Andy Gray has reportedly complained to 'friends' - well, the four friends that he had left, anyway - about feeling 'stitched up' after being sacked by Sky Sports. All following publicity surrounding a series of apparently sexist comments which he made. The presenter got the old tin-tack from the broadcaster after suggesting on Saturday that assistant referee Sian Massey would not know the offside rule due to her sex and then when previous lewd comments he made to his colleague Charlotte Jackson appeared on YouTube on Monday. According to the Mirra - who for some reason seem to be taking on the role of Gray apologists at the moment, which is probably wholly unconnected to the fact that Gray is currently suing their rivals the News of the World over phone-hacking allegations - Gray believes that his superiors have used the issue to allow them to promote younger staff. 'He feels like he has been stitched up and people working against him at Sky have set all this up to get him the boot,' a 'source' allegedly claimed. Oh, this is really good. Apparently Andy Gray believes that he is the innocent victim of a Miriam O'Reilly-style bit of ageism in the area! Brilliant - I shall look forward to theforthcoming Industrial Tribunal with great interest to see what happens next. 
Let's be fair, you've really got to admire bare-faced crass denial like that. 'He loved doing that job,' the nameless - and, probably fictional - 'source' allegedly told the Mirra. 'And didn't get much of a chance to get his point of view across. But it feels like a changing of the guard at Sky and this will give bosses a chance to promote Ben Shephard and Jamie Redknapp quicker.' Conspiracy theories that Gray was, indeed, the victim of deliberate leaks by someone - or several someones - within Sky as a direct consequence of his forthcoming legal action against another part of the Rupert Murdoch News Corp empire have been doing the rounds since the Mail on Sunday first got hold of the off-air sound clip from an 'anonymous source' late on Saturday night. They may even be true, far stranger things happen in the TV industry. The excellent Jim White, for instance, makes a highly persuasive argument in this article concerning the 'real' reasons that Gray was sacked. 'The reaction of his employer is far more to do with Sky's anxiety to end a series of damaging headlines at a time of a highly sensitive takeover. This was corporate public relations. He was embarrassing them, full stop. Yet part of that embarrassment came from within. If Sky's own employees had not leaked so prodigiously, no-one would have been any the wiser, the headlines would not have been generated and the corporation would not have been compromised. Gray was, quite simply, knifed by those he had patronised down the years.' But, Gray might like to consider the fact that if he hadn't said what he did, there would have been nothing for any naughty troublemaker to leak in the first place. So, you know, sorry Andy old chap but I've got no sympathy for you whatsoever. You broke the eleventh commandment and got caught. The latest footage to have entered the public domain, let us remember, showed an off-air incident in December, when Gray asked Jackson to 'tuck this in,' gesturing towards the microphone near his groinal area. Jackson can be briefly seen looking a touch embarrassed and turning away, whilst Gray and his co-presenter Richard Keys - who has also been disciplined for his role in the discussion about Massey - burst out guffawing like a pair of ignorant overgrown school bullies. The law firm Schillings have confirmed to the press that they have been instructed by Gray regarding his dismissal. Gray's fiancée Rachel Lewis added yesterday: 'He's wanted to apologise for the last few days, desperately. He was told not to by Sky.' The Gruniad's Richard Williams had a slightly different take on matters: 'The alacrity with which the Sky Sports bosses dispatched Andy Gray to the knackers' yard suggests that they saw no merit in flogging more life out of a dead workhorse. To a channel whose public image is established by the cast of interchangeable junior estate agents and blonde autocuties reading out the bulletins on Sky Sports News, the old centre-forward had passed his sell-by date some time ago. 
In the estimation of pretty well everyone, except Gray himself, the one-time penalty-area bully has long since lost the aura of authority created by his playing career with Aston Villa, Wolves, Everton and Scotland. When the world – ie the Premier League in Sky's terms – was new, he embodied a certain gritty outspokenness that lent an air of authenticity to the channel's glossy coverage, with its fanfares and fireworks. But YouTube, that deadliest of witnesses, harbours a whole series of occasions on which Gray could be expressing opinions on football matters that entitled him to be seen as the voice of the people only if the people concerned yearned for the days of leather balls, dubbinned boots and casual prejudice. Perhaps Barney Francis, Sky's managing director, feels that Keys is too valuable to sack. If that is what he thinks, much of the nation would disagree. The emergence of another clip seemed to provide a further illustration of his unreconstructed view of womanhood. It is hard to imagine a Save Richard Keys protest outside the channel's Isleworth headquarters. To anyone outside the close circles of the two presenters the only immediate cause for regret is the understandable decision of the referees' association to withdraw Massey from her scheduled duty at tonight's match between Crewe and Bradford. Noting the unusually high number of applications for media accreditations, particularly the requests for photographers' passes, they concluded that the twenty five-year-old official would not be permitted to go about her duties in the right sort of ambiance. The Sun – owned by Sky's major shareholder, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation – also sank to predictable depths, filling its front page with a photograph of an off-duty Massey dancing at a social function, wearing a skimpy top and a short denim skirt. It was the sort of utterly harmless image that many women of her age put up on their Facebook page but its use here was blatantly exploitative, freighted with a nudging insinuation but having no bearing on the subject's role in the story.' As, indeed, this blog stated yesterday. And, this is one occasion where yer actual Keith Telly Topping does want to say 'I told you so.' To go back to Jim White's article for a second: 'That Gray is not a particularly pleasant bloke will come as little surprise to those who saw him on television exploring the outer reaches of self-importance. And Richard Keys is, so those who have worked with him attest, not much nicer. Their saloon bar banter about the assistant referee Sian Massey was not unusual, apparently. It was as ignorantly incorrect as it was inappropriate. By the very excellence of her performance Massey refuted the pair's laughable insistence that women are somehow genetically incapable of mastering a set of rules. As to Keys's claim that her presence on the Molineux touchline was evidence of a "game gone mad," it might be argued that the elevation of someone on the grounds of their sustained competence marks a rare moment of sanity in the sport. More difficult to defend on mental health terms is the idea that the front man of a television show is worth more than one million pounds a year. Or as they probably don't say in the Manchester City dressing room, fifty nurses. If a haughty self-regard coupled with old-school views preclude someone from doing their job then half the sports media are unemployable. You only have to look at some of the candidates to replace Gray on Sky - Glenn Hoddle, Graeme Souness, Stan Collymore, Paul Merson - to see that inappropriate behaviour is endemic in the calling. If everyone has to be a decent person to do the job, the future is silence.' Of course, the numskull dinosaurs who fill up the comments sections on the websites of newspapers like the Sun, the Daily Scum Mail and the Mirra will continue to bleat their pathetic mantra that this was 'all just a bit of harmless fun,' some 'workplace banter' that, twenty years ago would have been perfectly acceptable. 
I agree, it probably would have been - this blogger indulged in a fair bit of it himself, I'm sure most dear blog readers, of both sexes, have done too at one time or another. The point isn't that it used to be acceptable, rather that it isn't acceptable now. In life, things change all the time and people (and their attitudes) have to change with them or they become moribund in this society. Bear baiting was the most popular form of Saturday night entertainment in this country once upon a time. If Sky Sports had been around in those days, they would've probably been covering it, live, from the Dung-Heap Arms in Chelmsford with commentary by ye-olde Sir Richard of Keys and Smash It. And they would have got a huge and voyeuristic audience for it and that would have been perfectly acceptable. But society has changed and we know better now. In many ways the changes are for the better, perhaps in some others ways for the worse. But to argue against the process of change, in and of itself, is to show yourself to be an example of exactly what Mr Keys and Mr Gray have been accused of being. Dinosaurs. In other words, soon to be extinct.
Meanwhile, Keys himself has blamed 'dark forces at work' for escalating the Sky Sports sexism row, which has led to the dismissal of his former partner Andy Gray and put his own job on the line. Keys said that he apologised to Sian Massey on Sunday afternoon - just hours after the initial Molineux recording was leaked to the Mail on Sunday - but was told by his employer that his apology could not be made public. 'We were wrong. It shouldn't have happened, but there are some dark forces at work here,' said an emotional Keys on TalkSport on Wednesday morning. 'From something that was controllable, I have found the reaction to be extraordinary. I cannot believe the frenzy that's blown up.
If I had been able to get out the fact that I'd apologised on Sunday I don't think it would have been as frenzied as it has been.' A new video entitled Richard Keys making lewd comments about girlfriend of co-presenter has, as mentioned above, appeared on YouTube showing Keys before a game at Chelsea's Stamford Bridge with Jamie Redknapp, Ruud Gullit and Graeme Souness. Someone off camera mentions a girl and Keys asks Redknapp: 'Did you smash it?' Redknapp replies: 'I used to go out with her.' Keys then adds: 'That is a stupid question, if you were anywhere near it. You definitely smashed it. You could go round there any night and find Redknapp hanging out of the back of it.' During the comments, Gullit looks at his mobile phone, whilst Sounness motions to kick Keys in the ankle. Redknapp laughs rather nervously.
Let's be fair, you've really got to admire bare-faced crass denial like that. 'He loved doing that job,' the nameless - and, probably fictional - 'source' allegedly told the Mirra. 'And didn't get much of a chance to get his point of view across. But it feels like a changing of the guard at Sky and this will give bosses a chance to promote Ben Shephard and Jamie Redknapp quicker.' Conspiracy theories that Gray was, indeed, the victim of deliberate leaks by someone - or several someones - within Sky as a direct consequence of his forthcoming legal action against another part of the Rupert Murdoch News Corp empire have been doing the rounds since the Mail on Sunday first got hold of the off-air sound clip from an 'anonymous source' late on Saturday night. They may even be true, far stranger things happen in the TV industry. The excellent Jim White, for instance, makes a highly persuasive argument in this article concerning the 'real' reasons that Gray was sacked. 'The reaction of his employer is far more to do with Sky's anxiety to end a series of damaging headlines at a time of a highly sensitive takeover. This was corporate public relations. He was embarrassing them, full stop. Yet part of that embarrassment came from within. If Sky's own employees had not leaked so prodigiously, no-one would have been any the wiser, the headlines would not have been generated and the corporation would not have been compromised. Gray was, quite simply, knifed by those he had patronised down the years.' But, Gray might like to consider the fact that if he hadn't said what he did, there would have been nothing for any naughty troublemaker to leak in the first place. So, you know, sorry Andy old chap but I've got no sympathy for you whatsoever. You broke the eleventh commandment and got caught. The latest footage to have entered the public domain, let us remember, showed an off-air incident in December, when Gray asked Jackson to 'tuck this in,' gesturing towards the microphone near his groinal area. Jackson can be briefly seen looking a touch embarrassed and turning away, whilst Gray and his co-presenter Richard Keys - who has also been disciplined for his role in the discussion about Massey - burst out guffawing like a pair of ignorant overgrown school bullies. The law firm Schillings have confirmed to the press that they have been instructed by Gray regarding his dismissal. Gray's fiancée Rachel Lewis added yesterday: 'He's wanted to apologise for the last few days, desperately. He was told not to by Sky.' The Gruniad's Richard Williams had a slightly different take on matters: 'The alacrity with which the Sky Sports bosses dispatched Andy Gray to the knackers' yard suggests that they saw no merit in flogging more life out of a dead workhorse. To a channel whose public image is established by the cast of interchangeable junior estate agents and blonde autocuties reading out the bulletins on Sky Sports News, the old centre-forward had passed his sell-by date some time ago. 
In the estimation of pretty well everyone, except Gray himself, the one-time penalty-area bully has long since lost the aura of authority created by his playing career with Aston Villa, Wolves, Everton and Scotland. When the world – ie the Premier League in Sky's terms – was new, he embodied a certain gritty outspokenness that lent an air of authenticity to the channel's glossy coverage, with its fanfares and fireworks. But YouTube, that deadliest of witnesses, harbours a whole series of occasions on which Gray could be expressing opinions on football matters that entitled him to be seen as the voice of the people only if the people concerned yearned for the days of leather balls, dubbinned boots and casual prejudice. Perhaps Barney Francis, Sky's managing director, feels that Keys is too valuable to sack. If that is what he thinks, much of the nation would disagree. The emergence of another clip seemed to provide a further illustration of his unreconstructed view of womanhood. It is hard to imagine a Save Richard Keys protest outside the channel's Isleworth headquarters. To anyone outside the close circles of the two presenters the only immediate cause for regret is the understandable decision of the referees' association to withdraw Massey from her scheduled duty at tonight's match between Crewe and Bradford. Noting the unusually high number of applications for media accreditations, particularly the requests for photographers' passes, they concluded that the twenty five-year-old official would not be permitted to go about her duties in the right sort of ambiance. The Sun – owned by Sky's major shareholder, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation – also sank to predictable depths, filling its front page with a photograph of an off-duty Massey dancing at a social function, wearing a skimpy top and a short denim skirt. It was the sort of utterly harmless image that many women of her age put up on their Facebook page but its use here was blatantly exploitative, freighted with a nudging insinuation but having no bearing on the subject's role in the story.' As, indeed, this blog stated yesterday. And, this is one occasion where yer actual Keith Telly Topping does want to say 'I told you so.' To go back to Jim White's article for a second: 'That Gray is not a particularly pleasant bloke will come as little surprise to those who saw him on television exploring the outer reaches of self-importance. And Richard Keys is, so those who have worked with him attest, not much nicer. Their saloon bar banter about the assistant referee Sian Massey was not unusual, apparently. It was as ignorantly incorrect as it was inappropriate. By the very excellence of her performance Massey refuted the pair's laughable insistence that women are somehow genetically incapable of mastering a set of rules. As to Keys's claim that her presence on the Molineux touchline was evidence of a "game gone mad," it might be argued that the elevation of someone on the grounds of their sustained competence marks a rare moment of sanity in the sport. More difficult to defend on mental health terms is the idea that the front man of a television show is worth more than one million pounds a year. Or as they probably don't say in the Manchester City dressing room, fifty nurses. If a haughty self-regard coupled with old-school views preclude someone from doing their job then half the sports media are unemployable. You only have to look at some of the candidates to replace Gray on Sky - Glenn Hoddle, Graeme Souness, Stan Collymore, Paul Merson - to see that inappropriate behaviour is endemic in the calling. If everyone has to be a decent person to do the job, the future is silence.' Of course, the numskull dinosaurs who fill up the comments sections on the websites of newspapers like the Sun, the Daily Scum Mail and the Mirra will continue to bleat their pathetic mantra that this was 'all just a bit of harmless fun,' some 'workplace banter' that, twenty years ago would have been perfectly acceptable. 
I agree, it probably would have been - this blogger indulged in a fair bit of it himself, I'm sure most dear blog readers, of both sexes, have done too at one time or another. The point isn't that it used to be acceptable, rather that it isn't acceptable now. In life, things change all the time and people (and their attitudes) have to change with them or they become moribund in this society. Bear baiting was the most popular form of Saturday night entertainment in this country once upon a time. If Sky Sports had been around in those days, they would've probably been covering it, live, from the Dung-Heap Arms in Chelmsford with commentary by ye-olde Sir Richard of Keys and Smash It. And they would have got a huge and voyeuristic audience for it and that would have been perfectly acceptable. But society has changed and we know better now. In many ways the changes are for the better, perhaps in some others ways for the worse. But to argue against the process of change, in and of itself, is to show yourself to be an example of exactly what Mr Keys and Mr Gray have been accused of being. Dinosaurs. In other words, soon to be extinct.Meanwhile, Keys himself has blamed 'dark forces at work' for escalating the Sky Sports sexism row, which has led to the dismissal of his former partner Andy Gray and put his own job on the line. Keys said that he apologised to Sian Massey on Sunday afternoon - just hours after the initial Molineux recording was leaked to the Mail on Sunday - but was told by his employer that his apology could not be made public. 'We were wrong. It shouldn't have happened, but there are some dark forces at work here,' said an emotional Keys on TalkSport on Wednesday morning. 'From something that was controllable, I have found the reaction to be extraordinary. I cannot believe the frenzy that's blown up.
If I had been able to get out the fact that I'd apologised on Sunday I don't think it would have been as frenzied as it has been.' A new video entitled Richard Keys making lewd comments about girlfriend of co-presenter has, as mentioned above, appeared on YouTube showing Keys before a game at Chelsea's Stamford Bridge with Jamie Redknapp, Ruud Gullit and Graeme Souness. Someone off camera mentions a girl and Keys asks Redknapp: 'Did you smash it?' Redknapp replies: 'I used to go out with her.' Keys then adds: 'That is a stupid question, if you were anywhere near it. You definitely smashed it. You could go round there any night and find Redknapp hanging out of the back of it.' During the comments, Gullit looks at his mobile phone, whilst Sounness motions to kick Keys in the ankle. Redknapp laughs rather nervously. 
