Mark Watson gets shirty

Sport-loving comic salutes beautiful game

Keen interest in obscure Bundesliga results got you worrying about your football obsession? You've got nothing on Mark Watson. The bespectacled Mock The Week funnyman is, by his own admission, quite the sports geek.

But now he can pass of the multiple Fantasy League accounts, boxes of dusty Bristol Rovers memorabilia and Johnstone's Paint Trophy marathons as 'research'. Why? Because he's just landed his very own sports quiz on ITV4.

Mark Watson Kicks Off (which starts at 10:35pm, Thursday 21 October on ITV4) features the usual panel of celebrity guests arguing about all the funny quirks that make British sport so imperfectly brilliant. So we asked Mark to tell us what he loves about the Bovril-scented world of British football. Enjoy.

1. Bare-chested supporters

All football playing countries have got their share of nutters, morons and borderline psychopaths in amongst the regular fans. But whipping your shirt off for no discernible reason is a peculiarly British thing. It’s hard to think that any other culture other than ours would react to the climate in Newcastle by trying to make themselves colder. Even if you’re at an away game in London, say, you’d want to take advantage of every crumb of warmth you could get at the football.

2. Post-match interviews

I’ve always been a keen observer of sporting clichés and platitudes. People always take the p*ss out of managers and players for the amount of clichés they come out with but they are essentially talking about the same sort of stuff every week. “Sir Alex, your reaction?” What’s he meant to say? Football is an endlessly fascinating and varied game but there are only so many things you can talk about. I try to apply this language to my life a lot when I’m touring. Certain venues are always a “difficult place to go” and if there’s a particularly tough crowd I’m always happy to come away with a point.

3. Rehearsed celebrations

Your main thought when you see rehearsed celebrations is, couldn’t they have worked on a set-piece or something in the hours they spent choreographing that elaborate dance routine? It can look a bit arrogant as well, fishing a joke shop mask out of your shinpad. That much preparation suggests a level of disrespect for your opponent. Where does it end? Pretty soon players will have an entire fancy dress costume on hire just on the off-chance they'll score.

4. Fantasy football

I've got a predictions league table with my brother as well as a fantasy team. So every Saturday morning my life is needlessly complicated as I negitiate an injury crisis to pick my side and try and guess various results. And I can't watch a game now without having some significant investment in the players or the result. The irony is that I take sport seriously enough to not need to do any of this so I'm only pushing myself towards some sort of heart failure.

5. Football show hype levels

A large bit of excitement seems justified for a game like Chelsea vs Arsenal but Sky don’t really have a second gear so it’s exactly the same hype if it’s Wigan vs Wolves. You can’t call that ‘Super’ really but I certainly don't need to be bullied into watching it. They’ve set this impossible bar for themselves really because they crank up the hype with every season that goes past, pretty soon they’ll be claiming that the losing side are going to be put to death.

(All images: Rex)

Tags: comedy, football, lists

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