FACTS ARE SACRED … COMMENT IS FUN?
Bob Mortimer hates opinions. The preface of his (excellent) autobiography, And Away … includes the important point that the book contains “very little opinion or advice”. And yet he loves football, a sport where it is almost impossible not to have an opinion. And he has a football-related podcast, Athletico Mince, where he is forced to give his two pence. “I have spent 50 years making sure I have no opinions,” he explained to Adam Buxton in 2018. “And then I signed up for a football opinion show, so I had to change that quite quickly.” Football will do that to you. Referees, managers, pundits and tea-timely emails are all paid to have an opinion. And thank goodness for that. It would be deathly boring if everything in the beautiful game was a statement of fact. If everyone agreed that Alejandro Garnacho’s volley was better than Wayne Rooney’s, or that José Mourinho is a better manager than Pep Guardiola, then the world, the pub, the pillow-talk – we presume – and the group chat would be a poorer place.
