I am awed:
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TONIGHT'S TV & RADIO
BBC1: Live Match Of The Day - Italy v Ukraine (7.30pm)
You're not too fond of Five Live commentator Alan Green, are you? Take it away, Patrick McCarthy.
Match Of The Day - World Cup 06 (11.45pm)
"Things about Alan Green that make him such a well-loved character?" he muses. "Hmmm ... let's see."
Match Of The Day - World Cup 06 Replay (1.55am)
Yes, let's. "For a start, there's his voice and his fat, self-satisfied, cold fried breakfast of a face, which luckily we don't often see," he begins.
ITV1: Live World Cup 06 - Germany v Argentina (3.30pm)
"Then there's the fact that he's a raving egomaniac who thinks that we turn on the radio to hear him, not to listen to a football match, when in fact we'd much prefer him to sod off and leave it to Mike Ingham or anyone else."
World Cup Highlights (11pm)
Ah now Patrick, get off the fence and tell us what you really think.
Sky One: Footballers' Pads (4.20pm)
"He thinks he's somehow fearlessly going out on a limb and being controversial by constantly laying into referees and giving them a hard time, and that we'd like to thank him for doing so on behalf of the common man.
Sky Sports 1: You're On Sky Sports (10.30pm)
"When in fact he's simply picking on an easy target to a tiresome extent, thereby displaying all the later-in-life overbearing tendencies of someone who was bullied to tears at school and who could do with being given a good wor[Snip! - Fiver Lawyers]."
Sky Sports 2: Fifa Futbol Mundial (2.30pm)
Unlike this current TV and radio riff, which isn't picking on an easy target at all ...
British Eurosport: Live World Cup Show (7.15pm)
"He's also an oleaginous Liverpool fan who won't shut up about his supposed insider knowledge," continues Patrick, getting the bit firmly between his teeth and running with it.
BBC3: World Cup Out-takes (10pm)
"Oh, and he even seems to be convinced that the sad cases who ring 6-0-6 do so to ask him his opinion, rather than give their own."
ITV4: World Cuppa (10pm)
Indeed, many of you have noted that those sad cases who get to air an opinion that doesn't happen to tally with Alan's invariably get short shrift. "His habit of cutting off people who blow his pompous opinions out of the water is bad enough," writes Dan Fallon.
Setanta: The Hub (7pm)
"But the manner in which he then sets about mocking their views when they are no longer able to defend themselves says a lot more about him than it does about them." Ouch.
Radio Five Live: Sport On Five (4pm)
"I've read Alan Green's autobiography and it reads just like those excerpts you published from Eamonn Holmes's onanistic output," adds Martin Parry. "There's continual self-aggrandisement, weak anecdotes and shameless name-dropping.
6-0-6 (10pm)
"I did suspect the hand of a mutual ghost-writer, but a second's consideration of their monstrous egos soon saw me right."
Talksport: World Cup Kick-Off (1pm)
Is there something about Alan Green that gets your goat? Perhaps you'd like to defend him?
Newstalk 106FM (www.newstalk106.ie): Tonight We Will Dine On Schnitzel Of Gilroy (7pm)
Tell the boss at the.boss@guardian.co.uk in an email marked: No17 - That'll Be The Chicken Chow Mein, Then
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Posted By: Arizona Bay, Jun 30, 14:28:12
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