Jeff Stelling: "My Entire Career Was A Complete Accident"

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So, Jeff Stelling, MBE, don't forget, which is really important to point out as well. We'll come on to that later on. Obviously, an esteemed broadcaster across the UK and around the world, and people recognise you straight away. You've done lots of TV, lots of radio, and so many people are so used to hearing your voice and talking about things. But I want to take you right the way back to the 70s when you kind of started in broadcasting up there in the Northeast. What made you want to get into broadcasting in the first place?

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Well, the truth, mate, is I didn't. I wanted to be a newspaper journalist, and my first job was at my local newspaper. And I wasn't covering sport. I was a news reporter and doing everything from covering council meetings, you know, to go into the local crown court on tea side, which fascinated me actually. You know, I thought I could happily be a court reporter. Yeah. And I was sort of aiming m more at that. I went to local radio because local radio was in its embryonic state at the moment. You didn't need any experience. Nobody had any experience. So I went to local radio at Radio Tees as a news reporter. That was my first job. And I'd only been there a week when Saturday afternoon, about well, about midday actually, we got a message from the radio station saying, please go to Leeds to cover Leeds against Middlesbrough. And the Middlesbrough reporter, uh a chap called Bernard Gent, had been taken ill and didn't have anybody else to do it. So I hadn't been on the air. I'd never been on the air. And suddenly that and this was a a big, fierce local rivalry. It was a top division game as well. And I was sent to cover it. I didn't have a clue. I didn't know how to get there. I'd ring my girlfriend, I didn't know a car. Ring my girlfriend and say, fancy an afternoon out in Leeds. And she thought we were going shopping. And she did. But I remember getting there thinking, well, how do I collect a ticket? Where do you get those simple things? Um so it anyway, yeah, I did the game. Um it it seemed to go okay. And on the Monday, my my boss at the radio station said, How do you feel about working on sport in the future?

SPEAKER_01 2:23

And that was it. We were up and running. All those iconic years that we've seen and heard you across sports broadcasting were effectively an accident then.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Complete accident. Wow. Complete accident. Absolutely unbelievable. I should have been covering some of the big murder trials of the century. Uh that would that was my dream. Um, but yeah, a complete accident. And if I'd made a Horlicks of that Leeds Middlesbrough game, then that's probably what I would be doing now. But people, people were unbelievably helpful, by the way. You know, all the local journos who were there, the experienced old hacks, you know, fag hanging out of their mouth and uh things like that, they they could not have been more helpful. And I always owe a debt of gratitude for them because I would never have got through that day.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

So, as you're moving around, obviously, local radio, um, local newspapers, etc., um, stints at lots of different broadcasters around the way. How have you found it for people that want to get into media? I know it's very different now, but did you struggle to kind of move up the ladder or were opportunities coming along from all different angles?

SPEAKER_00 3:30

No, the in those days there were a lot of opportunities. Oh, a huge number of opportunities. I mean, I moved from uh the North East down to um LBC IRN in London. Every journalist wanted to be in Fleet Street, I was no exception. And uh, of course, Fleet Street there was the hub of journalism. Uh LBC IRN wasn't quite on Fleet Street, it was just tucked away in a square behind, but it was good enough. Um but they'd offered me a job a year before, and I turned it down. Wow. Um and the reason I turned it down was because uh I I just bought a new house for my wife and it overlooked the local golf course, and it had an upstairs toilet and a downstairs toilet. Check you. And I exactly, and I thought, I'm not sure I can give up this brand new two toilet house overlooking the golf course to go and work in London. And the guy who went and did the job, got the job, didn't like it very much. So within a year, it was up for grabs again, and they rang me. So, so that was great. So I we I I was very fortunate in that I got a start in my career at a time when jobs were abundant, and you're right, it's very different now.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

So you you went on, obviously, to do that's commercial radio. Um, you went on to, you know, you worked at TVAM, for example, uh, you worked at Eurosport, you've done lots of different things. Did you ever think that, obviously, at that point, what what was the end goal? Was it just to kind of survive in that industry? Did you have something in your mind you wanted to do, or were you just kind of happy, just kind of bobbing along as your sports reporter on radio, TV, etc.?

SPEAKER_00 5:10

No, I I'd always wanted to be um, you know, once I'd started in my crowd, I mean I'd I'd had an ambition not to do TV again. I in in terms of radio, I wanted to present uh what was sport on two then, their Saturday afternoon flagship became Sport on Five. And I occasionally stood in doing that. Um, and I thought that was my destiny. And they'd had some great broadcasters over the years, you know, hosting that show. Some great, you know, they Des Lyon did it for years, Peter Jones did it for years. And I remember being called in by the the head of sport at BBC Radio, there was a lady called Pat Ewing, and she said to me, Well, you're okay at it. She said, But you're not the best, so you're not getting that job. And I was mortally offended uh and determined to look for something else. Um and and and I resented her for it until I heard John Himberdale, and then I realized actually she was right. He is better, was better than me at hosting that show. He was absolutely brilliant, and that's who got the job. Turned out to be a good mate of mine, as it happens in the end. But um so that that then became a change of direction. I then moved off to go to TV AM for a little taste of TV, and it went from there.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

And um, obviously, younger viewers watching this on YouTube, and I forget this sometimes, and I'm sure you know you do, that it wasn't a case of I'll just go online and apply, or I'll just go on and I'll have a look at this. Was it a contacts-based thing, or was it that you were kind of building up who you knew as you as you progressed across the industry?

SPEAKER_00 6:46

It it it was it was contacts-based. I mean, in this day and age, you've got to go through all the proper channels, haven't you? Be seen that you're offering the the job to given the opportunity to absolutely everybody. Wasn't like that in those days. Um I mentioned that I got the job at uh LBC IRN, they came back to me for a second time. My boss at LBC IRN moved to BBC Radio and he took me with him. Uh, a guy I knew from press conferences and things became head of sport at TVAM and he called me and said, Why don't you come and try television? Big mistake, by the way. Oh my goodness. Big mistake. Doing breakfast television or just in general moving into television? Doing breakfast television in those days. I mean, talk about clueless. I remember the day when I knew I'd made a mistake. I knew I'd made a big mistake when uh one of the heads of news, because sport was and they they didn't cover sport in any serious way at all. So in the build up to the derby, um, one of the heads of news came up to me and said, Uh, can we get one of the runners in the studio? I said, What? What are the jockeys? He said, No, one of the horses. Oh my god. He said, You're a kid. I said, You couldn't afford the insurance. These are, you know, equine athletes in the prime of their lives, and they are worth millions, you know, and nobody's going to risk bringing them into a TV studio. And he said, Well, Red Rum was brought into TV studios. So he's a gelding, you know, he didn't have any equipment. Um, and and and he was worth uh a fraction of what these other horses were. And I just thought, you know, I I I can't take this. And um that was the way they they they treated sport. It was always done as a as a gimmick, basically, nothing more than that.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

They were more interested in Roland Rat. Do you did you think to yourself, I need to get out of here for the unprofessionalism or because of the early starts? Or were you looking at other things in the background?

SPEAKER_00 8:53

No, I I I I think the lack of professionalism w with for sure was one thing. The fact that they didn't treat sport with any sort of significance at all. Um, look, I had a really comfortable, cushy life there. I was it it could not have been easier, um, but but it was so unsatisfying. So I got the chance to move on from there, and you know, I I couldn't get out of the place quickly enough to be absolutely honest.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Was it a case of so obviously you worked for BSB before it became Sky, etc. was was that the whole big shiny kind of satellite broadcasting you wanted to go to, or did you fall into it by accident, or how did that work? Um same thing, contacts.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Um there's a theme here, Jeff.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

There is a thing.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

There is a theme here. So the um the guy who was was head of sport at at uh BSB, the square real people that you illustrated as square real, they must be worth a fortune now. Because there weren't very many of them, even though. If someone put one in a garage, it would probably be so well. Absolutely. The the head of sport was a guy called Vic Wakling, and he employed um a producer who worked with me um at TVAM, and and between the they put their heads together and they decided that I would make a good reporter um for BSB. So that was going to be my job as a reporter, and they were gonna have three presenters of their sport, and and Vic kindly explained to me on the phone the three presenters were uh Gary Richardson, um Anna Walker, and Steve Scott. Wow, and I would never be as good as any of them, so and you know I wasn't offended at either. I'll take the reporter's job, and then Steve Scott decided he didn't want to go, and so Vic kindly offered me the report, the third reporter's job with the words of you realise, Jeff, and Anna Walker and Gary Richardson are the numbers one and two, and you will be the third string. So that's how Vic gave his job. Um, and and that's how I got the move. And um it was it was a it was a great stepping stone because you could practice television knowing that nobody at all was watching.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Nobody was watching. That was the thing. So obviously it's it's keeping your profile because that's very important in the media industry. What were there kind of thoughts in the back of your head, yes, I am practicing television, but were you worried about kind of obviously what next or whether this would work? Was that always in your mind, or did you think that just kind of go with it and see where it leads?

SPEAKER_00 11:31

I I I was more akin to go with it and and see where it leads. And we all thought at the time, I mean, misguidedly, we all thought that our product was good enough that we would see off Sky, who were the opposition at the time. And and we couldn't have been more wrong because of course Sky financially, you know what, massively bigger than uh BSP, even though BSB had built some bright new shiny headquarters on one of was it Chelsea Bridge or whatever, and and everybody was driving Bentleys and things, all the management and things. Well, the money ran out pretty quickly, absolutely, you know, and and when Rupert Murdoch moved in, that was that was the end. And I remember uh I'd been told, now don't don't ask me how, but I'd been told two or three months in advance the day, the day that we were all gonna be made redundant.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

And my contact got it absolutely right, absolutely to the day. So um, and it was obviously a pretty miserable occasion, but um, I'd already lined up another job.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

Well, I was just about to say, we we know where you ended up. Um was that as a direct consequence of that, or was there anything in between that you kind of thought I'll go and do that? Or because we'll go on to talk about Sky in a minute. But that was, as you said, they they were the financial big boys at that point. Yeah. Did you know you wanted to go there, or was it a case of I had to go there?

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Um, I didn't know I wanted to go there at that stage. I went from the square real people, I still got a job lined up, and it it wasn't perfect, but uh a a friend of mine um uh was was head of news at um Tyne Tees Television. Yeah. And they were just introducing a new show which was going to be done from their Middlesbrough studio, and uh he he ran me and said, Do you want to do it? Now I was living in London at the time, so it wasn't an ideal commute. No, absolutely going from London to Middlesbrough. Yeah. Um and and I went through a little training period of um two or three weeks, something like that. And the night before it was a Sunday, Sunday evening before, I was meant to host the first show from Middlesbrough. Another friend rang me and said, Um, what do you know about um American football? And I said, Don't know anything. He said, How quickly could you learn? I said, It depends. He said, Okay. He said, I needed to be in London tomorrow because there's gonna be a new series, the World League of American Football, American football teams playing uh in Europe, and um we have got Channel 4, we've got the rights to it, and he said, I want you to host it. And I said, Okay. So um, you know, it was and it was for 13 weeks. Big decision to be made, but I I knew the commute was unsustainable. Yeah. Unsustainable. So I rang my friend at Tyntees, the head of news there, and then said, uh won't be coming in tomorrow. And he he said, Are you ill? What's wrong? I said no, I said, Well, why don't I won't be coming in tomorrow? I won't actually be coming in at all. I'm sure that went down well. Oh, he didn't speak to me for about two years. Um Wow, okay. And I didn't blame him. Yeah. Uh you know, because I I'd he'd he'd put his neck on the line for me a bit, you know, and I'd sort of betrayed him, but it was so I came down and I learned the basics of American football, and I covered the ill-fated World League of American football for 13 weeks. We had a lot of fun, it was brilliant, I loved it.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

I was back in London and uh back on the market. And then 1994 was when, and and I think probably a majority of our viewers will know you from Sky, but probably don't realise that you started off, you did a bit of horse racing as well, didn't you? And you and it was actually Sports Saturday before it came Soccer Saturday, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Oh, yeah. Um I mean in those days, Sky didn't really have the rights for anything significant. Um you know, uh they had uh obviously they got Premier League rights, but nothing else. So consequently, yes, Sports Saturday would would go on uh surprisingly on a Saturday. And we would do things like we'd have studio guests. Um I remember um poor old David Burstow came in on more than one occasion, the former England England cricketer, uh Johnny Burstow's dad. And we'd have you know ex-footballers and things would come in. But we didn't have anything uh like soccer Saturday's got now, no coverage of games. We did what was traditionally the thing to do. We'd go to the VIDI printer probably 10 minutes before the end of games, something like that, because that's what the BBC did. The BBC just showed full-time scores, so we thought we were being revolutionary by having scores coming in for the last 10 minutes or so. But the rest of it, I remember one day, for instance, um building up to the World Cup. How do you fill your show? We've got no World Cup rights. I'm presenting the show with Suzanne Dando. So the producer decided that we would stage our own Subutio World Cup. Oh wow. So now I found this a bit hard to take seriously. I can imagine. So within the first five minutes of our World Cup final, Suzanne Dando against Jeff Stelling, my right knee had crushed three of her players, breaking both of their legs. And I remember the producer saying to me, You're not taking this seriously. Whoa. No, I wasn't.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

Was it almost like a kind of a poor man's grandstand then? That because they didn't have the rights, they had to fill it with with lots of different stuff.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

They'd have loved it to be compared to grandstand in any way, shape, or form. I mean, another day I was in there when it's coming around at Christmas, and to fill the show, Alan Lamb, the former England cricket editor, had come in. And we were we were showing toys that were going to be in the shops that Christmas. Harrods was was right next to a Harrods factory warehouse. Um, and they'd sent a whole load of toys. And actually, this was a sort of big, big moment for me because I was standing in the studio wearing a velcro hat while Alan Lamb threw balls at me trying to get it to stick to my head. As you do. As you do. Career high for you, yeah. Career high. And I did think of that moment, I thought, where am I going with this? You know, this is not what I want to do. Um and and things had to change, and they did, thankfully. Um, and and Soccer Saturday became much nearer what it is now, but those sports Saturdays. Never could a show have been more inappropriately named. Yeah. Okay, it was Saturday, but it was no sport.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

So who was it then that that suddenly thought, right, hang on, because it now, I mean, when you were doing it and it's it still does, it fills six hours of live television on a Saturday. So who was it? Did someone come to you? Did you have any input into it? How did actual soccer Saturday come about?

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Um well again, this was uh Vic Wakeling who became managing director of Sky Sports. It was uh his idea that initially the show uh was uh two o'clock till till five thirty, I think, something like that. And it was going to be more football-oriented. So at that time we would have George Best and Rodney Marshall, Frat McLimdock, and they'd be in for a uh uh discussion for maybe half an hour, possibly an hour about football. And then we would pretend they'd gone to games then. So George had been sitting next to me, and five minutes later, when the game started, we'd go for a phone report from George at Old Trafford. Um and somebody actually said said this this doesn't work, let's let's just show them in the studio. Which we did. But at that stage, we also would we were dipping it out of um rugby union matches because Sky had acquired the rights to some rugby, but a horse racing, so it wasn't just uh as it is now. Um but as it became more successful uh and I was yeah, I I was involved in the discussions with Vic. As it became more successful, Vic said to me one day, do you think this program could survive on football alone? I remember thinking this is gonna be hard. Yeah. Yes. Um but I did say to him at the time, I presented that show once in every three weeks. There were two other presenters, um, a lady called Jane Hoffman and Paul Dempsey, um, would present it on alternate weeks. And I remember saying to Vic, yeah, I said you could sustain it for the entire four hours just on football. But I said you would need somebody who was absolutely immersed in football, knows absolutely everything, knows every statistic possible to hold it together. I said you cannot have somebody coming in once every three weeks. And he said to me, Who you got in mind? And I put my hand up and said, I've got me in mind, and he said, I had you in mind as well.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

And and that leads me on to it is well, when you were doing it, it was six hours of live television. So people don't know it would go out at it would start at midday, you'd have a kind of preview build-up till about two o'clock when the teams came out, and then you'd have the two till three hour, and then three till five is obviously the live games, yeah, and then obviously the post-match reaction after that. People don't realise how much prep you had to do personally before you'd even got into the studio on a Saturday. Tell tell our viewers all about that.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

Well, it was um it was an increasing amount of prep because you know at first I would go in on a Friday and I'd spend my day in the office and meetings and the rest of it. I'd do prep with a few stats here and there. Um by the by the time I'd finished uh there, it would be you finished the show, you'd watch Match of the Day that night, you'd watch Girls on Sunday, you'd watch all the live football, you were obliged to watch pretty much every live game from whatever level of football there was. And I would start my sort of statistic statistical prep um on a Wednesday or sometimes even a Tuesday. So it's a vast amount of statistics, bizarre things that appealed to me, you know, like Players who'd never appeared on the VIDI printer. Yeah. You know, so every week I would write down Joe Gomez, not in 251 club games. It's not in 296 now. Just so I knew that if one day he scored, I knew exactly what it was. Um so yeah, so I I did a mass, massive statistics. And I mean I loved it in a way, but I had two young kids. So I they were very young, and they didn't understand what's daddy doing on the computer for three days. So eventually I used to have to go out of the house. And I didn't want to drive into the offices in London. I lived, you know, near Winchester, I was an hour and a half away. So I used to go to Winchester services on the M3 with all of my stuff on basically Wednesdays and Thursdays, and you know, get the laptop out, get a cup of coffee, and I would do all my prep in those services. And I mean, I wasn't boring. Sometimes, sometimes I would go to the northbound, and sometimes I would go to the southbound. But it was amazing the people who would you'd see there, you know, I remember Harry Redknapp popping in one day, Steve Claridge came in and could have done, yeah. You picked the trick there. That's a good idea, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Can we copyright that please? Um so obviously you do all that prep and you get there on a Saturday, and then that could be thrown completely out of the window with with obviously live events and stuff like that. But obviously, there's people shouting in your ear. How how difficult was it? And how does your brain kick into gear? Because you you mentioned Joe Gomez there. Yeah. Does your brain automatically say to you, I've got a Joe Gomez stat if he scored? Or is someone are you relying on the gallery to kind of tell you, you know, you've got a Joe Gomez?

SPEAKER_00 23:42

No, they they they don't have a clue that I've got that stat or what stats I've got. You know, they're just my private property. Look, there was a stats man there. We had really good stats people over the years. And they would tell me, for example, if the Montrose right back had scored his first goal of the season, things you couldn't possibly know. But they would expect me to know the basics. How many goals a player had scored in a season, whether he got six in six, seven in seven, how many defeats on the bouncer team had got, you know, how many how many goals they'd scored during the season. They would never ever offer me any of that information. And I would have been insulted if they had as well, because I knew that was my responsibility. Yeah. They knew it was my responsibility. So between us, we we try to dig out some some nuggets. Um, and as I say, they were the ones they provided the ones I couldn't possibly know. I had lots of selected, selected ones. So I've still got them now, you know, in my head. Some of them are sad person, I don't do the show.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

No, not at all. It just sticks with you, doesn't it? Because you you know, you've you've put your life into that.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

And yeah, and there was a boy, I'll j was a boy. I I use it as an after dinner story, so I won't tell the whole thing. But there was a boy at Chelsea called Josh McEchran, midfield player, good player as well, by the way. Followed his career right through house, and I knew one day he would score his first ever career goal. First ever career goal. So every Saturday. I mean, for three years, I would write down David Brent, then I would write down McCecron naught in, you know, 1950, 1960. I won't tell you when he did score, but suffice to say, the day that he did finally score after me making three years of notes was a Tuesday night, and I was sitting at home watching a Gillette soccer specialist. Oh no. When it kept dotted on the VIDI printer, Brentford won, Birmingham City Nil, McEchran. And that just ruined all those years of work.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

It was a it was a nightmare moment, all those years of work, yeah. And people may or may not realise that actually the you know, you you did that with some legendary names. You mentioned George Best, Clive Allen, Rodney Marsh when you first started, and obviously the later people. You actually became personal friends off-screen with a lot of the people that you were on the screen with all day on a Saturday, didn't you? Yeah, and and that was for me, that was really important.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

You know, because it helped with the chemistry, you know, we wanted to appear as just, you know, mates together on a Saturday afternoon. Okay, mates who've got a lot of international football caps, but mates together on a Saturday afternoon, just having a good time. So, what could be easier than being mates together on a Saturday afternoon having a good time? So, yeah, we used to, you know, particularly the the the next regular panel, if you like, uh Matt Letitia, Paul Mercen, Phil Thompson, Charlie Nicholas, and Alan McNally, Tony Cottie, people like that occasionally. You know, we'd go out on a Friday night and we'd go and have a few drinks, and sometimes we'd, you know, even if there wasn't a show, sometimes we'd go out midweek uh as well. So we became really good friends. I mean, when when poor George Best was alive, you know, George and we'd go out for a drink from from time to time and things, and and we were really, really good friends. The second bunch, the ones I mentioned, we were thick as thieves, basically. Um, and and sometimes it's fair to say, got a bit carried away on a Friday night. I mean, I remember one Friday night. Well, actually, it wasn't a Friday night anymore, it was a Saturday morning. Um, I got to bed at six in the morning. Oh, wow. And I had to be in the studio at about half past eight. So that was a tricky day. Yeah, but it focuses the mind. It does, I mean, I looked an absolute wreck, but I got the stats right.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

So that was the main thing. Lots of sleep Saturday night as well, I can imagine. Um, and obviously, you know, soccer Saturday, then you moved on from that. I mean, you tried to retire once and then came back, and then obviously um you you moved on from soccer Saturday, and then you moved on to doing a radio show, which a lot of people do go back into radio, don't they, when they've been into TV. How much are you enjoying being on Talk Sport now? Oh, love it.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

Um, you know, it it's a different vibe to TV, and it's not having a dig at Sky in any way, shape, or form. Because yeah, I had nearly 30 wonderful years at Sky. The company were great to me, and the people that I knew there were fantastic as well. But you were in a TV studio shut away from the public. Yeah. Um at Talk Sport, we get particularly text, thousands and thousands and thousands of texts every single day. You get a real instant feel of what people are feeling about what you're saying. You feel you've got a real relationship, you know, with with the football fans who are listening. Not always necessarily a very friendly relationship, let's be honest about it. Because everyone's got an opinion and it doesn't always, you know, equate uh with mine. And it doesn't have to. That's part of the joy of it. And that's why I read so many of the things out, because I want them to feel part of the part of the show. Um and I I love being there. My my very first day there, I would say, you know, um, as far as talk sport are concerned, one of my bosses came in at 5 30 in the morning and he just said, Look, I said, Whatever your opinions are, don't be afraid to say them. He said, We don't have rules on this show. If you want to criticize something that talks sport is doing, he said, you feel free to do it. And and and and that was how it started. So that that was pretty comforting. By the way, that day Talk Sport had England were playing a one-day series. We just finished a test series somewhere, and England were playing a one-day series in the Caribbean, and and they they'd sent out a sort of basically a shadow squad. Yeah. And talk sport were covering it live, and somebody asked me about it, and I just said, it is a total waste of effort to send 16 players out to the Caribbean for a one-day series. We've got a test series in India just around the corner. You know, it's an absolute nonsense. Who could be interested in that? Coming up next on Talk Sport, live on Talk Sport today. Exactly. Brilliant. But I didn't, you know, but he was true to his word.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

I didn't get any flack for that at all.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

So and you obviously have a rotating amount of co-hosts on there, including Gabby Agbon Lahore, Ali McCoy, Standy Townsend. Do you have to adapt yourself to whoever sat with you, or are you still always the same Jeff while you're hosting with different people?

SPEAKER_00 30:23

Yeah, no, you do have to adapt a little. Um I mean, for instance, um Koisty is is the obvious exact we we know. We're we're we're gonna try and get a word and edge wedge, each of us, because we both like to talk as much as the other one. We know we're gonna laugh till there are tears coming down our face some days. Um so that's that's got a very relaxed vibe to it. Um Koisty knows something about everything, absolutely everything. Now, Gabby, for example, I I love Bill. Gabby, we we we get on great. We had a little tiff before we started at Talk Sport when he criticised me for something um uh that that I'd said on soccer Saturday, and I always referred to him after that as Gary Agbonlah. And I didn't realise he was just a wind-up merchant, you know, and he was getting exactly the response he wanted. Now we're getting on brilliantly with Gabby now, brilliantly. Gabby doesn't know some sports, which is fine, because there are some sports I don't know either. So you've got to be a little bit more careful then. If it's golf, for example, I mean I remember we were talking about the Masters um recently, and Gabby says, where's it being held this year? Augusta, you know, that's where it's held.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

But that's a that's a Gabby thing. I think talk sport listeners expect Gabby Abgon Lahore to say something like that, don't they? They they they do.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

But again, he's but you just got to adapt a little bit, not take anything for granted that you can with Ali or Andy Townsend as well, who's got a vast knowledge across the board of pretty much every sport. And then you get the occasional ones who you who pop in who've not done it before, who just need nurturing along a little bit. Sean Deitch did a uh morning show with me, a breakfast show, uh you know, pretty recently. It was great by the way. And you're talking about Curry went viral. We saw him talking about Curry. Yeah, so so that was great. Uh Ben Foster's been on a a few times uh as well. It it's not easy to find um articulate, interesting guests who are willing to be in the studios at sort of half past five in the morning, you know, on a regular basis. So we're always grateful when the guys come in. Brilliant chat, Jeff Stelling. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Hi, I'm Jeff Stelling, and you've been watching Liberty Rock Sports. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and tell us what your favorite part was in the comments below.