A British football-based comedy TV show in The '90s, presented by comedians David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, which capitalised on the "new lad" cultural phenomenon and the growing mainstream popularity of football in England following the 1990 World Cup and the creation of the Premier League, a time which also saw the publication of good-quality football literature (All Played Out, Fever Pitch, etc) and — crucially for the initial premise of this show — the rise of fantasy sports leagues on this side of the Atlantic. Three series were broadcast on BBC Two between 1994 and 1996, followed by a further, smaller series during Euro 96. The show subsequently moved to ITV, airing during the 1998 World Cup and later the 2004 European Championship.
The format centred around comedic observations about football (particularly recent Premier League matches and off-the-pitch goings-on) and short comedy sketches that usually referenced said observations, with different celebrity guests each week. The humour was usually irreverent, with just about anything football-related considered fair game for mockery. Originally, the show was heavily reliant on an actual fantasy football league, fantasy leagues having become popular in Britain in the early-to-mid-1990s after various newspapers picked up on the idea at around the time when the Premier League was established. Each week, the show's celebrity guests would talk about football and their fantasy team line-ups. As the show progressed, however, the fantasy league element was pushed to the background and eventually dropped. As a result, though, the guests tended to be people who had a decent knowledge of football. The likes of Delia Smith, Nick Hornby and Sean Bean were all guests on the show, as were football presenters and commentators like Des Lynam, John Motson and Richard Keys.
The studio set was designed as a mock-up of the London flat where the hosts purportedly lived (it was in fact partly inspired by a flat they'd actually shared for some years), the idea being to represent the environment in which regular 'lads' would watch football at home. The guests would stand outside the 'front door' of the set and ring the 'doorbell' before being let in and announced.
The third regular on the show, sports pundit Angus Loughran, stood in the 'kitchen' area and was always referred to as "Statto". Clad in a dressing gown and pyjamas, he would dispense football-related facts and statistics on demand. He was often made fun of by David and Frank, but quickly became an audience favourite - chants of "Statto! Statto!" became more common as the show continued its run.
In 1996, David and Frank wrote a song for Euro 96 called "Three Lions", with music by Ian Broudie. This was immensely popular upon its release (at a time when Britpop was at its height) and has since become the de facto anthem of England's national football team.
Regular features included:
- "A Few Things We've Noticed from Watching Football" — amusing incidents from recent matches that may have gone unnoticed by viewers when the match was originally shown on TV. These often provided the basis for sketches or other gags later in the episode.
- "The Big Hello" — David and Frank would announce that they were going to say a "Big Hello" to someone (usually a relatively obscure person somehow connected with football) who would then say "hello" on a pre-recorded video clip. The whole studio would then reply with a very loud (ie. big) "HELLO".
- "Phoenix from the Flames" — David and Frank recreated a famous moment from footballing history, usually with a retired professional footballer who had been involved in said event.
- From the second series onwards, "Jeff Astle Sings" — an episode would end with former West Brom striker Jeff Astle (Frank's hero) singing a song over the closing credits. Sometimes in a costume. After he died, they used a different ex-professional footballer every week.
As of 2022, the show has been rebooted on Sky, hosted by comedians Ellis James and Matt Lucas, with Andrew Mensah taking on the Statto role (albeit without the dressing gown). Matt had appeared on an episode of the original show back in 2004.
Everyone seems to know the tropes...
- The Alcoholic: Frank, although he'd been teetotal for several years before the series started and it wasn't mentioned. Hosts and guests frequently drank from beer cans or bottles as part of the show's 'laddish' atmosphere; Frank's always contained water. Frank's own problems did not stop him from mocking Jimmy Greaves for his much-publicised problems with alcoholism when the latter appeared in a "Phoenix from the Flames" skit.
- Biting-the-Hand Humor: The long list of mockworthy targets extended to coverage of football — regardless of whether the show was on The BBC or ITV, commentators and pundits working for both channels (and also Sky, which had the broadcast rights to live Premier League matches) were not immune from being made fun of by David and Frank. Most of them took it in good humour, with some of them appearing on the show.
- Blackface: The mockery of Jason Lee went as far as David doing this in sketches which took the piss out of him — very much a source of Old Shame for David and Frank.
- British Brevity: An aversion; the first series had 18 episodes, the second 17 and the third 15 — that's 50 episodes in three years. The next three series took it up to a total of 82 half-hour episodes, spread out over ten years.
- Broadcast Live: The show was originally recorded the night before it was broadcast, but following the 1998
switch to ITV it went out live. This led to a few problems, including the eccentric behaviour of some guests (see under Cloudcuckoolander below) and the fact that one episode went out mere hours after England got knocked out of that year's World Cup, which really killed the atmosphere (as David mentioned during the show). - Butt-Monkey: Statto.
- Call-Back: The 2022 reboot sometimes shows archive footage of the original show.
- Celebrity Resemblance: Played for laughs if people resembling celebrities happened to feature in the crowds on footage of football matches. For a while, there was a Running Gag involving pictures (purportedly) sent in by viewers of women who looked like Statto.
- Chromosome Casting: Strongly averted, as women were included among the guests from the start (singer/model Mandy Smith was one of the guests in the first episode, businesswoman Karren Brady - the managing director of Birmingham City at the time - in the second). This was considered somewhat surprising for the time, as the show was overly laddish in tone and 'traditional' football shows like Match Of The Day had always been male-dominated.
- Cloudcuckoolander: A few guests came across as this. Brigitte Nielsen, one of very few guests who knew absolutely nothing about football and who appeared to be under the influence of alcohol, tried at one point to attack David with a Danish pastry and was told to "stop behaving like a twat" by Frank. Not long afterwards, Johnny Rotten behaved so obnoxiously that he was asked to leave the studio during the commercial break.
- The Couch: What with the set being designed around a lads' flat, David and Frank had a sofa and spent most of the show on it. In front of them was a coffee table covered by a Subbuteo pitch in place of a tablecloth, in keeping with the football memorabilia theme for the set's decor.
- Crossdresser: Statto, and sometimes David, occasionally did sketches in drag. Jeff also sang in drag once or twice.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Statto! Angus Loughran was a little-known commentator on satellite channel Eurosport prior to Fantasy Football League, which briefly made him a household name.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: David and Frank, who had previously shared a flat together (the studio set being modelled on it).
- Incredibly Lame Pun: Many. One example from the last (2004) series was a bald man in a referee's kit who was seen cleaning the flat in the background — a play on "cleaner" and the (famously bald) Italian referee Pierluigi Collina, widely regarded as the best referee in the world at the time.
- Jerkass: Some guests came across as this. The former Scotland international Andy Gray displayed plenty of schadenfreude when he appeared on a Euro 96 episode after England had been knocked out, but the prize goes to Johnny Rotten, who was so obnoxious that he was kicked out of the studio during the commercial break.
- Language Barrier: Encountered every so often in "Phoenix from the Flames" when they brought in non-British ex-footballers, like the Argentinian 1978 World Cup winner Mario Kempes, who couldn't speak English.
- Limited Wardrobe: Statto rarely wore anything other than his dressing gown and pyjamas.
- Logo Joke: The show's logo, as seen in the opening credits, was a piss-take of the Premier League's original logo depicting a lion with a football. In the Fantasy Football League version, the lion is wearing a bobble-hat and is puncturing the ball.
- Moment of Silence: Done in memory of Jeff Astle in the first episode of the 2004 series (although he'd died two years previously, this was the first episode since his death), complete with a referee blowing his whistle and the crowd cheering at the end, as would happen at one of these prior to the start of an actual football match.
- Nerd Glasses: Worn by Statto. Averted by David, who (as one of the main presenters) came across as a lad rather than a nerd, despite wearing glasses.
- New Season, New Name: Most viewers missed the fact that for the 1998 series, the show was actually called Fantasy World Cup. The next series (in 2004) reverted to the original title.
- Nostalgia Filter: Defied; there was even a segment called "Old Football Was Rubbish".
- Old Shame: Over two decades on, both David and Frank have expressed regret for the way in which the mockery of Jason Lee got out of hand.Frank [in a 2022 interview]: Looking back, it was a bullying campaign. And it's awful. And yeah, I'm ashamed of it.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Statto! Statto! Statto!
- Re-release the Song: "Three Lions" was the hit song of Euro 96 and very quickly became a favourite among England fans; in the summer of 1996, it spent two separate stints at number one in the charts. Two years later, David and Frank re-wrote some of the lyrics and re-released it for the 1998 World Cup (under the title "3 Lions '98"), and it got to number one in the charts again. Years later, the original got (back) to number one as a result of England's unexpected success in the 2018 World Cup.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Most of the gags revolved around then-recent footballing events; at times, David and Frank expressed boredom about continuing to do jokes about (say) Jurgen Klinsmann diving or Manchester United constantly changing the colour of their away kit note but these would invariably be worked into sketches anyway. Eric Cantona's infamous 'kung fu' attack on a fan in January 1995 was parodied by Statto trying to attack a member of the audience in a similar manner, in addition to which a subsequent sketch parodied Cantona's TV adverts for Nike by making reference to his punishment for this incident (120 hours of community service) and his bizarre comments at a subsequent press conference.
- Running Gag: Every time David and Frank tried to watch something on their TV, the doorbell would herald the arrival of that week's guests. They lampshaded this more than once by appearing to watch their own show and complaining when something potentially interesting was interrupted by the doorbell.
- Same Surname Means Related: Whenever ex-West Ham defender Paul Brush and Basil Brush appeared on the show (and both of them did so more than once), there were jokes about them being related.
- Smoking Is Cool: As well as drinking, guests were allowed to smoke during filming.
- Sound-to-Screen Adaptation: The show actually started out on Radio Five Live, hosted by Dominik Diamond; curiously, the radio and TV shows overlapped by several months.
- Special Guest: Usually two (sometimes one, sometimes three) of them in every episode.
- Stage Names: Frank, whose real name is Chris Collins.
- Studio Audience: Invariably wearing replica football shirts and chanting every now and again. And sometimes barracking the hosts and guests.
- Theme Tune: Originally, an instrumental version of "Back Home" (the England football team's 1970 World Cup song), although they also used a version in which the words "fantasy football league" were sung over and over to that tune. The latter was also how the celebrity guests and the "Phoenix from the Flames" segment were introduced. After the move to ITV, the show used the old World of Sport theme, although for 2004 this was itself replaced by the theme from Saint and Greavsie, a football show featuring Ian St John and Jimmy Greaves which ran from 1985 to 1992 on ITV note . Funnily enough, those two were guests on the show during the 2004 run - despite the fact that in the early episodes, they'd been a regular target for mockery by David and Frank. The 2022 Sky revival uses an instrumental version of "Back Home".
- Wrap-Up Song: The "Jeff Astle Sings" bit at the end.
