Baddiel & Skinner

Episode seventeen - Part one

Listen to this episode

(audio from the match)

David Baddiel:  So, we’re at Holland Uruguay, World Cup semi-final. One small point I’d like to make about the national anthems, and their present, modern incongruity is that I don’t know these national anthems, but I assume they’re full of gravitas and seriousness about their countries, and they’re clearly not designed to be sung by blokes wearing orange afro wigs and enormous Timmy Mallet glasses. Actually, if you see those people on the screen looking serious during the national anthem, it looks completely ridiculous.

(cuts to studio audio 00.56)

Frank Skinner:  When we flew from Johannesburg to Cape Town, I got very excited. 

DB:  Yes, I remember.

FS:  There were actually four South African cricketers on our flight.

DB:  Yes. I didn’t recognise any of them.

FS:  Yes, there was Graeme Smith, and Dale Steyn, and Mark Boucher, and Jacques Kallis. They were all there. They were at the baggage reclaim and everything. I was very, very excited.

DB:  You tried to spot their cricket baggage.

FS:  I did, yes. 

DB:  You started getting very excited. You started saying this is a Graeme and Mowbray or something.

FS:  Gunn & Moore.

DB:  Yes, that’s right.

FS:  Yes. Exactly.

DB:  Gunn & Moore. Is it?

FS:  Gunn & Moore.

DB:  Right, Gunn & Moore. Surely you’re not allowed to take that on a plane! A bag that says Gunn & Moore, but brackets, ‘Could be bombs, ammo.’ Yes, you got very excited about that indeed.

FS:  Not only that, but sitting in front of us on that same flight was Jens Lehmann.

DB:  Yes. Jens Lehmann. He was in goal for Germany at the last World Cup. Him and Oliver Kahn, you remember, kind of alternated I think.

FS:  If you remember, way back early in these podcasts, when we flew over on the same plane as Ant and Dec, I got worried about if the plane crashed, what the billing would be, and in the newspapers, would it say Ant and Dec are killed, and then much further down-,

DB:  Yes, Baddiel and Skinner are also dead.

FS:  Yes, exactly.

DB:  ‘We think. We’re not sure. Their bodies haven’t been found, but we’re not even looking.’ 

FS:  Yes.

DB:  ‘All we’re worried about is Ant and Dec.’

FS:  Yes, quite a long headline, but I know what you mean, whereas this one was more complicated.

DB:  Yes, well I don’t know much about cricket, so of course I can’t really judge the cricketers.

FS:  Well, these are international cricketers, and I’d say four of the big stars of the South African team, so I think in this country-,

DB:  Well, in this country, in the Cape Argus, which we sometimes read, we’d hardly get a mention, I think.

FS:  No, I don’t think we would.

DB:  Well, I think possibly on the side. You know you have little stories on the side of the paper? In the old days they were probably things about stocks and shares or whatever. I don’t know, but we’d be in there. ‘English comedians,’ my name would be spelt wrong, ‘David Baddiel and Frank Skinner are dead.’ Definitely the cricketers would get top, and then Jens Lehmann, I think again, with Germany, but in Britain he would get a mention.

FS:  Oh, I think in South Africa. The thing is, he’s more World Cup themed, so he’s quite a topical guy to go down.

DB:  Well, on that note, we went to Robben Island, which is where Nelson Mandela was held captive, and on that boat, because the boat obviously goes from the Cape Town harbour, was Graham Taylor, who is a lovely bloke, it turns out.

FS:  Yes.

DB:  I've been utterly hateful about him in my time.

FS:  Well, yes, you have.

DB:  I felt bad about it because he was a lovely bloke. He reminds me more and more of Ken Dodd these days, really a lot.

FS:  Yes. You’ve stopped being nasty about him now, did you say?

DB:  Yes.

FS:  Oh good.

DB:  Yes, I love Ken Dodd. Then it occurred to me of course, that boat might have sunk.

FS:  Yes, and then what would the billing have been?

DB:  Well, it’s difficult. It was also complicated in my mind by the fact that you can’t swim. When we were thinking, ‘Oh, what if this boat goes down?’ I was also thinking, ‘I’ll have to save Frank, never mind Graham Taylor.’

FS:  Well, that would be a tricky decision though, wouldn’t it, because would part of you want to save Graham Taylor, as a sort of payback for all the abuse you’ve given him?

DB:  Because of the guilt? Well, possible, though if I was to save him I’d still be probably thinking about him looking like Ken Dodd and having his hair really ruined by the sea.

FS:  Yes.

DB:  No, I would save you. I did actually start thinking about it. I was thinking, ‘I’ll have to zip up my pockets on my coat because they’re full of water.’

FS:  You don’t want to lose your wallet.

DB:  Don’t want to lose my wallet, yes.

FS:  So that was first.

DB:  That was first. I’d save my wallet first, then you, about how heavy you might be, and slightly annoyed at you for failing to swim at 53.

FS:  Well, if it makes you feel any better, I think Graham Taylor would have been rescued by Mark Pougatch of 5 Live.

DB:  Mark Pougatch was also there, of 5 Live. He used to do little bits on Match of the Day, but doesn’t anymore.

FS:  Where would he be in the billing, if we’d all drowned?

DB:  I think Mark Pougatch would be last.

FS:  Well, not on the BBC news site though. He’d probably be right up there, I think.

DB:  On 5 Live?

FS:  Yes.

DB:  He might have been, yes. He does have a funny name as well, Pougatch. I've always thought, that’s a very funny name.

FS:  Well, if they found the body then the headline might be, ‘Large poo patch on Mark Pougatch.’ It would be a terrifying experience.

DB:  Yes, that implies all sorts of things might have gone on before Mark Pougatch.

FS:  The terror! The terror of it all!

DB:  Seeing Graham Taylor’s bloated body rising up beneath.

FS:  Oh God! Can you imagine? Robben Island, that’s seen so much over the years, pushed beyond its own limits. Maybe we’d float as far as Batman Island, which is that larger island nearby.

DB:  Is that the larger island?

FS:  Yes.

DB:  Batman and Robben Island.

FS:  You just got that, didn’t you?

DB:  I just got it! It took me a while.

(cuts to match audio 06.14)

FS:  So, there’s loads of Dutch fans here tonight. It seems like millions of them, but really, apart from dressing up in sort of orange-based fancy dress, they don’t do much, do they?

DB:  No. There was a time when the Dutch fans sort of saw themselves, I think, as a sort of English fans abroad, didn’t they? They were hooligans, they chanted a lot, but now they seem to have settled into their natural rhythm as Dutch people. Essentially, they just party a bit and wear silly clothes. They’re the sort of Monster Raving Loony Party of football. I don’t really take them seriously as football fans. They’re just ridiculous fancy dress people.

DB:  Well, as a result, this game, which is a big game, is actually probably one of the most atmosphere-less we’ve been to, which is contradictory in a way, because if people spend a lot of time dressing up, and putting on a lot of silly costumes, they’re thinking, rather like Russ Abbot used to,

Episode seventeen - Part two

Listen to this episode

(cuts to studio audio 07.26)

FS:  So, I’m sort of fascinated by this idea that the way forward for the England team is youth.

DB:  Very young youths.

FS:  Yes, almost an exclusive youth policy to the national side, which I don’t think we’ve ever had. Certainly not in my memory.

DB:  Well, you mentioned the other day that the golden generation should be called the folding generation, but really they’ve become the olden generation, haven’t they?

FS:  Yes.

DB:  Very quickly. Suddenly, anyone over 25 is old now in football, and for years we were told that experience is a very valuable commodity in football, especially in international football. That’s gone now, completely, and in fact, you know, there was a time when experience and wisdom was an important thing, and it’s really not anymore, is it? 

FS:  No.

DB:  People just think, ‘That’s rubbish.’

FS:  Is this a grumpy old fan moment?

DB:  Yes, it is. It’s partly inspired, perhaps, by being in Africa, where I have an idea, based on very little actual information, that there are kind of-, it’s a tribal wisdom that the elders are kind of important people. Of course, the elders are about 34.

FS:  Yes, exactly. It’s not often, is it, in the modern society, that anyone says, ‘We’re in a situation here where people lack discipline and focus, so let’s just replace them all with teenagers.’

DB:  Yes. Yes, ‘We’ve got a crisis. Who can we turn to? Someone who’s texting and having underage sex all the time.’

FS:  Yes, exactly, and probably tagged.

DB:  Probably what? Tagged, yes. Probably got an ASBO.

FS:  Obviously there are big pluses to youth. The thing they keep saying is that they won’t have such massive egos, they’ll be easier to handle, but is that true of teenagers?

DB:  Teenagers have enormous egos, don’t they?

FS:  Yes.

DB:  They’re full of themselves. The whole youth thing, as well, it’s based partly on the German team, who I think we worked out have an average age of 23, not 18, but of course the idea of German youth puts me in mind only of the Hitler Youth.

FS:  I knew.

DB:  It was coming. You knew it was coming, but the phrase, the something youth, even the England youth, strikes me as some kind of nationalist organisation.

FS:  Well in England, if the word youth, particularly in the plural, if you read in the paper that two youths were seen, you know there’s going to be some bad news after.

DB:  Maybe the England youths, as they are, this team now should actually appear, maybe they’ll take them off, but in kind of hoodies and hanging around by the end of the tunnel and stuff like that. Perhaps that’s how they’ll come onto the pitch, and people like you and me will be slightly frightened and (TC: 00:10:00) avoid them.

FS:  Yes. We don’t want to be one of those middle-aged men that was beaten to death by hooded youths.

DB:  Oh, God bless. This is so grumpy old man, but why is it that you go to any sort of small market town now, in England, somewhere like Kettering in fact, and there will always be youths hanging around the market square? What do they do all day? That’s just all they day.

FS:  That’ll be broken Britain you’ve identified, yes.

DB:  Well, that’s who we’re turning to, you’re absolutely right. We’re turning to the people who hang around in the market square, thinking about getting drunk or committing some sort of petty crime.

FS:  Youths.

DB:  Youths.

FS:  It is true that in the paper, when they’ve done something bad, they’re called youths, and if they’ve done something good they’re called young people.

DB:  That’s absolutely true. Of course, Fabio Capello is 64. He was already quite old. You know, all this stuff about relating to the players, he was quite old. To the young players, he’ll seem like a very, very ancient man indeed.

FS:  Yes, but then maybe he’ll take on that kind of grand pappy thing. You know, they’ll sit on his knee and he’ll tell them about the old days.

DB:  Once again, the youth of England, don’t they just rob things from their grandparents when they’re not looking?

FS:  You’re right, actually.

DB:  You know, make fun of them and say that they smell and things like that.

FS:  Yes. I don’t want things like that said about Fabio. It’s not right, but we should look. Obviously, there’s a tendency to think they’re all bad, teenagers and kids and stuff, but I’m hoping that the England team will become a bit like Bugsy Malone. It’ll be like an adult world but with just fresher faces involved in it.

DB:  It’s a lovely idea.

FS:  When they’re warming up, you know, on the pitch, rather than the normal stuff, they’ll be like, one will crouch down behind and one will push him over. People will be getting Chinese burns and things.

DB:  It’s a very, very kind of late fifties idea of youths.

FS:  Do you think?

DB:  Yes, sort of happy, smiling. At the worst a Chinese burn, at best a kind of community sing-along, but I don’t know if it’s like that anymore for the young people. 

FS:  You can imagine a scything tackle, a spray of acne fluid, as somebody goes down.

DB:  I think the Bugsy Malone thing. Perhaps they’ll also, as well as playing football, put on small productions of things like Bugsy Malone, the England team. Annie.

FS:  Fabio likes opera, doesn’t he?

DB:  Yes. I would put virtually everything I have on the fact that none of these young people like opera. They won’t be talking about opera or modern art.

FS:  No.

DB:  They’ll just be saying that he smells, behind his back.

FS:  Oh, no.

DB:  Yes, definitely.

FS:  I wish they wouldn’t say that.

DB:  That’s what they do to grand pappy. 

FS:  I wish they wouldn’t do that. I mean, I guess he’s going to become a sort of Fagin figure.

DB:  Yes. Hiding them underground.

FS:  Sitting around. He’s going to be sending them out to pick the pockets of various international sides.

DB:  Well, that would be great. That would be great. That’s what people say, don’t they, pick pockets? Isn’t that a sort of a football term? ‘We’ve picked the lock of the German team,’ or whatever.

FS:  I think the idea is that we won’t be that high on individual skill with all these kids, but they’ll get together a team spirit, the way the boy scouts do, like some sort of jamboree, and that’s what’ll carry us through. So, in a way, they will be picking pockets.

DB:  If he keeps going, Capello, perhaps for another twenty years, he’ll have a very long beard, and he could be in there with all the team going, ‘I’m reviewing the situation.’ He’ll have become Jewish.

FS:  That’s the FA, isn’t it? They’ll review the situation after each tournament. 

DB:  Yes.

(cuts to match audio 13.50)

FS:  3-1 to Holland. The Dutch fans have suddenly woken up and put together, I must say, quite a good conga.

DB:  It is quite a good conga, but can a conga be done to this music? Doesn’t it always have to be (sings conga tune)?

FS:  Oh no. I often used to conga to Tom Hark in the old days.

DB:  To what?

FS:  Tom Hark.

DB:  Did you really? I have to say that even when I've been in a football ground and done a conga, I've never been really happy congaing. I've always felt a bit silly.

FS:  I've always been a big fan of the

Episode seventeen - Part three

Listen to this episode

(cuts to studio audio 15.09)

DB:  So, the young players Fabio Capello has said he’s going to bring in.

FS:  Well, we got back to our hotel room quite late last night, and I put on Sky News which, as I've said before on this podcast, we can get here in South Africa, and they showed what could be a possible first team of the new Capello regime.

DB:  Who was in it?

FS:  Well, I can’t remember.

DB:  No idea who any of them were.

FS:  They all looked very young and ebullient.

DB:  Most of them are called Jack, aren’t they?

FS:  Well, there was Jack Wilshere, certainly. I knew him, and then there was another fellow called Jack.

DB:  Jack Rodwell.

FS:  Is it Jack Rodwell?

DB:  Now, I have to tell you, I only know that because I looked him up on the Internet.

FS:  That’s fair enough.

DB:  I have no idea. He plays for Everton, I believe. I also discovered that his uncle is Tony Rodwell, who used to play for Blackpool.

FS:  Oh.

DB:  Do you remember him? I looked him up and I discovered that his name is Anthony, and then in inverted commas, ‘Tony’ Rodwell, which suggested his nickname, Anthony Rodwell’s nickname, is Tony, which is very poor I think.

FS:  That was in brackets?

DB:  In brackets, yes. The middle of his name.

FS:  Well, I mean, I blame the parentheses.

DB:  Yes. That’s very good. All these people. Lee Cattermole is one of them.

FS:  Yes.

DB:  He apparently is the kind of bruiser in midfield. He’s meant to be the hard man, okay, the one who would replace the kind of Roy Keane figure we’ve never had. The David Batty.

FS:  Yes.

DB:  Then I read about him that when he first started playing for Villa-,

FS:  He’s in the Batty mould.

DB:  Yes, he’s in the Batty mould.

FS:  Cattermole’s in the Batty mould.

DB:  Yes.

FS:  Isn’t that a novel by Beryl-,

DB:  Oh, don’t say that.

FS:  No longer with us.

DB:  Yes, and I read about him. He used to play for Villa. No, he didn’t used to play for Villa. Who did he? Anyway, I was confused, but I read that after a 0-4 home defeat-,

FS:  That’s what happens when you start to show off.

DB:  I know. To Aston Villa. Listen to this. After a 0-4 home defeat, oh, it must have been for Middlesbrough, home defeat to Aston Villa, he was captured on camera in tears and had to be consoled by Gareth Southgate. Now, there’s a few associations in that sentence that are not good, England-wise, are there?

FS:  Well, he might as well get used to breaking down in tears in public.

DB:  Yes.

FS:  Obviously the Southgate association.

DB:  Yes, but this is our hard man.

FS:  The Southgate Association, they were a great band.

DB:  Well, these are the future. Jack Wilshere. I’ll tell you something about Jack Wilshere that does depress me. Jack Wilshere was born in 1992.

FS:  Blimey.

DB:  Now, in 1992, I was, you know, well into my career. Things were souring with Rob Newman. I knew you already, I was probably thinking about moving on, but you know, it feels like yesterday, is what I’m saying, and I don’t like that. It makes me face mortality too much in the face, to think that the next person that’s going to be at the centre of the England team was born in 1992. 

FS:  Born yesterday.

DB:  I’d be happier if it was Tony Rodwell that had been picked.

FS:  I don’t know if I’d be happy about that. How old is Tony in brackets?

DB:  Tony Rodwell was born in, I don’t know, but I think about 1962.

FS:  1962, or 1963 in brackets?

DB:  1962, exclamation mark. I don’t know, but it does worry me. All these people, they’re all born at times that are too frightening for people of our age.

FS:  No, but I must admit, you know how down I've been about the whole England experience.

DB:  Oh, I know. There’s all sorts of things that I've tried to cheer you up, but they’ve all failed.

FS:  I know, but when I saw all these young, fresh faced men lined up, I thought, ‘You know, maybe this could be a new beginning.’ I’ll tell you what I find within myself. Part of me, about 42%, is kind of excited at young blood coming into the team, and a new beginning.

DB:  Sydney Youngblood is coming into the team?

FS:  Yes.

DB:  I thought his career was over.

FS:  Then, about 58% is sweet revenge at the rejection of the golden generation, and them being kicked out.

Episode seventeen - Part four

Listen to this episode

(cuts to recording at match)

FS:  I’m getting a bit worried about the Dutch conga, because there’s a lot of very scary looking South African policemen gathering.

DB:  They don’t like the conga.

FS:  No.

DB:  They think it’s a snake.

FS:  Do you think this is how the Soweto uprising started, with a conga?

DB:  Yes. There’s going to be a mass shooting in a minute.

FS:  Oh no. They do look quite scary.

DB:  What are they doing here? There’s lots of them in body armour appearing around the Dutch fans, who are after all congaing. Perhaps it’s misunderstood here.

FS:  Perhaps it’s a local bylaw, anti-congaing.

DB:  You said you could conga anywhere you like.

FS:  Well, I don’t know this strange land.

(cuts back to studio audio 19.35)

DB:  So, in the van coming back from Holland Uruguay, and Frank, this thing just happened to me which may interest you. I was just accosted, in fact I think you saw, by an England fan. You moved ahead to avoid any kind of trouble.

FS:  Yes. I just wasn’t in the mood.

DB:  He was quite a big drunk bloke, and his mate, and they started talking about England being toilet and that kind of thing, and I was just playing along with them. Then he said to me, ‘Yes, so it as a good game (TC: 00:20:00), wasn’t it, good game?’ I said, just again, to pass the time, ‘Well, I was quite pleased about it because I've got £25 on Holland.’ He went, ‘Oh, £25 on Holland? You’re supposed to be an England supporter! Three Lions and all that, why are you supporting Holland?’ I said, ‘Well, you know, if England go out, you like to have a bit of insurance, something to support or whatever.’ He went, ‘You see that? That’s why people hate people like you. They hate,’ and I thought, ‘Oh no, he’s going to say Jews.’

FS:  Oh no.

DB:  It’s going to be that sickening anti-Semitic moment.

FS:  I held my breath. 

DB:  Yes, and he went, ‘They hate hedge fund managers. That’s what you’re doing, you’re being a hedge fund manager,’ and I thought, ‘Blimey.’ All the time that money people have tried to explain to me what hedge fund management is.

FS:  Robert Peston and people like that.

DB:  I've never understood it, and now suddenly I get it. I know what he means. It’s when you think you’re going to lose something, then you put a bet on something else to cover yourself.

FS:  You put your money elsewhere. That’s fantastic.

DB:  It is fantastic.

FS:  A bloke who you’d expect to just have like gibberish at his fingertips, and then he comes out with a really interesting economic insight.

DB:  I know. It was extraordinary.

FS:  I've never understood that before. How marvellous.

DB:  I wanted to embrace him. He did smell rather of drink, though.

FS:  Yes. How do you account for that? Did he look like he’d been pulled through a hedge fund manager backwards?

DB:  He did.

FS:  Oh, scruffy.

DB:  One more thing, while we’re recording. We were talking during the game, do you remember, about the South African riot police sort of getting very disturbed by the conga that the Dutch fans were doing. I suggested they might have mistaken it for a big snake, but I was mentioning this to Ed, our fixer, who is of course South African. He pointed out that the black South African police force will of course get very disturbed by a huge crowd of rioting Dutchmen because of the history of the Boers and so on and so forth.

FS:  Oh, I see.

DB:  That wouldn’t have been available to me immediately. Of course. Of course that would have been disturbing to them, for a whole bunch of basically Afrikaans going a bit mental.

FS:  Yes, well I was worried that it was one of the most Protestant things I've ever been close to.

DB:  Yes, the whole orange thing must have been disturbing for you.

FS:  Oh, I found it very unnerving. Also, can you not ever mention orange again on a Sony Ericsson podcast?