"Better for you, better for all of us," promised Des Lynam at the unveiling on Saturday evening of the most expensive football transfer of the year, The Premiership (BBC to ITV, £183 million on a three-year contract). By the time he said goodnight, 75 minutes later (23ish if you didn't count the ads), it was achingly apparent: Des Lynam is not a man of his word.
And speaking of words, Dustin the Turkey has one for stuff like ITV's The Premiership: brutal. He usually uses it as a term of abuse for boy bands but no boy band I've ever heard irritated as much as this dross. Apart, maybe, from Milli Vanilli. Between ourselves, they were times when a plaintive cry of 'Bring Back Brian Moore and The Big Match (or even Bob Wilson)' filled the air, it was that dire.
When Ally McCoist declared, after watching Arsenal's win over Middlesbrough, that "as 4-0s go that was never a 4-0", a comment (his most cogent of the evening) that had Tel Venables' shoulders vibrating in hilarity and Des's eyebrows rotating in mirth, something else was clear: ITV's revolutionary coverage of English football involves transforming it in to a cross between The Jimmy Tarbuck Half Hour and Stars In Your Eyes.
It also involves them confidently pitching their football against the likes of the celebrity version of The Weakest Link on the other side because they reckon, like Anne Robinson's party, it's showbiz.
And it involves them attempting to convince us that the game of Association Football was invented on the day ITV won the rights to show us the Premiership (see Des's opening speech on Saturday evening). Sky Sports tried this tactic when it started out all those years ago but lads, like football, we weren't born yesterday.
Yes, Match of the Day devotees (the bulk of them born pre-1970) feared the worst when the contract was lost to ITV but if Saturday is anything to go by their worst fears weren't worst enough.
Des? The game of football, as opposed to all the stuff that clings to it, ISN'T, despite what you've been hinting in all your pre-launch interviews, showbiz, even if all its accessories are.
The only pure, uncontaminated part of it left is that 90 minute-bit played on grass, the bit that's sandwiched between all the glitz. The rest of it can be a laugh, no harm in that, but that 90 minute-bit is simple, beautiful and occasionally sublime and merits intelligent, insightful and honest analysis, not the "entertaining", hyped-up twaddle ITV, evidently, seems intent on dishing up.
A case in point. Liverpool ground out a 2-1 win over West Ham on Saturday in a less than convincing display, but they stuck at it and got their points.
A season or two ago they would have drawn, lost maybe. The ITV pundits dismissed the performance as poor, largely, one assumed, because it wasn't entertaining enough (low showbiz factor).
Over on RT╔ John Giles was thoroughly impressed, largely because he has the wit to know that if Liverpool are to be serious title contenders this season that's precisely the kind of scruffy (copyright: Mark Lawrenson) win they NEED to grind out. Scruffy = midweek points away to Southampton = prizes = genuine stab at Premiership title. But doesn't necessarily = £183 million worth of entertainment. But don't tell ITV.
Back on ITV they had Andy Townsend sitting in their "on-site tactics truck" (he had a pen in his hand so this hinted that we might get some analysis - we were wrong) asking Middlesbrough's Ugo Ehiogu (conceded penalty and sent off in 4-0 defeat, apart from that he'd a good day) where it had all gone wrong. Ugo wasn't sure but he thought the ref had something to do with it.
Andy nodded.
Then we returned to the studio to be told by Des that "this season Tel's going all tech, he's on Prozone - not to be confused with what he's on".
Tel's shoulders re-vibrated. "How do you know what I'm sitting on," he asked, lifting himself from his chair. Ally chortled, Des guffawed, the rest of us wailed:
"Alan Hansen, Gary Lineker, Trevor Brooking, Mark Lawrenson:- MISS YOU LOTS."
Prozone? An aerial view of a Subbuteo table populated by football-jersey wearing ants replicating footballers running around in circles in the course of a game.
Unless your name is David Ginola, in which case you'll be the stationary ant hugging the left touchline. Tel will study these ants for the season and share his conclusions with us. Gimmick-a-rama? Don't need it lads, football's grand as it is - after all it was the planet's most loved sport long before ITV brought us footballing ants and on-site tactics trucks.
RT╔? Your 11th-hour decision to run, after all, with Premiership will, one suspects, be greatly rewarded in a Saturday evening telly-football-ratings-battle kind of way.
Especially if The Dunph carries on describing players like Liverpool's Danny Murphy as "a donkey, but a good donkey". Note: a good donkey, but not a great donkey.
Can you imagine Tel, Des or Ally labelling Danny Boy as a donkey? No. They'd compare him, straight-faced, with Edgar Davids, because they know they'll never beat the game show on the other side in the ratings war if all they can promise us is edited highlights of a Scouser hee-hawing while he tracks back. That's hardly showbiz Cecil.
The Dunph's opening howarya in Network Two's Premiership on Saturday resembled a kind of a state-of-the-nation address, or a late 1970s Minister for Finance's grave budgetary "tighten-yer-belts-lads" televised lecture to the people, but then he got chatting with Gilesie and he chilled out.
"Now John," he said, "it's a long time since you were lying awake in bed at night ..." Gilesie flinched, looking acutely uncomfortable and you suddenly realised that the AprΦs Match Gilesie is more Gilesie than Gilesie himself.
"Mother of Jeeesus, what's he about to say to me," said Gilesie's face.
"Since you were lying awake in bed at night dreaming about the new season - do you still get excited about it?", thge Dunph enquired. Gilesie's sigh of relief was so cavernous it resulted in a tidal wave lapping Western Samoa's shores.
"Yes, I get a little buzz when the new season starts," he admitted. Note: a LITTLE buzz. Not a big buzz worth £183 million, or even a good donkey of a buzz worth a free transfer to Rushden and Diamonds. A little restrained, calm, hype-free, controlled buzz which explains why, in the absence of Hansen and Lawrenson from televised Premiership duty this season, Gilesie is our only hope of a helping of sanity in the midst of on-site tactics trucks and aerial views of footballing ants.
