take a bow.
Poor old Andy Gray, ever get the feeling he wasn’t that well liked at Sky Sports and that they were quite happy to bin him and his reported £1.7 million salary off?
Political correctness gone mad or a conspiracy or just damn funny and about time?
The middle one first, was he binned so quickly and so easily because he’s currently suing another branch of the Murdoch empire The News Of The World over the phone bugging? Could be, after all the original clip along with all the subsequent follow ups didn’t go out on air, all leaked by an “insider” or in the second case shown out of nowhere by Sky News. Now that would suggest there’s at least one person who doesn’t like him at the station but according to ex-Sky Sports presenter Sam Matterface it probably wasn’t limited to just one…
I’m not really surprised that another incident has come to light. I always had the feeling, even though I had cordial exchanges with him, that he wasn’t very popular among the people he worked with. Sam Matterface
…and the company saw a very easy chance to get rid. Would also explain why Hairy Keys has so far survived when more footage of him has come out.
PC gone mad, well what he and indeed Keys said wasn’t broadcast, in the original and follow up leaks. Sexism, ah one of those magic “ism” words that sticks like mud and can destroy a career. And one of those “ism” words that only seems to go one way, there’s only one gender that can be sexist. Yes it’s just jokey banter when the likes of “Loose Women”, Jo Brand etc. slag off men left right and centre. In adverts how many times have you seen a woman take a mouthful of yogurt that results in a man getting a smack in the knackers. A woman is struggling on with a cold while hubby is poncing it with “man-flu”. One I remember a man is made to undress by his wife in front of her friend and belittled during doing so. Can you imagine the outcry if the roles were reversed. Harriet Harperson would be in a right state.
Yes what they said was sexist, it was also quite pathetic on all occasions, more so Keys, though the comment that Gray wouldn’t trust his colleague’s description of the assistant ref as “a looker” was pretty much spot in her getup at the time. But his tone through it was on the verge of vicious, except where he was asking for help with his mic from another colleague Charlotte Jackson, pictured from one of her what looks like many photoshoots with a lads mag, who kind of revel in the type of comments Gray’s been sacked for.
Their laughter about the Women’s Cup Final in the 90s, well quite frankly it is there to be laughed at, it’s amateur hour at best and if it was men it would be laughed at straight out without trying to hide the fact, much like many an own goal are.
Now the stuff they said about Karen Brady can pretty much be ignored because the chapter in Len Shackleton’s autobiography – “The Clown Prince of Football” 1956 – entitled “The Average Director’s Knowledge of Football” still holds true, whether back then a butcher, baker or candlestick maker old bloke or today a bint from the porn business.
Damn funny and about time, the former very much so the latter yeah and if you listen to the first leaked recording and ignore the sexist remarks for a minute it shows why.
They stated that Kenny [Dalglsh] would go potty when she got the “big one” wrong. Well she got the big one right but if she hadn’t Kenny would have benefited, it would have been his opposite number Mick McCarthy who would have been put out – because the assistant ref got it wrong not that a woman got it wrong.
And that’s Sky Sports and these two all over the little team doesn’t matter, even with the fact Gray played for Wolves the channel is all about Sky’s Big 4. Why else would the likes of Merson, Thompson, Smith or Nicholas be employed, if it’s not for certain teams they played for, it’s certainly not for their use of the English language in making intelligent an insightful comments. That’s of course when they’re not bigging up every game the only time the little teams matter – Super Sunday with Wigan versus Stoke – where nothing is ever bad, no game crap and not worth sticking with, everything is brilliant in “the greatest league in the world”.
And after all it’s something the likes of Gray and Alan Green will have to learn nobody but nobody tunes into a game to listen to them. In this day of technical TV advancement we should have the option of no commentary, just the sound of the crowd – away crowd at the Emptycrates of course. Would be interesting to see the viewing figures for the same game with and without.
Seventeen years of Gray and Keys is enough. Just wonder who’ll they’ll get to replace him, if the front runner is Jamie Redknapp the it would indicate they are interested in someone who spouts inane banalities so could they not just take Alan Shearer off the tax payers hands?
So if Keys does also follow him out the door Andy can spend his time rallying against the world while grooming the hairy one, picking out the nits and eating them but if he finds himself on his own he could search out Big Fat Ron and find a pub somewhere, where they can reminisce about the good old days when you could call a… better not.