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danny baker to return to 606

Stevie H
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Stevie H

Stevie H

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Baker's return can only be good news for 6-0-6

 

We should all celebrate the BBC's decision to restore Danny Baker at the helm of 5 Live's football phone-in

Barry Glendenning

May 21, 2008 10:06 AM

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/05/...ly_be_good.html

 

Tune into BBC Radio 5 Live football phone-in 6-0-6 any evening and you'll invariably hear the same voices offering the same opinions. The pompous golf club bore pontificating indignantly about yet another Cristiano Ronaldo triple axel with pike. The slow-witted Big Four flat-earther who thinks the relegation trapdoor is a thick black line above Everton. The barely sentient Liverpool fan, whose inarticulate opinions are so moronic you're left wondering how it was that somebody so evidently in need of community care could possibly have been let loose on the national airwaves.

 

The listeners who call in are often worse. If being subjected to the tedious bluster of presenters Alan Green, Tim Lovejoy and the byword for haplessness that is Spoony doesn't convince you that getting in among your radio with a claw-hammer is a good idea, then the echoed insanity of Gavin on the A38 who forgot to turn down his car stereo almost certainly will.

 

It wasn't always like this. Having quickly realised that broadcasting a successful football phone-in show without input from the kind of cranks who like to call football phone-in shows was always likely to be a non-runner, BBC suits opted for the next best scenario by installing Danny Baker as the original ringmaster of the 6-0-6 circus in the early nineties.

 

Fed up with missing Millwall's away matches, he left for a stint on Radio 1 in 1993, then returned to the relaunched Radio 5 Live in 1996, only to lose his job a year later. In the wake of comically savage attacks on Birmingham City managing director Karren Brady and the then Tottenham Hotspur chairman Alan Sugar, the straw that did for the camel's lumbar region was some rather robust midweek criticism of referee Mike Reed, who had just awarded Chelsea a penalty for a 116th minute Erland Johnsen dive that resulted in Leicester City being unfairly eliminated from the FA Cup.

 

Baker went ballistic.

 

Although the story that he gave out Reed's address and rallied his listeners to exact retribution could well be apocryphal, he did embark on a spectacularly belligerent rant that culminated in him describing referees as "the maggot at football's golden core", before angrily b******ing his producer for "putting through calls that are just smart-arses who want to be contrary". Pleading for the return of "my old producer", the contrary smart-a*** other contrary smart-arses call The Guv'nor was given his P45 instead.

 

Since then, Baker's been around the broadcasting houses, often in cahoots with his co-conspirator, Danny Kelly of NME and Under The Moon fame. The duo's obsession with obscure trivia and the excruciating minutiae of life as a football fan has resulted in some of the funniest football radio shows ever broadcast by two avuncular Londoners with the same first name.

 

They likened the Belfast teenager who had to walk up Belfast's Shankill road in a Celtic shirt as a forfeit to Bruce Willis wearing the sandwich board in Die Hard: With A Vengeance ("the retreat from Moscow was a doddle compared to this!"). They argued with a 12-year-old over whether or not the Grimsby Town mascot was a giant bag of chips or a midget in a yellow raincoat (it was a midget in a yellow raincoat). They pounded the desk in paroxysms of mirth as Gordon the middle-aged Dundee United supporter told them of the giant wooden "United" dickie bow his father made for him when he was a boy ("I wanted something other than a scarf. In the end it was two foot wide, tied round my neck with a big leather strap and by half time I was Quasimodo"). They regularly reduced their listeners and each other to tears of laughter.

 

Yesterday the BBC announced that Baker will be returning to the 6-0-6 studio for a half-dozen shows during Euro 2008. "Of course the problem is that latest figures suggest only 1,400 people in the UK have even a passing interest in the tournament, but I really believe that, come the latter stages, Radio 5 Live can double that tally," he said. "Leastways I've never been to Iceland before and am very much relishing getting to grips with the altitude and native songs as the tournament unfolds."

 

Undeniably funny, occasionally as boorish and rude as Alan Green, but with a better sense of the absurd, none of the pomposity and a lot less self-regard, this spiky Cockney's long overdue return to the 5 Live phone-in fold should provide a much-needed jab in the arm for a radio show that, through every fault of its vacuous incumbent presenters, has come to resemble a refuge for the mentally lame and halt. Listen up during Euro 2008 to hear Danny Baker spank all concerned with six of the best.

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Woodsyla

Woodsyla

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Tune into BBC Radio 5 Live football phone-in 6-0-6 any evening and you'll invariably hear the same voices offering the same opinions. The pompous golf club bore pontificating indignantly about yet another Cristiano Ronaldo triple axel with pike. The slow-witted Big Four flat-earther who thinks the relegation trapdoor is a thick black line above Everton. The barely sentient Liverpool fan, whose inarticulate opinions are so moronic you're left wondering how it was that somebody so evidently in need of community care could possibly have been let loose on the national airwaves.

 

The listeners who call in are often worse. If being subjected to the tedious bluster of presenters Alan Green, Tim Lovejoy and the byword for haplessness that is Spoony doesn't convince you that getting in among your radio with a claw-hammer is a good idea, then the echoed insanity of Gavin on the A38 who forgot to turn down his car stereo almost certainly will.

 

That is absolutely spot on, the presenters are fecking atrocious, shame it's only for the Euro's.

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Des

Des

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That is absolutely spot on, the presenters are fecking atrocious, shame it's only for the Euro's.

 

Might be seeing how it goes before offering it full time? I hope so. Tim Lovejoy must be stamped out at all costs.

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Swipe

Swipe

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Baker and kelly were the best together.

 

very good news this.

 

Used to watch Under The Moon all the time. Was great.

 

According to Wikipedia, co-host Tom Binns was axed from the show after he offered to "give Michael Owen one up the a***" after he scored an impressive goal in the 1998 World Cup. :unsure:

 

Slightly off-topic, but I remember a Dominic Diamond footy show on Channel 5 that was good too.

 

With Fantasy Football too, footy shows were much better in the 90's

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Hassony

Hassony

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Used to watch Under The Moon all the time. Was great.

 

According to Wikipedia, co-host Tom Binns was axed from the show after he offered to "give Michael Owen one up the a***" after he scored an impressive goal in the 1998 World Cup. :unsure:

 

Slightly off-topic, but I remember a Dominic Diamond footy show on Channel 5 that was good too.

 

With Fantasy Football too, footy shows were much better in the 90's

 

Tom Binns used to make me laugh, I remember him showing an FA cup replica made in ice only to break the handle

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Cam

Cam

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Binns was funny but Lisa Rogers was brilliant midnight 'entertainment'. Can't believe it's been 10 years.

 

Anyway, Baker & Kelly were always brilliant together on the former's Sunday morning show (with or without Mark Kermode and Nick Hancock) & letely in The Times' podcasts. But Baker alone on 606... better than Lovejoy & Spoony obviously but got way too bogged down by 'funny' stories (the same funny stories that were great on the morning show) and lower-league teams that no-one cares about. I *think* he had a ban on Premiership-related calls for quite some time too.

 

Good news about the short-term return but I wouldn't want him back on 606 for too long. But get him & Kelly back together; I'd have thought TalkSport would have signed them up as a weekend complement to Hawksbee & Jacobs.

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Des

Des

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Binns was funny but Lisa Rogers was brilliant midnight 'entertainment'. Can't believe it's been 10 years.

 

Anyway, Baker & Kelly were always brilliant together on the former's Sunday morning show (with or without Mark Kermode and Nick Hancock) & letely in The Times' podcasts. But Baker alone on 606... better than Lovejoy & Spoony obviously but got way too bogged down by 'funny' stories (the same funny stories that were great on the morning show) and lower-league teams that no-one cares about. I *think* he had a ban on Premiership-related calls for quite some time too.

 

Good news about the short-term return but I wouldn't want him back on 606 for too long. But get him & Kelly back together; I'd have thought TalkSport would have signed them up as a weekend complement to Hawksbee & Jacobs.

 

Get Baker & Kelly in on Saturday mornings instead of Eamonn f*cking Holmes on 5 live.

Edited by Des
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Ostrich Man

Ostrich Man

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Tom Binns used to make me laugh, I remember him showing an FA cup replica made in ice only to break the handle

i remember him getting a typical footballers massage once and he was in total agony....you just know that at one point he was going to hit the female masseur just to make her stop...it was one of the funniest things on that show.

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Knox_Harrington

Knox_Harrington

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They likened the Belfast teenager who had to walk up Belfast's Shankill road in a Celtic shirt as a forfeit to Bruce Willis wearing the sandwich board in Die Hard: With A Vengeance ("the retreat from Moscow was a doddle compared to this!"). They argued with a 12-year-old over whether or not the Grimsby Town mascot was a giant bag of chips or a midget in a yellow raincoat (it was a midget in a yellow raincoat). They pounded the desk in paroxysms of mirth as Gordon the middle-aged Dundee United supporter told them of the giant wooden "United" dickie bow his father made for him when he was a boy ("I wanted something other than a scarf. In the end it was two foot wide, tied round my neck with a big leather strap and by half time I was Quasimodo"). They regularly reduced their listeners and each other to tears of laughter.

I heard all these and THIS is football. There has never been anything as good as this.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Stevie H

Stevie H

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Get Baker & Kelly in on Saturday mornings instead of Eamonn f*cking Holmes on 5 live.

you'd think that would be a gimme wouldn't you? i'd even get up early to listen to that. if i still lived in the country that is. and hadn't been up until 4am the night before.

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Guest Raisbeck

Guest Raisbeck

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So has anyone listened to it?

 

I download the first show and it was fecking dire! Callers ringing in with limericks and reasons why they hate certain countries.

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Hassony

Hassony

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So has anyone listened to it?

 

I download the first show and it was fecking dire! Callers ringing in with limericks and reasons why they hate certain countries.

Not really surprised

 

was planning to download it today but I think I'll just download fighting talk and the friday quiz show (no adam and joe this week :( )

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