TV View: This couch - and we don't mean to drop names - has carried out several interviews with Steve Staunton in its time. There was the one in 1999: "Any chance of a word Stephen?"

"No."

2000: "Steve, any chance of a word?"

"No."

2001: "Hiya Stevie babes, would there be any . . ."

"No."

So, we go back a long way. To be honest, when Steve retired in 2002 our reaction was along the lines of, "phew, that's one less Irish player who won't talk to us". Only Stephen Carr loved us less.

Now, in fairness, Steve wasn't that diffident with every word-seeking hack, only those who happened to be working as a post-match-quote-seeking tunnel rat at Lansdowne Road, who had written a bad word about him eight years before. Not even Dumbo had a memory like him.

In light of yesterday's News of the World revelations, we wondered was Steve's reticence in speaking freely with the tunnel rats over the years down to the fact he feared we were Lansdowne's version of the Fake Sheikh, there to set him up, embarrass and humiliate him, draw him in to saying bad things about his team-mates, or, worse, entice him into managing Aston Villa.

We'd assume, then, that like every semi-public figure earning his living in Britain, Steve had heard of Mazher Mahmood, the Fake Sheikh. Every semi-public figure except Sven-Goran Eriksson.

On Sky Sports' Sunday Supplement, the panel was incredulous, in a laughing- out-loud kind of way, at the mere thought of Sven falling for the "sting". Is it really that long since Newcastle chairman Freddie Shepherd told the Sheikh that "Newcastle girls are all dogs, England is full of them"?

Now, we didn't take the Fake Sheikh business too seriously until the Sunday Supplement panel started talking about possible successors to Sven. (Which sort of proved to us that the English press' worst nightmare is that England might win the World Cup).

Sam Allardyce was mentioned, as was Steve McClaren - although, as Martin Samuel put it, "timing is everything in football", in reference to McClaren's Middlesbrough losing 7-0 to Arsenal on the weekend there might just be a vacancy for the England job.

Not one of the panel suggested Graeme Le Saux and Jack Charlton as candidates for the position(s), but sure, what association would appoint as manager a recently retired left back with no managerial experience, aided by an affable but slightly elderly Geordie, who doesn't know his Shay Givens from his Shay Brennans, as an "international football consultant"? Exactly: mad.

It was on this very issue that Cathal Dervan and Eamon Dunphy fell out on Setanta's The Hub. Fortunately Dunphy was on the phone and Dervan was in the studio, so they weren't actually able to physically get hold of each other's throats. Still, presenter Daire O'Brien had a job separating them.

The gist-ish: both started by agreeing Staunton deserved a chance, but once mutual Saipan-ish loathing kicked in one sort of concluded that Staunton should be sacked before his investiture and the other reckoned Stevo was the son of God. Maybe even God Himself. In other words, 'twas lively and immensely entertaining stuff.

But maybe not as entertaining as our telly Darts week. "What's so special about playing at Lakeside?" Ray Stubbs asked the one and very only Bobby George.

"It's the bee's knees. You've heard of Richard Gere, this place is different gear," he said of the World Darts Championship at the Lakeside Country Club in Frimley Green.

An officer and a gentleman is our Bobby.

A weighty lad he is too, as we discovered on ITV's Celebrity Fit Club: 16st 13lb, to be exact, but you suspected he'd have weighed in at just 13lb if he'd removed his jewellery before getting on the scales.

"I can hear him, crunch, crunch, crunch," said his wife, Marie, revealing that Bobby gets up in the middle of the night to eat chocolate out of the fridge he has installed in their bedroom.

By yesterday Bobby, still weighing 16st 13lb, was back at the Lakeside to watch the David Beckham of darts, the Netherlands' Jelle Klaasen, win the world championship, beating compatriot Raymond van "Barney" Barneveld in a Total Darts final.

"I think I am a little bit different than a normal darts player and I think that's the most interesting thing about me, I think," said Jelle.

Bobby nodded, with almost as much enthusiasm as he raids that fridge.