They think it’s a question of fantasy football.

by Rick Johansen

I see the job of a television critic as someone who watches programmes so I don’t have to. Tonight, I have selflessly volunteered to perform the critic’s job myself. I watched a very small part of ITV’s brand new “sports based panel show” called ‘Play To The Whistle’.

For starters, the show is introduced by Holly Willoughby who I vaguely know from some other nondescript show I saw some time ago. The idea is that there are two teams of three ‘personalities’ who answer questions on sport. I had a good idea what the show would be like by merely looking at the cast list. Aside from Ms Willoughby, the team captains were the alleged comedian Bradley Walsh, who I never saw in Coronation Street or in his quiz show ‘The Chase’ and the footballer Frank Lampard. Walsh’s first contribution in the show was to describe WWE wrestling as, and I quote, “shit”, which drew much laughter and a generous round of applause from the studio audience. I am guessing that they either agreed with Walsh, or that they were greatly amused by hearing the word “shit” after the 9.00 pm watershed. Lampard has a pleasant enough personality, is plainly intelligent, something that is certainly not required on this show, and is uniformly bland. But what about the guests?

There was a man called Alex Brooker (sorry, I don’t know who he is), Piers Morgan (sorry, I do know who he is), ‘Arry Redknapp and someone I didn’t recognise. What a glittering line up that was! If I give you an example of what the show was about, listen to this. ITV had dug up some footage from what appeared to be the dark ages, featuring ‘Arry Redknapp in action for West Ham. And what should happen but two young ladies ‘invaded’ the pitch and ran up to embrace the great man. ‘Arry made some unamusing remark about it and – you’d never have guessed it – the two ladies concerned, now of bus passable age, had been found and were reunited with ‘Arry. Laugh? I never started.

Then, two blokes recreated a football incident from the past and the panellists had to guess who was involved in the original one. Who would have thought it? Well, Baddiel and Skinner on Fantasy Football, actually.

In fact, the entire putrid programme is a cheap and nasty recreation of A Question Of Sport, They Think It’s All Over and the aforementioned Fantasy Football. To quote Bradley Walsh, it is “shit”. Do yourself a favour and don’t watch it. If you do, I’m coming for you.

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