Friday 24 November 2017

845 Best and Marsh - The Perfect Match


First  viewed : Winter  1988

I  must  admit  I'm  cheating  a  bit  here  as  this  was  on  when  I  was  playing  pool  down  at  The  Red  Lion  on  Friday  nights  and  I  hardly  saw  any  of  it  at  the  time. Fortunately  some  of  it  is  on  YouTube.

It  was  a  regional  programme  for  Granada  viewers.   presented  by  Tony  Wilson  with  New  Order  inevitably  providing  the  theme  tune. It  brought  in  the  two  greatest  football  entertainers  of  the  seventies  for  a  chat  about  the  period,  based  around  extended  footage  from  the  ITV  vaults.

Marsh  of  course  retired  tidily  after  making  a  packet  in  the  USA  and  became  a  top  football  pundit. Best's  playing  career  just  dribbled  away  and  he  never  found  much  of  a  role  for  himself  beyond  feeding  the  tabloids  every  so  often. You  would  expect  then  that  Marsh  would  be  very  assured  and  Best  shambling  and  incoherent  by  comparison  but  he  was  generally  tidy  and  lucid - this  was  just  a  year  before  the  infamous  Wogan  appearance. You  don't  really  think  of  Wilson  as  a  football  man  and  he  did  seem  a  bit  less  sure  of  himself  in  their  company  but  he  obviously  knew  enough  to  stay  in  the  conversations.

Though,  as  far  as  I'm  aware,  the  show  wasn't  broadcast  outside  the   Granada  region, the  format  reappeared  in  the  very  similar  There's  Only  One  Brian  Moore  a  few  years  later.

2 comments:

  1. Anthony H was actually a HUGE football nut. He worshipped Man Utd all his life and as utterly obsessed. I remember some dismal cheapo celeb show he was involved in in the early 00s that saw him and a handful of other Z listers try alternative therapies abroad. He was there in some exotic, mystical locale in India (I think) and got up everyone's nose because he went AWOL one Saturday afternoon to check the premier league results on his mobile. Indeed at this stage in his life Wilson referred to himself as a Sparts Presenter, a TV guy who dealt in sport and art.

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  2. Presumably recording happened early in the day, or they somehow managed George well enough so that he'd stayed sober long enough. By all accounts, he was a fairly intelligent guy when he was straight.

    I remember Wilson upsetting some of the United hardcore by coming out in support of Rupert Murdoch buying us - I wonder if those same lads had a rueful chuckle when the Glazers took over a few years later. That said, Wilson was of the "give them a chance" mentality with that lot too!

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