As we go into the final week of the World Cup (without England) here are a couple of classic monologues from Ron Manager - the archetypal BBC football pundit created by comic genius Paul Whitehouse for The Fast Show.
Here's Ron eulogising on the 'boy wonder' Ryan Giggs - a player who might have filled England's perennial gap on the left wing and made us into a real world force over the last decade-and-a-half.... if only he hadn't quixotically rediscovered his Welshness (after playing for England as a schoolboy!).
Here's Ron eulogising on the 'boy wonder' Ryan Giggs - a player who might have filled England's perennial gap on the left wing and made us into a real world force over the last decade-and-a-half.... if only he hadn't quixotically rediscovered his Welshness (after playing for England as a schoolboy!).
And this is Ron's finest moment, an elegiac reverie on Saturday afternoon football that is almost poetic in its evocation of nostalgia for England, the BBC, my long-lost 1970s childhood.
In looking around for these clips on YouTube just now, I discovered that in the last couple of years Paul has reunited with his old comedy partner Harry Enfield to create a new BBC sketch series, Harry & Paul - in which one of the regular skits is this brilliant glimpse into the dressing room of a modern English Premier League football club (it's such an international game these days!). Just stunning - it is ridiculous that one man can have so much talent. [Johnny Depp begged to be allowed a cameo appearance in The Fast Show finale, largely because he'd been overawed by Whitehouse's contributions to the series.]
No comments:
Post a Comment