Sean Ingle

Ingle all the way

Sit up straight, arms folded, behave yourself and no talking at the back. We've only got the Guardian.co.uk's Sports Editor (Editor!) on the line. Sean Ingle, for it is he, has been doing that job for six years, been working there for ten and, furthermore, he's bloody good at it.

You'll know by now that I keep going back to the well marked 'Guardian' for these interviews. That's because to my mind, nobody comes close to matching their output. Factor in the Football Weekly podcast and The Fiver and it not only enriches our knowledge and enjoyment of football - it makes us chortle along the way. What's not to like in that?

If you're aware of a better career progression than Sean's - starting with working for Motor Cycle News, Fore! and Total Sport before becoming Guardian Sports Editor and sitting in on Maradona press conferences at World Cup finals - then drop us a line. Anyway, enough of me for now, aside from some mandatory poor questioning, it'll be Ingle all the way:

Hi Sean, thanks for talking to EFW. Are you looking forward to the new season or do you need a long break after the World Cup? No worries – I am a big fan of the site. When I was younger I travelled as a punter to Milan, Prague, Rome and Madrid to watch games with mates so I know where you’re coming from. We’d always book the most ridiculously cheap and early flight, usually from Stansted, sleep three to a room, walk around a city till our feet were red-raw and blistered and take in a match, on the terraces if possible. Sound familiar? Being pelted with coins and bottles by away fans while watching the likes of Zidane, Nedved and many greats as Lazio took on Juventus in 2001 was one of many, many highlights - and it’s not every day you’re flashed while walking back from the San Siro with Sid Lowe after watching Milan v Juve … but that’s another story for another day.


Regarding the break, I personally think that the one good idea Sepp Blatter has ever had is a global calendar with one month off every year – and I certainly wouldn’t mind a bit more of a break before the new season. This piece written in 2006, sums up how I feel: “Football has become a year-round fandango, the baton passed from one season to the next with the blurring speed of a sprint relay … Football in the summer months used to be anonymous. Players would run hills and shed pounds, amble through a few low-key friendlies and then the season would start. TV companies were rarely interested in pre-season matches. When ITV started showing the Makita International in the late 1980s it was an exotic curiosity, like Andy Cole in an Arsenal shirt … [But] there are better things to do in July. Enjoy the summer sports, go to the seaside, become reacquainted with your family - anything. Because it is only when you are deprived of something you love - and, yes, that includes football - that you truly miss it.”


What was your World Cup highlight both on and off the park? The best game I saw in the flesh was Uruguay v Ghana, although I was also fortunate enough to be at Slovenia v USA, Spain v Chile and Cameroon v Denmark. Of the 13 games I went to, there were only two absolute stinkers – Slovenia v Algeria and Paraguay v Japan – so I was pretty lucky. An off-the-park highlight is trickier, because I only had one day off in four weeks and my routine was basically get up, live blog for a few hours, drive to a press conference/write a preview piece for the paper, report on a match, bed, and repeat. So, from a small list, it’d either be the giddy exuberance in South Africa when Bafana Bafana drew their opening game or visiting the Apartheid museum.


You had a few problems finding your seat at a couple of matches which caused a bit of amusement back here. Was the tournament well organised or organised chaos for the media? Apart from two incidents in Pretoria – being assigned a seat No13 that didn’t exist (there was a 12 and a 14 but no 13!) and being given a ticket in row of seats that just weren’t there – everything went fairly smoothly. The media are spoilt at World Cups: there are TVs on every desk that show highlights and live stats, wi-fi to research and file, and you even get free bottles of water when its hot, so we can’t complain. But reporting from games is generally much easier than it was when I started out. For evening games back in the day reporters had to phone copytakers - always lovely Northern ladies - before the match with teams and formations, at half-time with half the copy, on 70 minutes with another chunk of text and on 85 minutes with the top and tail. It wasn't easy doing it from places like Millwall when you could hardly make yourself heard over the din - and it was a nightmare when nothing happened before half-time and then there were lots of late goals.


So how long after a match are you expected to have your report online? We have to file on, or sometimes just before, the final whistle, which is fine for match reports but sometimes trickier for blogs/sidebar pieces when an obvious subject doesn’t suggest itself in the first half. There were a couple of times when I had 400 words still to write with 20 minutes to go and experienced mild panic - until several shots of adrenaline kicked in and everything was suddenly all right. I should also mention that we get an hour after the final whistle for a rewrite, which allows us to bring in managers’ quotes and – hopefully – add a little finesse to the prose.


Move over Paul the octopus, you were the real star of the World Cup predictions weren't you? I did pretty well tipping Spain to beat Holland in the final, England to be knocked out in the second round, Uruguay to do better than everyone expected, David Villa to be top scorer, and the lack of technology ruining a couple of big games. But while watching a lot of world football certainly helped realistically assess most teams' chances, I’m not kidding myself: there was a lot of luck involved too.


A lot of the television pundits took a critical kick to the jubulanis. Would you like to exchange your laptop for a place on the Match of the Day sofa? No. Anyone who has seen my infrequent appearances on TV would agree that it’s best that I stick to editing, writing, and occasionally podcasting on Football Weekly.


A recent report in the New York Times suggested online journalists are facing an early burnout becoming frantic and fatigued at the fast moving nature of new media. How is your health old chap? I was a bit frazzled after the World Cup, but that was only to be expected after so many 12-16 hour days. And it's the World Cup so you've got to give it everything. But journalism is changing: there are very few 'paper' and 'online' journalists at the Guardian any more - most people work for whatever platform needs them. That clearly brings certain challenges, but the Guardian is very conscientious about paying back lieu days and making sure its staff get adequate time off. And it is certainly sounds a nicer place to work than some other publications I know of, where 9am-9pm shifts can be the norm.


Do you have time to read any football blogs? I read several regularly - including yours, Zonal Marking, Arseblog etc - as well as popular club message boards.


The Football Weekly Podcast is an absolute gem. Do you get time to listen to your competition; Football Ramble, Game Podcast, Two Footed Tackle, The Real FA Cup etc and indeed etc? Not as much as I probably should. I usually listen to Football Ramble and the Game podcast most weeks but that’s about it.


Nailing our colours to the mast, we belong to Jimbo here at EFW. Do you? James Richardson is brilliant. He’s knowledgeable, funny, stiletto-heel sharp - and, just as importantly, he’s just like that off screen too. I’m amazed that a mainstream broadcaster isn’t paying him gazillions to front their football coverage. I've heard it said he's too highbrow for the mainstream but that's surely ridiculous. Do we really want to live in a world where presenters and pundits trade cliches and monosyllables?


I couldn't agree more. Anyway, hang on a minute - what's all this about a 'Pirate Shop' in Kings Cross that you visit? Is that Glendenning on the wind up or is there something you should be telling us? Barry is definitely winding you up there. What else did he tell you?!


Erm....*thinking quickly* I hear you're actually quite a handy player yourself? I was decentish when I was a kid. I played in goal for my county from U13 to U19 level and had trials with a couple of league clubs, but ultimately I just wasn’t good enough.


With respect to, ahem, Motor Cycle News, you must be happier covering football nowadays. Do you follow any other sports? I hated living in Kettering and knew nothing about motorbikes, but I learned a hell of a lot at Motor Cycle News. Several of the staff were 30-something blokes who had worked on national newspapers, and so standards were high. I could have done without being ridden around the outskirts of Kettering on a Honda Super Blackbird at 155mph as part of my initiation, mind. As for other sports, I follow pretty much all of them – particularly boxing, tennis and darts – although F1 does nothing for me.


As we speak you're approaching 10,000 Twitter followers - incidentally, you have 100 more than Barry Glendenning - is the Guardian office a competitive place or do you pretend you're not too bothered by it all? Is it that many? I use TweetDeck so it’s not immediately apparent. Let me check on Twitter.com now. Ah, you're spoofing me - it's not even 9,000! I can honestly say that Barry and I have never discussed our number of Twitter followers. Our betting success, or lack of, come Monday morning on the other hand ...


Should we pay to read your online work on The Guardian website? 'Should we pay' is less important than 'Will people pay'. Because the evidence so far suggests they won't, unless it's specialised content. I'm not ideologically opposed to the Times' paywall. It's just a practical thing: people have got used to getting content for free and I can't see that changing any time soon. So, we're left with the billion dollar question: can newspaper websites sites make enough in online advertising and sponsorship to cover the decline in paper sales and classified ads? That's the road the Guardian has gone down and, for the sake of all of us in the industry, I hope it works. If not, my fear is that there may not be a right way; and that all roads - paywall, free, whatever - will lead to the same ending. Death.


Philosophically I agree with David Mitchell's recent piece in The Observer that "we have to find a way of continuing to pay journalists and editors for professionally produced content". Because without adequate recompense, how does David Leigh have the time to expose Jonathan Aitken's lies? How can David Conn afford to spend days digging through a football club's accounts to expose wrongdoing? And Jonathan Wilson, good though he is, would not know nearly as much about football tactics if he hadn't spent years interviewing the likes of Arrigo Saachi and other top coaches across Europe. Good journalism usually costs.


That's it Sean, thanks again for your time and keep up the splendid work old chap. No worries. But I'm surely not that old - I have a couple of years on Barry Glendenning, Rafa Honigstein and James Richardson!

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John Ashdown

ASH FOR QUESTIONS

John Ashdown is a burglar. He is in fact part of a sophisticated team of burglars who operate from a Kings Cross hideout in London village. John and his pals use their cunning skills to rob of our time everyday. How many times during your working day have you tried to shield your pc from your boss because instead of rolling the Yen you're sneaking a look at the sports pages on the Guardian website?

"Everything is hunky dory, Japan can sleep tight" I say to the aforementioned boss whilst trying not to scratch my nose or blink. These lies are for a good reason though. Ashdown has got a shoe in each of the following delights; The knowledge, Today In Sport, The Fiver (of course The Fiver), daily transfer gossip and a plethora of other gubbins and, furthermore, the whole Jewson lot is bloody marvellous.

So clearly, John Ashdown - like Manchester before him - has so much to answer for. So without further ado (get on with it you lemon - Ed.) here's an EFW exclusive with the man they're calling John Ashdown:

Here is a little tip for you chaps at The Guardian that you might want to think about covering: the World Cup in South Africa 2010 - starts today. If you take that on board, what are they likely to have you doing for it? They've already brought out the manacles. We've got reports, blogs, live coverage, podcasts, videos, tweets and news galore. Personally, I'll be concentrating on perfecting my pretending-to-work-while-surreptitiously-watching-the-football schtick.

Likewise John, likewise. What's your favourite World Cup memory? David Platt's goal against Belgium in 1990 'in the last minute of extra time'. Nine years old. In the White Hart (with my dad, I should add). Way past my bedtime. And one of the most criminally-underrated goals in World Cup history. Magic.

Do you think En-ger-land will win it? 'Fraid not. Quarters, probably. Semis, possibly. I have a sneaking suspicion it'll be Holland's year.

Enough of the World Cup already. You've given EFW some welcome coverage on the Guardian pages. Are there any other football blogs that tickle the Ashdown fancy? Twohundredpercent is a fantastic site, one that gives plenty of exposure to the little guys of the football world. Their series on Chester during the winter was exceptional. One other I have a real soft spot for is Tony kempster - a stats site keeping track of scores, tables and attendances right the way down the league pyramid. If you want to know how many came through the turnstiles for Pease Pottage Village v St Francis Rangers in the Sussex League Division Two in the 2004-05 season (and, let's face it, who doesn't), it's there (35, by the way). It was run by the eponymous Tony until he died last year (almost exactly a year ago now) and now stands almost as a memorial, like a stopped clock.

How did you end up at Guardian Towers? Same old story, I'm afraid - not what you know but who you know. A university lecturer helped me bag two weeks work in the summer of 2002. That turned into a month. Then the season. I'm still clinging on.

Clinging on and going great guns but it's 2010 and you're not on Twitter Mr Ashdown. Time to get down with the kids no? It's bit poor isn't it? I tend to use it quite a bit (@badjournalism is a particular favourite) so I'm beginning to feel like a Twitter leech (or Tweech, if you like) - taking what I want out of it without putting anything in. I'm sure I'll be on there soon, though the thought of Barry Glendenning 'following' me is slightly unsettling.

The Knowledge on the Guardian website is a thing of rare beauty. Are there any cunning or inane questions and answers that stand out? My favourites tend to fall into two categories. There are the deep research ones - an afternoon with my head stuck in old Rothmans or Guardian archive pages is something close to my idea of nirvana. Of that ilk the recent question on the pointlessness of taking three goalkeepers to a World Cup is a perfect example - it's not something I've ever seen anywhere else and it was an excuse to spend all day looking at every single World Cup line-up since 1930.

The other category of great questions are the ones where you get fantastic anecdotes or info from readers. Have any football matches been captured on Google Earth? Well, yes they have. From which train trip in Britain can you see the most league football grounds? This one, actually. You just couldn't do those questions without an army of trivia-loving readers pitching in.

　

And occasionally you get emails out of leftfield that really make your day. The one from David White's dad, for example.

Genius, surely there is a book in that isn't there? Why, yes there is! Available in all good bookshops etc and so forth. My Knowledge colleague James Dart put it together so he scoops all the vast royalties.

Stinker. Who is the biggest football anorak at The Guardian? Smyth. Without question. Though I did once out-anorak him at a football-based quiz by knowing that Edgeley Park is the closest ground to the Mersey and recognising a bearded early-80s Martin Jol.

Has anyone ever disagreed with Jonathan Wilson on a 'football tactics' issue or do you all just agree with everything he says and then pass it off as your own thoughts down the pub? I find it rarely pays to disagree with Jonathan about anything. He seems to know pretty much everything about about pretty much everything. We once spent a four-hour train journey from London to Sunderland together and he regaled me with stories of the various features of the north-east coast as we went past, pointing out of the window at some 14th century castles and revealing who lived there, what they used to have for their tea and what their dog was called. When I went to Amsterdam for a weekend last year he recommended the Indonesian rijsttafel. Now I'm a bit of a gourmand, but I'd never heard of it - turns out it's ruddy amazing. So in the face of such knowledge I'd never dream of questioning him on tactics, and, yes, in the right company (ie people who haven't read much of Wilson's stuff) dropping 'Actually I reckon the full-back is the most important player on the pitch' into a conversation can make it sound like you know what you're talking about.

Rather embarrassingly Mr Fuller from The Ball is Round and I got locked inside Wembley Stadium a few weeks back. You've got previous in this department have you not? Alas, yes. It's happened twice, with varying degrees of embarrassment. Basically on both occasions the shoddy broadband at Loftus Road and Hillsborough meant I had to pop back to the press box to file match reports rather than utilise the press lounge. And on both occasions, I returned to the press lounge to find doors locked and lights going off. At Loftus Road I accidentally scared my other half by ringing her and saying I was 'stuck in the ground'. She thought I'd fallen down a hole. After wandering round the pitch I managed to get out through the players' tunnel. That wasn't an option at Hillsborough - it was locked for a start, but I'd also left my keys in my bag in the press lounge. I don't really want to go into the unedifying details. Suffice to say they include increasingly frantic banging on a door, increasingly loud and colourful swearing, and, eventually, rescue from a understandably nervous looking local journalist.

You like your cricket as well. Would you prefer an afternoon at Lords watching England rip through the Aussie card or a seat at the World Cup QF watching England unexpectedly overcome Portugal on penalties? I'd have to say Lord's. I'm not an England-hater, but I do find it increasingly hard to get behind the national side. Too many dislikable characters. That said, even when I was a kid I'd have taken a Sheffield United FA Cup win over an England World Cup victory.　

My wife wouldn't agree but I don't actually digest that much football media during the week. The thing I do make a point of listening to each week though is the Football Weekly Podcasts. Are they as much fun to record as they are to listen to? Probably more. It's far more shambolic than you'd ever imagine having downloaded from iTunes, which is a testament to the skills of Producers Pete and Ben. That sitting around chatting to such footballing brains as Raf Honigstein, AC Jimbo and others is an occasional part of my job is a real privilege.

Do you have a favourite James Richardson pun? There was that one about Sharon Stone and Nicklas Bendtner. But as we don't have the option of bleeping it out, it probably can't be repeated here.

How do you think Football Weekly differs from TheGame podcast and The Football Ramble? I suppose on a spectrum of seriousness, if you had the Game at one end and the Football Ramble at the other, we'd be floating in the middle. I imagine if you like football and enjoy podcasts you probably subscribe to all three. I certainly used to, though it's just FW and the Ramble for me these days.

I don't suppose you all queue up to do those minute by minute reports do you? They're wonderful to read but no so good for repetitive strain injuries I'm guessing? I genuinely always enjoy doing them, although it's very difficult to get a proper impression of the match because you're always watching them out of the corner of your eye. And, yes, they do make you yearn for a touch-typing class.

How much sport do you watch a week? Not as much as you might think. When you work in a sport environment all day it's nice to get away from it when you leave the office. For example, I'm currently listening to a Radio 4 report on krill. That said, it's probably still far too much.

Barry Glendenning is bezzy mates with Dara O Briain (check him out). Who is the most famous person in the Ashdown mobile? O Briain? Pah! I used to have Barry Chuckle's number in my mobile. I curse the day a bike-riding local youth nicked it (the phone, not the number). Glendenning and Dara can keep their dry Irish witticisms. As far as I'm concerned comedy reached its zenith with 'to me, to you.'

Tee hee, thanks a million for talking to EFW John and keep up the good work old chap. Cheers. It's been a pleasure.

So there you have it folks, John Ashdown is not only a top man (see above) but, he won't mind me telling you that he recently cemented his 'football guru' status by predicting Blackpool would be relegated from the Championship last season, Oh. I'm off to get a train from Plymouth to Aberdeen, 11-and-a-half hour journey that takes in 20 (twenty) league grounds in case you didn't click on the link earlier. £180 well spent and no mistake.

Read up on John's work at The Guardian HERE. To get tip-top satirical daily football email The Fiver delivered to your inbox click THERE and you'd be an absolute radish if you didn't download the Football Weekly podcast - again for free - HERE each week.

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Barry Glendenning

Guardian angel

Evidently, I'm not alone in appreciating the sophisticated wit, scepticism and cynicism of the genial Barry Glendenning. His minute by minute match reports are often the most read thing on the Guardian website - with its 33 million (million!) readers. Furthermore, he's the maestro largely responsible for The Fiver; a flipping marvellous tea-time satirical newsletter that brightens up umpty thrumpty inboxes every weekday.

Glendenning also sprinkles magic on the Football Weekly podcast (simply the best bit of football media one can digest) and has started casting his spell on the new Today in Sport - Live! feature which will undoubtedly result in yet more damage to your F5 key as update your PC throughout the day, whilst pretending to do some work.

Anyway, enough of the pleasantries (phew - Ed), EFW was delighted to be granted an exclusive interview with the Big G. So, pull up a chair and join us we chat about paranoid Everton fans, Cash in the Attic and why Dara O Briain is erm....a "fucker".

Satirical daily emails, minute by minute reports, Football Weekly...do you ever long to get out of the office and report on matches? On cold winter afternoons I often yearn for an away day in Crewe or Wolverhampton, sitting in a press box trying to type 300 words of pristine prose to a tight deadline with frozen fingers, but unfortunately my paymasters rarely see fit to unshackle me from my desk, so it remains a pipe dream.

Are there any sports other than football you take a keen interest in? I will watch anything, even that nonsense on Eurosport where blokes compete against each other to see who can ride a motorbike the furthest up a very steep hill, fall off near the summit and then tumble all the way back down while trying to avoid their bouncing bike. As far as keen interests outside of football go, I love horse racing, cricket, rugby and Ireland's national sport of hurling. But like I said, I'll watch pretty much anything: tennis, golf, snooker, darts, rugby league, Aussie Rules, boxing, gaelic football, cycling, motor racing … you name it. There are very few sports that I've never warmed to, but basketball is one of them. I wouldn't cross the street to watch an NBA game. I had a Polish builder doing a job in my house recently and he was trying to extol the virtues of handball, but I wasn't convinced.

How long do think it'll be before a Premiership club goes out of business? I would not be hugely surprised if Portsmouth go out of business by the time I finish answering this question. They seem to be very badly run and while it would be an awful shame for their fans if they did go to the wall, my podcasting partner James Richardson recently made the excellent point that at least there's another team in nearby Southampton that their fans will be able to support instead.

Football fans take themselves too seriously don't they? A lot of them do, but then so do a lot of football writers and pundits. People need to lighten up a bit and realise football's just an ongoing soap opera, much like EastEnders or Corontation Street. You only have to read the comments that appear under certain articles on the Guardian sportblog to see how seriously some fans take it and how completely deluded and unaccustomed to failure many of them are. Some of the correspondence we get from fans who think we're biased against their team is genuinely funny and often astonishingly abusive. One of my favourite emails was an angry email we got from an Everton fan who accused us of deliberately not publishing the Premier League leading-scorers table for a few weeks because Yakubu featured prominently on it. Just to fuel his paranoia, I'm very tempted to publish one with a thick black line through the names of any Everton players that might feature on it ... if only I could find one with any Everton players on it.

You'll be writing about the World Cup for the Guardian, how do you rate England's chances? I honestly don't think England have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the World Cup, which is an opinion that doesn't go down very well with some of my English friends. But they've had Ireland under the heel of oppression for over 800 years now, so I don't care what they think. They might have forgotten what Cromwell did, but I haven't.

If England fail to win the World Cup in South Africa, it'll be the English media's fault for bigging them up again right? I don't care whose fault it is (although a small part of me hopes it's John Terry's fault), so long as they come home empty-handed. England's a great country which has been very good to me, but the jingoistic smugness that would accompany a World Cup win would be unbearable for me as an envious Paddy. Myself and a couple of Irish mates have already decided that if England make it to the final, we're going to spend the 90 minutes of the game doing laps of the London Underground's Circle Line. Then once we reckon the match is over, we'll alight from the Tube and emerge blinking into the sunlight to see what the prevailing mood is on the street.

The Football Weekly podcast is hugely popular. Why? Good question. The world and his wife are podcasting about football now, but I like to think we're holding our own, if you'll pardon the expression. At least I hope we are - I very rarely listen to any of our "rivals", because I worry I'll end up absorbing other people's opinions or jokes and passing them off as my own. We try not to take ourselves or the football we're talking about too seriously, which I think is one of our more endearing qualities. It's very easy to become pompous and decide that, just because you're talking into a microphone and being broadcast on t'internet, your opinion is more valid than that of somebody pontificating from a bar-stool down in their local pub. If anyone, including me, falls into that trap on Football Weekly, they're quickly cut down to size. It's important also to remember that you can't please all of the people all of the time, so there's no point in trying. We have a number of listeners who claim to hate our show and everyone on it, especially me, but they still tune in religiously, presumably just to confirm that I'm still a prick. I find that very strange. It's like hitting yourself with a stick or burning yourself with cigarettes for 40 minutes twice a week - why on earth would you do it? I think Cash In The Attic is rubbish so I just don't watch it. I certainly wouldn't Sky+ it just to further infuriate myself at the end of a long day.

Will there be a daily version during the World Cup? The honest answer is that I don't know, but I expect there will be. For logistical reasons, I suspect we'll be doing it from London with added input from our boys and girls on the ground dotted around South Africa.

Can you describe your typical working day at Guardian Towers? I can, but I'm not going to. A lot of people seem to think it's a glamourous gig and I'd prefer not to shatter their illusions.

Is there a sport or other subject you would prefer to write about other than football? I must be the only journalist alive who has no interest in writing a book, but I've always fancied trying my hand at a sit-com. However, I'm aware that the older I get the less likely it is to happen. I'm very, very lazy.

Are there any plans afoot to charge for the Football Weekly podcast? Not that I'm aware of. Why? What have you heard? Will I be on commission? I certainly hope we don't start charging for it, because then we'd have to up our game and start taking it more seriously. No good could come of that.

Do you have any interest in Non League football? I'm embarrassed to say that I don't. However, one of our office administrators/fixers, Yvonne, without whom many of our journalists would be unable to get dressed properly in the morning, never mind book into a hotel or catch a plane, is a rabid Luton Town fan who never misses a game, home or away. I'm in awe of her dedication to the Hatters and the close proximity of my desk to her's means I have no choice but to take in interest in their progress in the Blue Square Premier League. I can tell you without looking that they're fifth at the moment, so they're doing quite well in trying circumstances, but possibly not as well as Yvonne would like.

Who are you favourite sporting personalities? I'm a horse racing enthusiast and have the highest of regard for jump jockeys. Not just the really good ones, like Tony McCoy, Ruby Walsh and Timmy Murphy, but all of them. They're so brave, often to the point of total foolhardiness, that I'm honestly in awe of them because I'm far too much of a coward to even try what they do. Although the vast majority are not particularly well paid, they put their lives on the line every time they go out to race, often riding poorly schooled, stupid or lazy horses over big fences at top speed in terrible weather. I mean, it's so dangerous they get followed by an ambulance, for heaven's sake. In what other line of work is that kind of precaution required? And the stoic shrugs with which many of them deal with bad, bone-crunching falls really puts the theatrics of certain diva footballers into perspective. Jump jockeys are as hard as nails and very competitive, but because of the inherent dangers of their sport, the camaraderie between them is real Band of Brothers stuff. There are very few big egos in the weigh room, because every single one of those boys is constantly aware they're only ever one mistake or misplaced hoof away from very serious injury or death.

Putting sport to one side if we may, I hear you're a music aficionado. Who should we be cocking an ear to these days? I'm not sure where you heard that – I downloaded the grand total of one album last year: Florence & The Machine's Lungs, and attended one gig that I can recall: AC/DC at the O2 Arena, which was one of the best nights out I've ever had. In a lame effort to redeem my reputation, I should add that I own three or more albums by each of Primal Scream, The Coral, Foo Fighters and Super Furry Animals. My girlfriend got me interested in the Foo Fighters and Dave Grohl is top of her laminated Celebrity Shag Wishlist. That causes tension in our house, because he's only third on mine.

You like a bit of stand up, any current comedians float your boat? For sheer edginess, I'd have to go for Michael McIntyre. His fearless, ground-breaking routine about people walking past shop windows and doing double-takes upon seeing their own reflection is possibly the funni … no, I'll stop there in case your readers don't realise I'm being sarcastic. There's a lot of comedians I like: I've known Dara O Briain for nearly 15 years, since he was doing gigs in front of 10 or 15 people in assorted Irish clubs and he's doing amazingly well for himself ... the fucker. Dylan Moran is effortlessly brilliant and always has been. I think Chris Rock, Rich Hall, Ross Noble and – on his day – Johnny Vegas are top class as well. I was lucky enough to see Jerry Seinfeld in Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas once and that was probably the best $100 I ever spent. It was certainly the best $100 I spent in Vegas, but that's not saying much.

That's it. Thanks very much for brightening up our tea-time (via the Fiver) and bringing large doses of sophisticated wit, scepticism and cynicism into our daily football intake. It's most welcome and no mistake. No problem, although I think you need psychiatric help if you honestly believe that.

To hear and read more of Barry's musings check out the Guardian Football Website, subscribe to the iron horse of podcasts Football Weekly or sign up for football's most tea-timely email The Fiver.

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