Micah Richards has shared a glowing review of what his punditry pal Roy Keane is like when the Sky Sports cameras are turned off.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Athletic, the former Man City right-back discusses his childhood in Leeds before reflecting on the highs of being catapulted into the England setup as a teenager as well as not making the most of his potential - albeit rotten luck with injuries played a massive role there.
But it's when the conversation turns to his current guise as a fixture on our television screens alongside the likes of Keane, Graeme Souness and Jamie Carragher that he shares a few nuggets about what Cork's most famous son is like off-screen.
He said: "Roy is everything I didn’t expect him to be. It’s hard to explain without going over the top, but there’s this perception that he’s an angry, old… but he’s the nicest, most considerate guy.
"And on the other hand, I think I’ve helped bring out a side of him that a lot of people wouldn’t see. And I take great pride in that.
“I know I sometimes go a bit over the top in terms of getting reactions, but I love working with him.”
Despite possessing polar opposite personalities, the pair clearly get along well and have developed quite the fanbase as a dynamic duo on our screens.
Keane is quick to tease Richards whenever possible while the 33-year-old often delights in recording a slightly embarrassed Keane pre-show when they're doing things like getting their makeup done.
His comments on Roy hamming up his hardman persona while on-air aren't that surprising as similar testimony has been given before by other pundits like Ian Wright but it's still enjoyable to hear someone rave this much about the supposedly surly former Ireland skipper.
And later on in the chat there was another amusing detail surrounding one of our other most inspirational players of the last two decades.
Richards - who is much younger than most of his Sky colleagues - remarked how much more of a microscope players are under nowadays and how that can have an unfair effect on how they're perceived as pros.
He added: “They can’t do anything now. Some of the stories Roy and Graeme tell about their playing days… wow, you can’t get away with anything like that now.
"Even when I first came into the team at City, Richard Dunne, how he used to drink what he did and then be our best player on a Saturday, I’ll never know.
"He was a machine. But you couldn’t even think of doing that now."
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