on the kelly

Having just watched the farce that is the FA Cup draw, and let's face it, if anyone can cock it up it's Bobby Robson, not the first time he's shown a lack of balls. Anyway, Villa get yet another away draw, so I thought it was about time I told the world about the delights of the day I met Mr TV personality himself, Graham Kelly.

it was Wednesday 24th April last year, in the High Street, Taunton. I was just locking up the record shop I was working in when my mate Ricky started acting very strange. "F*&' me, it's Graham Kelly!", he screamed, shocking all the grannies waiting for their buses. Amazed, I looked across the road and it was true, there he was. So what do you do? One of the most powerful men in English football is in your sleepy town, on his own, looking lost and lonely. I We did the obvious thing, we legged it across the road, right into his face and introduced ourselves. I thought the bloke was going to have a seizure as we bounded up to him, he's obviously not used to being recognised and let's face it, he is hardly the most charismatic bloke on television.

To put this into perspective, at the time the hot footy news was that Venables was not going to leave the England job after all.

"Is Venables going to keep his job then?"
"No, it doesn't look like it. "
"Well who's the next manager going to be then, Graham?"
"Well, if I told you that you would be straight on the telephone to the press and earn yourself a lot of money, son"

After several minutes of trying to persuade him that giving me this information and me earning a lot of money from it were not necessarily bad things, all to no avail, I started to panic. We were doing well at this point of the season and certain papers were beginning to talk of our Brian as being an outside bet for the job. I had to hear the truth. After losing Graham Taylor, just as things had started to look good, I didn't want the same thing to happen again. But the bugger wouldn't put me out of my misery. He was beginning to enjoy himself, reducing this cocky, carrot-crunching Villa supporter to a nervous, gibbering wreck in front of him. Before I resorted to begging at his feet, he more or less convinced me that it wasn't going to be Brian. Relieved? You'd better believe it.

He was quite obviously getting a bit distressed by the verbal battering I was giving him, but before he left I put a lot of effort into making him say "And first out of the bag, Aston Villa." because you and I know that he's the main culprit in the conspiracy.

I offered bribes, I promised the sexual favours of the local ladies of ill-repute, but he wouldn't be swayed. I resorted to the threats of kidnapping him, with a home tie as the ransom., but nothing could divert this evil man from his filthy secret. So the other week, when we came out of the bag second again, to play Notts County, I'm sure that I saw a brief smug grin flicker across his usual deadpan face.

He remembered that day in Taunton, and realised that he had been rumbled.

Paul de Gregorio