Villa Park. A 42,682-capacity stadium. Home to Aston Villa since 1897. The first English ground to stage international football in three different centuries. Various facts, each copied off Wikipedia on account of the fact that, while I know that my visit to BBC1’s pre-match magazine show Football Focus has brought me to the “hallowed turf” of a famous stadium, my knowledge of football leaves everything to be desired.
Happily, Football Focus’s charming anchor, Dan Walker, is willing to overlook my sporting ignorance when he joins me for a chat and a biscuit in one of several BBC outside broadcast trucks situated in Villa’s car park. He hobbles his way over: having snapped his achilles tendon, one leg’s in a cast. “I was playing the beautiful game at a terrible level,” he admits. “It’s the first injury where I’m actually getting sympathy from footballers. Usually they just laugh at me.”
Dan is 37 now but, 26 years ago, he wrote a letter to Des Lynam. “I was mildly obsessed with Des when I was 11,” he admits. “But what’s not to like? The moustache was immaculate. The last line of my letter was: ‘I like your moustache, how did you get your job?’ He wrote back and said do your GCSEs, do A-Levels, do a degree but not in media, then do a post-graduate course in broadcast journalism and get a job in local radio. And that’s almost exactly what I did.”
Dan has since had the chance to meet Des, who was “lovely”. But he does, I suggest, seem like the sort of debonair man who would try it on with one’s mum. “He’s a man who’d buy your mum some chocolates,” is as far as Dan will go on this particular topic.
Although Bob Wilson presented Football Focus as part of Grandstand for two decades between 1974 and 1994, since then Football Focus has become a standalone show, with the presenters changing on what appears to be an informal five-year cycle. “Yes they have,” Dan nods. And how long have you been doing it? “Err, five years.” He laughs. “I tend to get itchy feet after 18 months so there must be something special about Football Focus – we’re here today and I’ve still got butterflies in my stomach.”
It’s hard not to feel that Dan is being groomed for the Match Of The Day job, having stood in for Gary Lineker on a few occasions. “I often say: ‘Gary and I are very similar in that between us we’ve scored 48 goals for our country.’” He smiles. I must be looking confused, because he then adds: “I haven’t scored any by the way.” It was a football joke! But what about that MOTD job? “If Gary ever goes away I’ll say ‘Yes please’. I think it’d be a really good opportunity for them to give Football Focus to a woman.”
In a few minutes I’m due to meet John Hartson and Dion Dublin, two of today’s Football Focus pundits. I remind Dan that in an interview he gave to students, he said that the job was “50% bluff, 50% knowledge”. I ask if I might be able to get by on 98% bluff. “You just need to know one thing they’re well known for,” he advises. “With John, just say, ‘Oh, you must have loved your time up in Scotland playing for Celtic.’ Then you’ve got a 10-minute answer.’”
In the event, when I do meet the pundits in Aston Villa’s curiously swish dressing room, Hartson brings up Celtic before I even get the chance to ask about it, so it all goes out of the window and we talk about punditry instead. “This is the next best thing to playing,” he explains. “You’re talking about football, you’re around football people, you’re at stadiums. Our football careers are over now, but we’ve got another one in terms of the media.”
But one of these men has another career on the go, too. Because, as I point out, Dion Dublin has also invented a musical instrument. “YES!” he exclaims. “I’ve got a percussion drum company!” The Dube, in case you haven’t seen it, is sort of like a cubic bongo. It even featured on last year’s album Dion Dublin’s Christmas Presents. “I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to build a percussion drum I can play myself,’” Dion says. “Every side you hit gives you a different tone. Olly Murs’s drummer uses it.”
My time with the ex-pros is over. “Well done!” Dion says, having clearly rumbled the fact that I have no idea what’s really going on. This is the first compliment I’ve received from a sporting type since my Year 9 PE teacher told me that at least I’d made the effort, after I ran the wrong way down a rugby pitch and scored what turned out to be an own try.
I watch the show go out live from one of the OB trucks: it’s the mix of pre-recorded interviews and on-air chitchat that’s kept Football Focus on air for four decades. Afterwards, I ask Dan what would need to happen for Football Focus, still popular after more than 40 years on British screens, to shut its doors. Would football – heaven forbid – need to end? “You should never think it’ll be for ever; we’re constantly changing Football Focus,” he says. “The game has changed immeasurably. I mean look at the kick-off times!”
Yes, I nod, sagely. As we say goodbye, he tells me about a recent chat with Eamonn Holmes. “Eamonn said to me: ‘I love your programme. I would give up everything to do that.’” Dan pauses for a moment. “People really care about football, don’t they?”
Football Focus is on Sat, 12.10pm, BBC1
