to see if they were dishing up the same old crap and yep, they were.
Slightly improved with the new guy at the helm but still not on my must watch list. Helen Chamberlain battles on manfully it must be said,if that's the right word.
Spot on. What about the woman who had slept with the footballers. That was funny and the boy with the wooden bow tie in Dundee Utd Colours.
I agree (apart from the bit about Chirpy's opinion being valid bit which clearly it isn't : - ) ) as he does drift off into left field. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I also think he needs a good foil to play off which is why Danny Kelly was good with him but Kelly is terrible on his own
Some people are so jealous.
I can hear Danny's voice now incredulously repeating, "A wooden bow tie, a wooden bow tie..... ladies and gentlemen, a wooden bow tie".
I personally liked the best names for non-league clubs; A3 Milan being a wonderful example from the Hampshire area.
Whoa up there pal, you're way off the pace with that one!
My bruv and I used to be in stitches watching it but when you quoted them it was pure tumbleweed - or maybe that was just the company we used to keep!!!
"...he was caught in two minds - Abbot's and Costello's." A corker!!
To name each country at Euro 2008 after callers pets names is just not up my street.
I'd rather just have a few experts talking about the games and dump the callers alltogether.
" Right, I want people to own minutes of the remaining fixtures....when Germany play Portugal or whatever, in the 18th minute I want Steve of Wanstead to say I own this part of the match"
????
Danny you're trying too hard to be funny.
You were funny once - when you fell down that grass bank on It'll Be Allright On The Night 47.
As I said earlier :
Me thinks the lady doth protest too much. At it again Chirpy? Go on admit it, you secretly find it too entertaining too miss don't you?
Remember this was the man who helped make Janet Street Porter famous with 20th Century Box and the televisual pioneer that single-handedly resurected Terry Nutkins' career with Pets Win Prizes. For these acts alone he should have got a Perrier award. He is a comedy icon. Of course I share your misgivings about his spannerishness, but funny? Of course he is.
you tell him.........
new bloke taking over from andy goldstein on soccer am. seems average.
If you still appreciate his humour then tune into BBC London every weekday , 3-5pm for his show. Just as good as 606 was if you are into that sort of thing. (which I am)
I shouldnt have stopped the "mexican" from stabbing theTwat in the Saigon restuarant in 88.
Love him or hate him ? errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ?????????????????????????????????????? yep its hate.
Hardly.
I'll be checking up on the cretin again next time though.