Seven football TV shows they absolutely have to make

Steven Chicken

We’re a bit worried that sooner or later, John Nicholson – nominated for an FSF award this year, just like us – is going to run out of football shows to talk about for his weekly column, so we’ve come up with some new ones ourselves.

 

7) Holmes Under The Hammer
Game show, filmed on an IKEA bunk bed.

On the bottom bunk, Eamonn Holmes interviews a series of ever-more-obscure former West Ham players laid on the top bunk without being able to see each other’s increasingly disdainful facial expressions.

To add an element of jeopardy, if Holmes is unable to guess the identity of the player within 30 minutes, large men wearing rubber Dion Dublin masks will rappel from the ceiling and smash the shit out of the guest with hammers. As both men are strapped to their bunks, Holmes is forced to listen to every excruciating moment.

Episode 1: Rufus Brevett.

 

6) It’s A Game Of Given Takes
Game show, with the Supremes’ You Can’t Hurry Love as its theme song.

The basis for this show is the existing and hugely heteronormatively-titled Mr & Mrs (known elsewhere as The Newlywed Game). For the uninitiated, it goes like this: two members of a couple are isolated, interrogated as to their preferences, and then earn points for correctly guessing how their partner answered. It is, admittedly, much more light-hearted than I have made it sound.

The twist here is that rather than playing with their spouse, every contestant is paired with Shay Given, having spent a week living in a remote farmhouse with the former Blackburn, Newcastle, Manchester City and Aston Villa goalkeeper and being forced to carry out a series of challenges in the Taskmaster mould. There are no football questions; the point of the game is to discover the man behind the gloves.

The fun part is that the viewer would get to know Given in minute detail over the series’ 13-week run, with each new show peeling off a new layer of humanity that will endear us all to him. Either that or the isolation and constant social pressure will drive him a bit mad and he will become increasingly difficult to get along with. Either way, it’s good telly.

 

5) They Think It’s All Ova
Travel cookery show.

Noted egg enthusiast Joe Allen talks us through his favourite meringues, omelettes and carbonara dishes. Every week he must work with a different animal\s eggs, starting with the humble hen and graduating all the way to caviar.

The catch: he must harvest each set of eggs personally. Every episode features him being chased by packs of angry chickens, ostriches, swans, snakes, etc. Particularly memorable is episode 3, where he tries to steal pigeon eggs from an allotment belonging to genuine pigeon-fancier Mike Tyson.

Will he get away before the former heavyweight champion catches him? Is all the trouble worth it? And, most importantly, will Joe still love eggs just as much by the end of this terrifying journey of the soul?

 

4) Keane As Mustard
Game show. Chris Kamara presents.

Every week a member of the public tries to convince, trick or goad noted football hard man Roy Keane into eating an entire jar of English mustard in one go, by whatever means necessary. If they manage to do so, they win £10,000.

Roy starts the show resolutely declaring that he will not eat the mustard. No way. Not this week. But after 30 minutes of the contestants questioning his manhood for refusing to do so, every show ends with him shirtless, beard and chest caked with mustard, screaming ‘ARE YOU HAPPY NOW? I’VE EATEN THE BASTARD MUSTARD’ into the face of Pauline from Hartlepool or John from Stroud. One week he says “bustard mastard” by mistake and everyone laughs so he eats a second jar just to spite them and has to go to hospital.

 

3) Three Lie-Ins
Early Sunday morning discussion show.

This is a straight rip-off of WWE’s excellent Table For 3 series, only instead of three wrestlers connected by a (sometimes tenuous) theme having dinner and chatting out of character, it’s three England footballers – past and present – having a little slumber party and chatting about whatever they like.

Imagine Peter Reid, Harry Maguire and Stuart Pearce wearing Wee Willy Winky-style nightcaps and tell me this isn’t better than Sunday Supplement.

 

2) Keane Intellect
Dark comedy drama.

Everton defender Michael Keane has decided to jack in professional football and pursue his lifelong dream of attending Oxford University to study Criminology. To save money, he moves back in with his parents, the doting Robbie and curmudgeonly Roy, who is dead against the move and constantly tries to devise ways to toughen up young Michael. He is especially angry after having been made to eat all that mustard.

Things take a turn for the tragic towards the end of episode two, when Roy takes Michael to the set of Holmes Under The Hammer and tries to force him into a rubber Dion Dublin mask to beat the shit out of Craig Forrest. Instead, Michael turns the hammer on Roy and bludgeons him to death in the dressing room.

Michael wants to come forward, but Robbie insists they must cover up their misdeed. Will sweet-faced and good-hearted young Michael be able to keep it together – especially with his suspicious FBI-veteran professor hot on his heels?

 

1) An all-Phil Jones edition of Total Wipeout

Come on.

 

TV producers can contact Steven Chicken on Twitter to discuss any of these incredible ideas.