Tottenham Fans: Do You Want To Kill Andy Gray?

A straightforward enough question.

I think the final straw for me was the 'if he stays' remark in relation to Berbatov. It was arrogant, clueless and bewilderingly uninformed. In many ways it summed up an awful lot of Ol' Moonface's work.

Gray has mastered the art of limited craft.

He sounds terrific. But his impassioned Celtic tones and dramatic cries actually camouflage ... quite a lot of old pony.

His ability to point out the bleedin' obvious and pass it off as divine revelation is now so well honed that when he blares out at 237 decibels, ' that was a simply wonderful ball' with hypnotizing cartoon bulbous eyes, we catch ourselves reeling.

Why had we not seen how good a ball that was? He's right. He saw the wonder and has thus enlightened us. He opened our eyes as it were, with his Hanna Barbera ones.

His party trick of course is hindsight. Quicker than you might imagine Martin Platt might be with Tracy Barlow, he's there, pointing out what's just happened with all the certainty and pomp of a man who had predicted nothing else just before kick off. 'This was always goin' ta be about Reading being able to manipulate the set plays.' Except he didn't.

Now, if you take an Andy Gray and pair him with a Richard Keys, you really can achieve a state of extreme contempt. Richard Keys, a man crossed between... two things that ought not have been allowed to breed in the first place.

Ok, if you pushed me I'd say half Thunderbird puppet remnant, half moron.

He too has created his own niche in the Peter Principle domain. In the land of the Keys, the man with half a brain is king. With the back of his hands freshly shaved for HD, he casts a knowing glance down the camera, remembers the twinkle in his eyes Granny Keys used to rave about when he was 8 and proceeds to speak in tongues to the Shortbread Guzzler.

'And indeed, conversely, what do you believe, if the opposite were to happen here today, might the outcome be?'

Key's is the lackey's lackey. Armed with only benign smiles and a total absence of product knowledge he nods earnestly with all the conviction of a QVC salesman who truly believes (as he extols the virtues of a three headed laser steam mop) that today will be the day the producer will tell him Newsnight are on the phone. Paxman's dead. They're sending a car...

I may occasionally wish the ex Evertonian Uncle Fester were dead, but I find myself more frequently lost in daydreams... wishing to savagely torture the monkey fisted Boxhead...















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