With the news that Sky Sports plans to cancel its seminal morning football show Soccer AM after 28 years, we look back at the time a group of Hibs hooligans tricked their way to appearing on the programme.
For the best part of three decades, Soccer AM has been a Saturday morning ritual for football fans up and down the country, known for its mix of informal footy chat, celeb appearances and fun-packed competitions and games.
But in September 2000, the team behind the iconic soccer show landed themselves in a spot of bother when they unwittingly made TV stars of one of Scotland's most notorious hooligan firms.
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Getting real football supporters to appear on the show was a regular feature of Soccer AM, but this time the team were left wishing they'd done a little more research.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Capital City Service (CCS), who aligned themselves with Edinburgh team Hibs, were among the most violent football hooligan groups in British football.
Barely a matchday went by without reports of the CCS being involved in serious fighting with supporters of rival clubs, while the group also had links with the world of organised crime and drugs.
Clearly none of this was on the mind of Soccer AM showrunners when they accepted a request from seven CCS members, including Bobby Lipscombe, Andy Blance and Derek Dykes to appear on the show.
The rowdy Hibs mob got blinding drunk, chanted 'CCS' and even convinced Soccer AM co-presenter Helen Chamberlain to show off her rather intimate tattoo.
The Soccer AM appearance is recounted in detail in Andy Blance's book Hibs Boy: The Life and Violent Times of Scotland's Most Notorious Football Hooligan.
According to Blance, fellow CCS member Bobby Lipscombe managed to get through to Soccer AM's other co-presenter Tim Lovejoy and managed to persuade him that the Hibs fans would be worthy of making an appearance.
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In the book Blance writes: "Bobby Lipscombe's suggestion for a group of us to apply on Sky Television's Saturday morning football show Soccer AM was a stroke of genius.
"As it was Bobby's idea, we got him to phone Sky and put our case. To his surprise he got through to Tim Lovejoy, the co-presenter."
When Lovejoy asked why Soccer AM should put Hibs fans on the show, Lipscombe replied matter-of-factly that the club was top of the Scottish Premier League. It was enough for Lovejoy and the Soccer AM team to acquiesce.
On their way down to London by train, the so-called regular Hibs supporters downed alcohol, smoked cannabis and were blinding drunk by the time they reached their swish hotel - that Sky was paying for.
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A night of unbridled carnage ensued, as Blance recalls: "We got up around eight and when the curtains were opened we realised just how riotous a night it had been. There were dozens of empty bottles and cans on the hotel's beautifully-maintained lawns and flower beds."
Still heavily-intoxicated from the night before, the Edinburgh soccer casuals rocked up that following morning at the Soccer AM studios where they were about to embark on a live telly event reminiscent of the Sex Pistols on the Bill Grundy show.
Reluctantly wearing their Hibs tops (casuals typically avoided wearing official club merchandise, opting instead for designer sportswear), the seven hooligans were first introduced to co-presenter Helen Chamberlain, who, after being egged on relentlessly, allegedly lifted up her skirt and revealed the Torquay United club crest that was tattooed on her bum.
When the cameras started rolling, the seven men burst into chants of "CCS! CCS!" with Andy Blance and Bobby Lipscombe lifting their Hibs jerseys to reveal their CCS mottoes and other casual-related slogans - much to the horror of the show's execs, who finally realised who they had booked on.
Once the slot had aired and the dust had settled, it was later revealed that Sky Sports had been inundated with more complaints about Soccer AM than they'd ever received before.
Scores of viewers - no doubt a good few Hearts supporters among them - phoned, wrote in and emailed to express their disgust at the show booking on a group of genuine football casuals. The story even featured in the now defunct tabloid the News of the World.
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