Hartlepool's Jeff Stelling, star of Sky's Soccer Saturday and Channel 4's Countdown talks about his new book
Hartlepool's Jeff Stelling, star of Sky's Soccer Saturday and Channel 4's Countdown talks about his new book
Posted: 06 Oct 2009
There's only one Jeff Stelling
Quickfire Jeff - who hails from Hartlepool - has become a cult figure with Sky Saturday Soccer show and as the new presenter of Channel 4's Countdown. He talks about his rise to telly stardom and growing up
Exclusive interview by Michael Hamilton
MH: What are your memories of growing up in Hartlepool?
Jeff: My childhood memories are fantastic ones, mainly. It was a tough town. I grew up on the Rift House Estate, which was one of the tougher neighbourhoods. But I remember you could play football to your heart’s content. You’d come home when it got dark and your mum and dad wouldn’t worry about where you’d been. Everybody looked after each other. It sounds clichéd but those were the days when people left their back doors open and you still felt safe.
I remember my dad Andy coming home from the steel works at the end of his shift covered in all sorts of gunge and thinking: “I’m never going to do that.” Thankfully he felt the same way. He died 17 years ago but my mum Nora is still with us – she’s 88 now.
I’ve still got lots of aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces living in and around Hartlepool – my extended family. I normally only get back these days to see my mum, although I was back for the football club’s centenary bash and I’ll be back a couple of times in the summer. I’m doing the countdown for the Tall Ships Race, which the mayor asked me to do and I’m involved in a numeracy and literacy campaign with the local libraries.
MH: You took your wife Liz to see Hartlepool FC on an early date. Is she a football fan?
Jeff: She used to work at Sky Sports so you have to have some basic knowledge of football. I wouldn’t say she is the biggest football fan in the world but she understands the game. It was probably a bonus she wasn’t football-mad because I took her to see Hartlepool versus Rochdale. I built it up as a big game but we were absolutely shocking! The kids haven’t seen Hartlepool at the Victoria ground but they have been to some away games including Bournemouth and Southampton, which are nearer to where we live in Winchester. My ten-year-old Robbie boasts that he hasn’t seen Hartlepool lose but I have to remind him he hasn’t seen that many games. I also have a son Matt, nine, and daughter Olivia, five.
MH: What do they make of your celebrity status?
They don’t get any stick at school about it. They’ve never known anything different because I’ve been on telly since they were born. But my little girl was a bit puzzled that other people see me on TV – she thought I was just on the telly for her! When I’m recognised on the street she says: “Daddy how do those people know you? Are you on television for them as well?” Which is sweet.
They are pretty cool about it and all their school friends are too. I take the kids to school and pick them up quite a bit so I’m just another dad to their friends. They might ask me what I think about a team they may support or whatever which is great.
MH: Would you ever move back to the North East?
Jeff: I could see myself moving back to the North East but not for work. If you want to do sport then Sky is the place to be – they’ve got the channels to cover it properly. If I was to move back to the North East for the BBC or whatever I’d have such a limited time on TV I don’t know if I could cope with it. But in terms of a part of the country, it’s fantastic. I love it when we go back.
One of the first times I took my boys up a few years ago – that was without my wife and my little girl – we had a few days there. When we got back they said: “Mum, can we move to Hartlepool please?” They loved it. We played football on the beach and we went to the Victoria ground and visited the historic harbour and ships and everyone made a big fuss of them.
MH: Your Middlesbrough rant won you a lot of friends in the North. (He famously defended the town in a five-minute outburst on live TV when the trendy property show Location, Location, Location listed it as the worst place in Britain to live)
Jeff: It’s great to stick up for the region. I’m a Hartlepool boy and I worked in Middlesbrough for quite a few years. When Hartlepool, got to the play-off finals against Sheffield Wednesday a few seasons ago I was asked to go up and do a personalised piece for my show.
Being a big fan I was delighted to. But when I got there the producer said we’d like to start with some shots in the terraced, cobbled streets. I said: “You’ve come to the wrong place. They don’t exist!” A lot of people have got these misplaced perspectives of places in the North East
It was nice to put it right. I was pleased to try and put the record straight. Middlesbrough has got its good bits and bad bits like anywhere else.
MH: Do you think you would have landed a top TV presenting job with a regional accent 25 years ago?
Jeff: I definitely wouldn’t have landed a top TV job like mine then. In those days if you had any sort of regional accent you would be struggling. When I first went to London I got a lot of stick about having a North East accent. But how many people actually speak in that BBC type voice in measured accent-free tones? People can more easily relate to you if you actually sound like them.
MH: Would you ever give up your Soccer Saturday show?
Jeff: I would never give up Soccer Saturday, although it might give me up one day. With respect to Countdown it’s the main love of my life. It’s the show that got me noticed. I love football and the guys that I work with. In any case my wife wouldn’t allow it. If I gave it up she would find me absolutely intolerable on Saturdays!
Seriously, when the soccer season ends I spend as much time with my wife and kids as I can. We go away as much as possible and I play golf – both my lads play too – and we love to chill out. I love football but I’ve got enough to keep me occupied for two or three months without it.
MH: You are critical of the cost of going to Premiership games. Will football end up eating itself?
Jeff: If you are paying £40-£50 for a ticket and you are a family man taking two kids, by the time you’ve paid to get there and get it, bought programmes and drinks and food it’s an arm and a leg. Sunderland have set a great example where it’s a pound per game for kids. That’s tremendous and makes it accessible for a family again. In other countries top flight football is much cheaper. The clubs here get so much money from TV and commercial interests they don’t need to charge such high prices for fans to go to games and take an extra £10 off a working bloke.
If you look down to League Two, for example, Bradford were the first to slash their season ticket prices to something like £99, consequently they get crowds of 15,000 coming to see them. That’s the way forward for me – cut the prices.
MH: Football and humour go hand in hand on your Sky show. Is that why you turned down BBC and ITV sports jobs?
Jeff: I was desperately, desperately tempted when I was offered the main football job for ITV for the World Cup. The way it was sold to me was you will be there hosting it with England in the World Cup final.
But Sky persuaded me I wasn’t going anywhere and more than matched their offer. I’ve never regretted it and it was the right decision in the end.
The BBC and ITV cover sport differently to us on Sky. They are more limited and don’t have the time with specialised channels. They don’t have the latitude to do what is essentially six hours of a highly personalised version of a results service. They do it professionally enough, of course.
MH: George Best was one of your all time heroes and worked as a panellist on your show. Did you ever go out on the booze with him?
Jeff: I can honestly tell you that I was never out with George when he was drunk. We did go out a few times but his wildest days were well over by the time I got to know him. The thing about Bestie is that when he was out and about he was so courteous to everyone.
He was one of the most famous sportsmen in the world and if we were having dinner there would be queues of people waiting for his autograph. He didn’t like the limelight but his talent was such that he couldn’t avoid the limelight.
Even to the end he was didn’t enjoy the glare of the spotlight. He was much happier at home with his dogs. He was a lovely, gentle guy.
After he had his liver transplant and the papers and radio stations were having a right go about his lifestyle I remember ringing TalkSport – which I’d never ever done before – to stick up for him. He was an ordinary guy with an extraordinary talent.
Strangely one of his favourite things was to go to his local and watch Countdown every afternoon. He hated missing the show!
It's the way he tells them
Life-long Hartlepool supporter Jeff Stelling is a legend among football fans with his Soccer Saturday show on Sky TV.
His new book - called Jelleyman’s Thrown a Wobbly: Saturday Afternoons in Front of the Telly – tells the story of ten years’ hosting the hit show. It is out now, priced £15.99, published by HarperSport.
It illustrates how a six-hour long studio-based programme with no action pictures, featuring men gazing into TV monitors (which the viewer can’t see) can hold a huge audience enthralled on Saturday afternoons throughout the football season.
To the millions unable to get to see their team on a Saturday the next best thing is Jeff and his team of ex-footballer panellists with the Sky video printer.
Jeff, 53, has become a cult figure admired for his encyclopaedic knowledge of the game, his genuine unbounded enthusiasm for ALL levels of football and his wicked sense of humour.
The book’s title is one of his all-time great one-liners:
“Mansfield town’s Gareth Jelleyman has been shown the red card for dissent. Looks like Jelleyman’s thrown a wobbly.”
Here are a dozen of his other classics:
• Darlington’s equaliser has been scored by Guyain Ndumbu-Nsungu. Very much a case of local boy makes good. (He’s from the Congo!)
• They’ll be dancing in the streets of Total Network Solutions tonight.
• James Brown’s grabbed a second for Hartlepool. I feel good!
• He’s scored a rocket. (Used anytime Ayr’s Ryan Stevenson scores)
• One Size Fitz Hall. (Taking the mickey out of QPR’s Fitz Hall)
• What did Agger do-do-do? (A play on words about Liverpool’s Daniel Agger and the Eighties pop group Black Lace who had a hit with Agadoo)
• Lisa will be pleased Adam Stansfield has scored. (He played for Yeovil Town and Lisa was a Nineties pop star – but no relation)
• The Good Doctor. (He always calls Kenny Deuchar, a prolific striker for Gretna who happens to be a qualified doctor, by this name)
• He’s got himself in a pickle. (When Guy Branston was sent off for Kettering.)
• There’s only one Enoch Showunmi. Thank God for that!
• He must be the cousin of dandruff. (After Dean Drough scored for Cowdenbeath)
• Paynter has had a brush with the referee and been sent off. (About Swindon Town’s Billy Paynter)
Jeff started his career on the Hartlepool Mail, then Radio Tees before becoming a presenter on London’s LBC Radio Sportswatch in the early Eighties, then moving to BBC Radio Two’s Sport On 2. He switched to Sky in 1992 and covered horse racing, snooker and darts. In 1995 he became presenter of what is now Soccer Saturday. Last year he was voted the Sports Journalists’ Association’s Broadcast Journalist of the Year for the third year running and in January this year he became the host of Channel 4’s gameshow Countdown.
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