Soccer AM was not just laddish banter – it changed my life and gave soul to Saturdays

M y first vivid memory of Soccer AM was in a hungover stupor sprawled across a sofa at a mate’s student house in Birmingham in the late 90s. There was a man on television doing keepy-uppies with a giant cuddly toy sheep, there were lots of goals – then two people started wrestling in leotards by the Hammersmith flyover. It was charming and silly and kind of hazily endless – no matter what you did on a Saturday morning, it would still be on when you got in.

Around a decade later, it’s 16 August 2008, and I’ve spent the night staring at the ceiling. I am terrified. Soccer AM starts at 9. I’ve never hosted a TV show before. There was no audition, no screen test. My whole career has led to this point and I’d rather be anywhere else. I just about get my opening words out. The show happens around me. And to be honest, it does for months. Had social media been the force it is now I wouldn’t have lasted. But very slowly I vaguely learned what I was doing – I was lucky to be next to a brilliant broadcaster in Helen Chamberlain. Those enjoyable seven seasons are often referred to as The Glory Years ’08-’15.

It isn’t necessarily a surprise that Sky is dropping Soccer AM at the end of this season but it has taken me on a nostalgic journey thinking about the good times. Eighteen-hour days filming recreations of the John Lewis Christmas advert dressed as a penguin or a snowman in Helen’s ramshackle farmhouse. John Barnes’s baton twirling. (Speaks into dictaphone) sword fighting with Frank Leboeuf. Gaizka Mendieta and his Viennetta. The dance-offs. Gloves for Hatem Ben Arfa. Getting big in Belgium (Genk to be precise). Offering professional footballers a tenner if they did a certain celebration that afternoon and then watching