'Scuse Me While I Lick The Sky

CATHAL COUGHLAN, the man who gave the world 'Only Losers Take The Bus' and much more besides, once had a song which lambasted the robber-barons of late 20th-century global media.

To this day it remains unreleased, but Coughlan used to perform it live, and the chorus went, "Lick, lick, lick your way up the Murdoch thighs!" Well, over Christmas, it was Foul Play's turn to add a little more saliva to old Rupert's calves.

I had, until now, successfully resisted the temptation to subscribe to Sky Sports, because, after years of watching Premiership games in pubs, I am completely fucking sick of the way that they vicariously talk up the virtues of their own product under the guise of informed commentary.

Any game with more than three goals in it is routinely referred to as 'a cracker', and any game which genuinely is a cracker is instantly upgraded to 'all-time classic' status.

Moreover, when buying into their evil operation, there is the additional danger that your social life might go to the dogs entirely, as you find yourself staying in and watching all sorts of shite, like gridiron, or anything involving Leicester City. But I succumbed, anyway, and that's all ahead of me now.

So the fellow from Cablelink calls around one freezing December day, produces the black box from his bag of tricks, plugs it in, and stands back as the sea of wavy lines transmutes into a clear picture . . . professional ballroom dancing from the Royal Albert Hall.

I hadn't expected live coverage of Arsenal v Liverpool at the precise instant I switched on, but to be confronted with such cheap tat for my introduction to SkyWorld was, as John Gregory would say, sending out all the wrong signals. (No pun intended.)

In footballing terms, Sky's policy is one of containment. Since 1992, they've been buying up absolutely everything just to annoy the BBC, in the same way that AC Milan used to stockpile stars like Papin and Raducioiu so that Juventus and Lazio couldn't get them.

And, just as those lads spent most of their Sundays in the San Siro VIP box, so this stuff sits in splendid isolation on Sky Sports 2 or 3, reaching a tiny sliver of the audience it would have commanded a decade ago.

By eating everything that moves, Sky are covering all angles in a fashion similar to their alarming preponderance of cameras at Premiership stadia.

999 times out of 1,000, Man City v Bolton in the Worthington Cup would be of no interest to any sane person, but they will buy it up anyway with the hypothetical 1,000th occasion in mind, where City's new #60m signing Alessandro Del Piero would be making his home debut, and where it would thus possess more significance than the average lower-division gore-fest.

But at least several times a week there's something watchable on the main channel. Contrariwise, the extent to which Sky Sports 3 in particular serves as a dumping ground for the effluvium of televisual sport's colostomy bag cannot be over-stressed.

It's really only there for special occasions, like when they need to show two Premiership matches simultaneously (c.f. last season's title run-in) and there's something immovable like the PGA Tour on one of the other channels. Otherwise, it's endless surfing, kick-boxing, snowboarding, powerboating, and, no doubt given time, live 4 x 400mg coke-snorting.

Sky haven't yet snapped up tractor-pulling, but I understand that's because the sport's paymasters are driving a hard bargain during negotiations over cocktails at Rupert's pad in Singapore.

As I write, SS3 is broadcasting a full re-run of Newcastle's (ahem) memorable 5-0 win over Man United in 1996. Are they trying to tell me something, do you think?

At least Sky, for all their billions, haven't yet pilfered Barry Davies. Last week, the great man was doing his best to brighten the lives of United fans during those pressing encounters down in Brazil, with his increasingly whimsical pronunciations of 'Solskjaer'.

Most people plump for 'SOL-shar', but Barry tends to favour 'Sol-SHARR-er', with occasional recourse to 'Sol-SHAH-ehh'.

I myself have a unique perspective on this subject. One beautiful summer's night a couple of years ago (the night Argentina beat England in Saint-Etienne, in fact), I got talking to a drunk Norwegian while waiting at a taxi rank near Stephen's Green.

As we watched yet another empty cab hurtle past, roof-sign reassuringly aglow, there was much time to ponder the evening's events, and life in general. Presently, the conversation meandered to what was, in hindsight, an inevitable conclusion.

"You're Norwegian. Tell me this and tell me no more," I pleaded, gaping at him hopefully. "How DO you pronounce 'Solskjaer'?"

"Ach, not you as well," he yelped with dismay. "It's SUUL-shyre, alright?"

So, it seems, Foul Play is the only man in the country who can enunciate the name of the Greatest Living Scandinavian correctly. But then, as regular readers will know, I've always been something of a cunning linguist.