SPL self-mockery

THE SPL’s plans for its own telly channel have been deemed a turn-off before the station has even gone on air. But I think a Scottish football network would be a sure-fire ratings winner. Just as long as it doesn’t show any Scottish football.

OK, it can screen the odd match - one every couple of months, max - but it should use the rest of its schedules to exploit all the dramatic and comedic possibilities our great game throws up, week after week.

This could be done quite easily by nicking the formats of existing programmes. For instance, Temptation Island. This is the show where couples are dumped on a paradise isle and have their commitment to one another tested by the presence of lots of nubile members of the opposite sex.

In the SPL version there would be only one couple, Rangers lovebirds Drink Advocaat and Alex Unleashed, and as in the original they’d be dressed in sarongs and sandals. We’d see them, lying in each other’s arms in a beach-house hammock, stroking each other’s hair, while the cream of young talent from other Scottish clubs is paraded before their eyes.

Can they resist trying to seduce the top totty with contracts at Ibrox? Or will Drink throw a strop when he finds out the truth about Unleashed and that messy break-up in Leith and storm off back to Holland, not to coach the national team but to star in a remake of Van Der Valk? Tune in next week to find out ...

Before the channel can get up and running, though, there would have to be test transmissions, and a test-card. Who could possibly stay still for long enough, or as long as that little girl sat at her blackboard in the old days of the Beeb? Not Martin O’Neill, who’s forever pogo-ing about like a Playaway presenter.

Mark Yardley? He’s not in the top league anymore, and besides, I’m sure I saw him break into a pretty determined lollop for Forfar on the box the other night. No, this would be a selection fans could make interactively. Simply choose the slowest defender in your team and press the red button to see him feature on bigtumshiecam.

Now back to the programmes. Survivor has terrific rip-off potential for SPL TV, but instead of berries and slugs, contestants would have to live on steak bridies from East End Park.

And, speaking of Fife, it could be the setting for a revival of Treasure Hunt, the winner being the away supporters’ bus which doesn’t get lost more than twice en route to a match in the kingdom. In the helicopter, Jane Lewis, the results rounder-upper on Scotland Today, would play Anneka Rice.

Food shows are popular so we could have Who Ate All The Pies?, a half-time face-stuffing challenge, and Barry Ferguson as our galloping gourmand for a tour of Lanarkshire kebab-shops. Bazza, incidentally, would be much in demand on SPL TV. As someone who once sported a Rangers tracksuit for a daunder around Bothwell, he would be the first subject of the channel’s version of What Not To Wear.

IN THE style of Meetings With Remarkable Trees, Lorenzo Amoruso could host Floodlight Pylons I’ve Hit With My Blootering Free-Kicks. And don’t miss Franck Sauzee’s My Favourite Things, a show original to SPL TV, being a 1,480-part series about one man’s passion for, well, you name it (" ... ’Eebernians, my players, ze fans, referees, Rock Steadee Security, whiskers on kittens, warm woolen mittens, everytheeng ... ").

Loyd Grossman would tour Perth and other coldbeds of the game and wonder: "Who would play football in a place like this?"

And Bert Konterman would volunteer to go before the cameras in search of a better haircut, only to defeat the best efforts of Style Challenge, Ground Force and Jim McLean armed with a buzzsaw, hotfoot from Tannadice Chainsaw Massacre, a pay-per-view SPL TV drama premiere about the divided Dundee United.

The Big Brother confession-room could be converted for football’s needs. Managers with even the vaguest connection with Sir Alex Ferguson could nip inside to seek his advice on tactics and other matters, including holiday destinations, home decoration and what they should have for tea.

The possibilities are endless. A Police, Camera, Action special on clubs’ Christmas parties, a quiz where players must avoid using post-match interview cliches ... and we haven’t even begun to find a role for Ebbe Skovdahl yet.

He’s our game’s great philosopher with the potential to become a telly titan of the stature of Civilisation’s Kenneth Clark.

Don’t know about you, but I’m subscribing today.

Taken from the Scotsman