Roy Keane appeared to be on a roll on Tuesday night as he calmly admonished Alex Ferguson for not knowing “the meaning of the word loyalty,” but then ITV’s Adrian Chiles and an excitable Ian Wright intervened.

“I just don’t think the manager needs to do that,” said Keane at the top of the station’s coverage of the Champions League group game between Arsenal and Borussia Dortmund.

“I’m not sure how many books he’s written now, but he has to draw the line eventually and say ‘listen, these players have all been top servants to Man United’, and a lot of these players helped the manager win a lot of trophies.

“You can imagine if we never won a trophy what he would have said,” he added, prompting the first chortle from Wright.

Without a hint of irony, Keane, whose exit from Old Trafford was precipitated by criticism of his own team-mates, continued: “We brought success to the club, we gave it everything we had when we were there. But as I said, it’s just part of modern life, people like to do books and criticise their ex-players.”

“You’ll have to do a book about the book,” chimed Lee Dixon, perhaps ill-advisedly.

Wright, by this stage, was giggling uncontrollably on Roy’s right.

“This is a very serious matter,” said schoolmaster Chiles, “what do you find so amusing?”

Wright: “I dunno, it’s just the way Roy’s dealing with it, really.”

The former Arsenal striker, incidentally, agreed with the bigger boy that Ferguson’s criticism “seems unnecessary”.

Dixon then re-emerged to boldly admit: “I don’t understand books, at all.”

Well, thanks for that, lads.