IF GEORGE BEST DOESN'T PUNCH YOU, I WILL...
Republic of Ireland 0-0 Egypt. On June 17, 1990, two men sat in front of a television before a comedy night in south-west London. They’d never met before, and they were watching a match that’s since been described as the worst in World Cup history.
Had it not been so monumentally dire, one of football’s most loved TV shows may never have happened. Instead, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner became two of the 1990s’ biggest stars. By the time Euro 96 began, they were chart-topping national heroes. All thanks to Fantasy Football League – and Ireland vs Egypt.
“I’d seen Frank previously at the Comedy Store,” Baddiel explains to FourFourTwo today. “He was a new comic and I remember thinking, ‘This bloke’s really good’. But we hadn’t spoken, until we were both at Jongleurs in Battersea.
“The World Cup was on in the dressing room, and we got into an argument about the Irish team. I said they were dull; Frank said they shouldn’t be playing like Brazil. We had a row, and I remember thinking, ‘I disagree with that bloke but he knows a lot about football – he seems all right’. Apparently he thought the same thing. He also thought, ‘I’ve never met a posh bloke who knows about football’. I’m not posh, so that shows how working-class Frank is!”
In January 1994, Baddiel and Skinner’s Fantasy Football League landed on BBC Two, to little fanfare, at 11.15pm on a Friday night. The duo had become friends, then flatmates, before sharing a sofa together in front of the TV cameras.
“Today it’s not unusual to have a set like someone’s front room, but it was revolutionary then,” says show producer Andy Jacobs – now part of Hawksbee & Jacobs on talkSPORT, having worked alongside Paul Hawksbee on Fantasy Football.
“We said, ‘Let’s build a set that’s like our house’,”
