IT IS hard to remember a time before Off The Ball. The official record states that Tam Cowan joined the show in 1994, suggesting it was well established by then.
Certainly, by the late-1990s it had settled down into the format which continues to this day, so it has long been an integral part of Saturday for many Scottish football fans. Cowan and Stuart Cosgrove chunter on for an hour or so in their avowedly "
petty and ill-informed" way about a variety of topics, and then, come 2pm, we get what is supposed to be the real thing – Sportsound with its team news then match commentaries then reaction.
Off The Ball is so familiar now that the proverbial contempt is well nigh inescapable, but last week things were a little bit different. Tam was absent.
The initial explanation was that he might have got lost travelling back from watching Motherwell's Scottish Cup win in Inverurie five days earlier. Later in the show, however, he phoned in to explain he was on holiday in Spain, where, he claimed, he had developed such a good suntan that he was beginning to get hate mail from Carol Thatcher.
So Cowan actually made a live contribution to the show, and he made a recorded one too – via a series of snippets from past programmes under the title "some of Tam's most honking jokes". Just in case you have never heard one, here's the best example from last week.
A really camp guy walks into a butcher's and asks "Can I have a mince round?"
"Aye," the butcher replies. "But hurry up – we're shutting in five minutes." Cowan may only have been regarded as a bit of a comedy turn at first, but he has long since been the essential element of Off The Ball. And it's just not the same when he's away – the inclusion of those jokes was more or less an admission of that.
In a bid not to be outdone by his sparring partner, Cosgrove added a few jests of his own, such as the claim that Scotland were eliminated from the 1978 World Cup by a Dutch condom salesman. Yes, it was Johnny Rep.
Cosgrove's guests in the studio, James Grady and Pat Nevin, also did their best to keep the jollity going, although Nevin, too, felt obliged to mention the absence of Cowan. Making use of the phrase faux naif, he added "not one of those phrases you get from Tam".
Of course, in a pretty long show which invited listeners to phone or email in, there is only so much the presenters and guests can do. The success or the failure of any one programme is determined by the quality of the contributions from those listeners, who are given a few topics every week.
Last week the themes were memorable bust-ups at work (a nod to the recent clash at Celtic between Artur Boruc and Aiden McGeady), "He broke my heart", and "Has TV ever let your team down?"
This last was a reference, Cosgrove said, to ITV's failure to show Everton's extra-time winner in the FA Cup replay. But clearly, as Nevin had the good grace to point out, it could just as well refer to BBC Scotland's clumsy handling of the CIS Cup penalty shoot-out between Celtic and Dundee United.
Anyway, the best contribution from a listener was a terse two-liner which was amusing but also telling. Yes, he said, TV has let his team down. He does not support the Old Firm. Apart from that, there were slim pickings. Some predictable heartbreaking moments and bust-ups were recalled, the latter including Craig Levein's pre-season altercation with Graeme Hogg and John Hartson's impolite response when Eyal Berkovic annoyed him one day at training.
And there were also some favourite daft quotations from football managers, the best being from Craig Brown. "Michael Owen has the legs of a salmon", the former Scotland head coach supposedly said.
Does Off The Ball really merit all that air time just for a couple of second-hand gags? Maybe not, but if we applied similarly strict criteria to the rest of radio output, the airwaves would be silent for much of the week.
It may be formulaic, but not as much as the stuff which follows it, so it has to stay. Just as long as Cowan is not allowed to go away on holiday too often.
