Footie pundit not sacked, despite viewer outrage

One of Britain most inspoken football commentators is sensationally being kept on in paid employment despite not saying anything remotely of any interest during the many years of his lamentable media career.

After so many recent obvious opportunities for tasteless but amusing jokes caused by Marcel Desailly's poor defending, the likely reproductive habits of Chinese women, and the Tsunami disaster that hit Asia on Boxing Day, John Barnes has continued to host his so-called "Football Night" with the minimum amount of excitement and the maximum amount of presentational banality.

Viewers are in despair that the many top-notch UEFA Cup games brought to the British public by the station — including FC Oompah Loompah of Malta, Toblerone Wanderers of Switzerland, and Dynamo Lamp of Turkmenistan — have been marred by Barnes's resolute unwillingness to utter any remark of any consequence or to link the action with any pithy asides or witty observations. Instead, he has concentrated on trying to make out whatever's being said in his earpiece.

Barnes has caused controversy on many occasions since he was given the position by Channel 5 television and he has repeatedly caused offence to millions of viewers with his staunchly inoffensive studied blandness. "There is no place for these kind of presenters," said a spokesperson for Let's Kick Football Out Of Television. "What may have been acceptable in the era of Love Thy Neighbour and David Coleman is completely unacceptable in this day and age."

With ratings plunging below zero, one executive at Channel 5 told The Rockall Times that "we may have to consider 'going nuclear' and hiring Andy Townsend's Tactics Truck from ITV as even that would make a better programme than what we have now."

We attempted to contact Rodney Marsh this morning for his input into the controversy, but were told that "he's gone to the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz with Bernard Manning and Jim Davidson".

Previously

• 'Big' Ron Atkinson says sorry
• England will win major football tournament before heat death of universe, scientists predict
• Sports punditry is UK's 'least factually relevant' profession