The other more insulting facet of this CBBC approach to football was the Potted History section in which Clem would move around a football ground, popping up in front of camera like he’d escaped from the hand of Matthew Corbett, and read us extracts from the club’s Wikipedia entry.
Potted History may have gone – the BBC perhaps acknowledging that those staying up past midnight on a weekend to watch a show about the Football League, already have something of an understanding of its clubs – but Clem remains. The sort of man who you suspect facilitated his own nickname, one who will stand in the middle of the field eating a pie as the teams come out behind him. The enthusiasm he displays toward those he interviews is too often mis-placed, meaning it comes across as the sort of faux-jocularity displayed by someone you vaguely know as they lead up to asking for a favour or reimbursement of that tenner they once leant you; “Here he is… Gaffer, the Gaffer, eh? Look at you, check the suit out. How you settling in? Yeah… hey, look… mate… you couldn’t give us a hand shifting this wardrobe could you?”
In Clem lies the crux of the FLS’ failings, in that it endeavours so earnestly to please it ultimately disappoints. Clem’s cheery inside look at teams would be ideal for a Football League magazine show, but on a highlights programme, which is of course what the FLS is, it just grates; to all intense and purposes Clem is The Texan from Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, a man so happy and good-natured that ultimately no-one can stand him. His presence just reminds us that The FLS is simply trying too hard. By this time, post midnight on a Saturday, and with any sense of perceptiveness already dulled out of us by Alan Shearer, we don’t want whimsy, nor do we want to think. We just want goals and red cards. Nothing more.
