Vincent Jones is notorious: he is a hard man, a loose cannon, a player who supplemented his modest footballing ability with a thuggish demeanour on the pitch.

He is misunderstood: a great friend, a wonderful family man and yet someone capable of extreme violence on and off the pitch. With his footballing career at an end, he now offers a caricature of the worst excesses of his former life in a new movie career, previous misdemeanours sanitised by his association with the stars in Hollywood.

The resume is hardly startling to those on a nodding acquaintance with the British tabloid press over the past 12 years. Jones may have grabbed more headlines than any other player in the Premiership and its previous incarnation: through his actions he has opened his life to media scrutiny.

It was therefore hugely disappointing that the Channel 4 programme on Jones last Tuesday offered nothing more substantial than rehashed headlines, footage worn thin through repeated use and superficial title tattle in relation to the subject. A colleague aptly summarised the package as one that Shoot magazine could have cobbled together with greater insight and potency.

The absence of any formal interview structure with the subject is an obvious handicap and exacerbates the problem of fleshing out headlines and televisual incidents with a fresh perspective. This didn't even come close to fulfilling that obligation to the viewer, offering a soft-focus ramble through the life and times of Jones.

The narrative overview was almost apologetic in tone, not neutral, and not critical. It was also contradictory. Initially we were told that Jones enjoyed a happy childhood - that is, until he was three when his relationship with his parents soured, primarily because of their constant bickering and plunge towards marital breakdown.

For most people their childhood extends considerably further than three years of age and if pushed the majority of folk would find it difficult to resurrect memories from that period of life. It's a small point, but just the first of a litany of things that grated about the programme. Journalist John Sadler, a biographer of Jones, filled in the childhood blanks, re-appearing occasionally when Jones' image needed a little airbrushing.

Of the plethora of interviewees only journalist Patrick Collins, former Leeds United manager Howard Wilkinson and former Leeds and current Coventry manager Gordon Strachan provided a sliver of steel to the proceedings. Indeed Strachan comfortably wins the accolade for the most memorable line of the documentary when, in trying to sum up his initial reaction to Jones' arrival at Leeds, he observed: "I thought he was a big thug with a big throw. Useless."

The former Scottish international, however, went on to revise his view, borne out by a change in attitude by Jones. Strachan described playing in a match against a Belgian side in which Jones smacked an opponent in the face. Afterwards Strachan called Jones aside and pointed out that he had no intention at his age of running around on a 10-man team to make up for the stupidity of Jones.

It appeared a lesson that the latter observed for he was only booked twice in 18 months at Elland Road, and Strachan pointed out: "During that time he (Jones) played some lovely football, scored some good goals and was a joy to work with."

Wilkinson's decision to get rid of Jones on Leeds' return to the old First Division brought an end to a stability of sorts in Jones' life and pre-empted a return to Chelsea/Wimbledon and the bad old days and ways.

The most tasteless aspect of the programme - the viewer was spoilt for choice in this respect - followed the revelation that the subject once considered suicide, taking his shotgun into the woods and pondering life and death while sitting on a yellow oil barrel: cue camera meandering through a wooded area before revealing said barrel. B movie kitsch at its worst.

His faithful Jack Russell, whose bark cut through his reverie and forced him to consider the selfishness of his actions, particularly for wife, Tanya, saved Jones.

The programme trawled through a list of friends who all thought Jones to be a diamond geezer, probably because he played on the same team as them, lent them money or, in one case, lent this guy's wife a Mercedes for six months when she had the misfortune to crash the family car. There was one great image of a friend, shirt straining to contain his belly, pint of lager in hand reminiscing about his days playing alongside Jones and how hard it was to dispossess a player with such raw talent.

But the abiding memory was of a mishmash of cliches, pub talk and amateur psychology. It was a nothing more than a catalogue of indiscretion: a monumental failure to delve deeper than the headlines, a homily to yobbism and ultimately most damning, boring.