GRAHAM TAYLOR'S days of being taken seriously as a human being, never mind a football manager, may have ended after he was the subject of a Cutting Edge documentary on Channel 4 but Paul Gascoigne suffered no such adverse reaction last week after the showing of Gazza's Coming Home, made by the same team.
"We saw Gazza speak Italian when we thought he couldn't even speak English," was the comment of one television reviewer on BBC2 later in the week and, true enough, we discovered that maybe he's not quite as thick we thought he was.
In the course of the year-in-the-life film, which followed Gazza from his move to Glasgow Rangers after three years in Italy with Lazio, he revealed that he suffered from depression and after seeing some of the people he has to deal with in his daily life it was easy to see why.
On his arrival at Rangers Gazza was greeted by John Greig, the club's PR man, who did his best to make their new star feel at home. "You've been busy by the look of things, Cheryl's expecting. Where did she conceive that," asked Greig. You wanted Gazza to say "during a visit to the Vatican", but he didn't. Instead, while trying to come to terms with the most bizarre question he had ever been asked in his entire career, he muttered "it might have been Sardinia".
Next up was the producer of the Walker Crisps ad that Gazza made with Gary Lineker in London. The night before the ad was due to be shot he had played for Rangers against Steaua Bucharest in Glasgow and the producer told him how terrified he had been that the star of his commercial would get injured in the course of the game.
"God, you know every time you went to tackle the ball I thought oh God (hand to his brow) he's going to get brought down, he's going to be badly injured," he said. It seemed beyond the comprehension of this budding Scorcese that if Gazza had picked up yet another career threatening injury the last thing on his mind would be flogging bags of smokey bacon to the nation.
Anyway Gazza needn't have been too worried about what effect his appearance in the Cutting Edge series would have on his career. The public image of Phil Neal, who was a member of Graham Taylor's backroom staff when he managed England, also took a serious bashing but look at him now - the new assistant manager of Manchester City. Oh well, things might pick up for him soon.
Neal's new employer, Manchester City chairman Francis Lee, was one of three people to tie for last week's "I'm not in a very good mood so go away and leave me alone" award. Lee is clearly finding the pressure of running the club that inspires the tune "Let's all laugh at City" a bit stressful these days.
On Football Focus Gary Richardson tried to get Lee's definitive word on all the rumours surrounding possible takeover bids at Maine Road. "We want to hear it from the horse's mouth," said Richardson. "I'm not a horse," replied an unsmiling Franny and you sensed it had all become too much for him.
Jimmy Hill was in an equally grumpy mood on Wednesday's Sportsnight. He did his best to match the sartorial eloquence of Des Lynham, Alan Hansen and Ruud Gullit by wearing an attractive England bow-tie, featuring the St George's Cross, but it will take a little more than that to match Ruud in particular who, let's face it, would look dapper in a Crazy Prices plastic bag.
But we shouldn't be too hard on Jimmy because we later learnt that he had a very good reason for feeling cranky last week. Apparently, the Queen was demanding a fee of £140 before she would hand over a video of Jimmy receiving his OBE from her good self. So outraged was Jimmy by Buckingham Palace's latest money making scheme that he said "no thanks" and he must now content himself with watching the video of "Fulham's Glorious Footballing Moments", which is just a tinch shorter than his chin.
Damon Hill was the last man to grab a share of the grumpy award on Saturday for his performance at the press conference held before the Japanese Grand Prix. Damo became a little tetchy with Jacques Villeneuve and Michael Schumacher when they began chatting amongst themselves while he tried to give sensible answers to questions from the press pack. "Pay attention boys, you might learn something," said Damo to which Schumacher replied, "thanks grandad."
Well grandad had the last laugh when he was crowned World Champion yesterday and he now leaves the Williams, with the big shiny trophy in his luggage, and heads for the Lada team (or is it Arrows?). If anything was proved in Suzuka it was that there are no flies on our Damo - remember Villeneuve's right rear wheel fell off on lap 37? Mmm. Say nothing.
If you struggle to remember who won the European Championships during the summer (France?) then your chances of winning a Know Your Sport umbrella are a bit on the slim side. That's the prize for all the contestants appearing on George Hamilton's quiz show on RTE1.
And a spooky bunch of contestants they are too with even spookier memories. "What was the 200m world record before Michael Johnson broke it in Atlanta?" "19.72." "Correct." "What was Ebony Jane's starting price in the 1993 Irish Grand National?" "7-1." "Correct."
"What was the attendance at the 1952 All-Ireland Football Final?" "73,893," said the really spooky one, "Correct," said an impressed George Hamilton.
There were no umbrellas on offer to the contestants on the BBC's They Think P's All Over on Thursday and very little sympathy was being dished out either to one of the guests, poor old Chris Waddle.
Chrissie can shimmy and dance his way past fullbacks all he likes but he will always be remembered as the man who blasted his penalty, in the 1990 World Cup semi-final shoot-out against Germany, eight miles over the bar. "How tall am I Chris," asked Lee Hurst. "Eh, about six foot one," answered a puzzled Chris. "So you've no trouble judging height then."
Waddle's embarrassment didn't stop there. During the "Name Game" section of the show Hurst tried to describe the name of a football team to Waddle and David Gower. "You use it to clean your bath and you play football against them in Holland," said Hurst. "Flash," answered Waddle, who has obviously never heard of the great rivalry in the Dutch League between PSV Eindhoven and Mr Muscle.
