Richard Keys - What A Guy!

Richard Keys, the hairiest man in British broadcasting according to Danny Baker, could sell ice cream to Eskimos, sand to the Saudi's and cider to those strange people down in Somerset.

Keys, who has been fronting Sky's Premiership coverage since it began and their European Champions League coverage for the past three seasons or so, is a man who exudes enthusiasm, in fact if you look up the word enthusiastic in a dictionary there's a good chance they'll be a picture of him next to the definition.

He can make a boring nil-nil between Charlton and Middlesbrough turn into a positive goal fest during his half-time and full-time analysis - okay he can't do that. nobody can, but you can't stop him trying. If the programme is billed as Super Sunday then Richard will make sure it is a Super Sunday, like an annoying Aunt at Christmas who insists you must have a good time. Every stripe of his lurid stripey shirts is bursting with the need to 'big-up' Sky's coverage and like all of Sky's commentators (with the possible exception of the evergreen Alan Parry) Keys believes, hand on Sky Dish, that competitive top class football didn't begin with the 1888/9 season and Preston winning the Football League but with the 1992/3 season and Manchester United winning the inaugural Premiership.

Keys is hopeless as an interviewer, despite his blokey man of the people carry on, his questions have lowered the bar of banality to a level Vicky Derbyshire can only dream of. He thinks his audience don't know anything, which is a contrast to Andy Gray whose commentary assumes the audience really don't know anything and those that do know something can be expected to forget it within thirty seconds of being told so we have to be told again.

Despite being a Coventry City fan, who won their first and only honour in 1987, the time before Sky is a no go area for television's leading sports presenter. Sky's commentators often begin a sentence with an expression like "and of course Liverpool haven't surrended a three goal lead since way back in.." and you wait knowing that the use of the phrase "way back," must refer at least to the early sixties or late fifties, before being let down with "1996."

1996? Ten years ago constitutes an epoch in football?

I actually like Sky and their coverage, let's face it where else on a wet Wednesday evening will you get the chance to watch Spartak Moscow at home, other than actually travelling to Moscow itself? Okay they are big on the hype, guilty of a less than imaginative use of music, overuse of special effects, and the visuals that don't say anything very loudly and in more than one colour but the variety of their sports coverage and in particular football shows what the BBC and ITV could have down with a little more imagination and use of resources.

Wigan away at Blackburn - now that's what I call a Super Sunday!