October 25 – Cilla Fights Back | On This Football Day

October 25 – Cilla Fights Back

FOOTBALL has managed to upset a lot of people over the years – it has even been the cause of wars, but it was on this day in 2000 that the beautiful game crossed swords with a national treasure, and lost.

National big mouth Chris Evans (don’t worry – he’s not the aforementioned national treasure) stunned listeners of his Virgin Radio breakfast show by revealing ITV’s plans for the Premier League highlights show – the rights to which they had swiped from the BBC.

Evans claimed that he had spoken to Brian Barwick, then head of ITV sport and now blundering chief exec of the FA, who revealed in the strictest confidence that they would be showing their version of Match of the Day at 7pm on a Saturday night.

One can only imagine tirade of expletives that came out of Cilla Black’s mouth when she heard the news that her Blind Date show, the rightful owner of the prime time Saturday night slot, was being bumped for football.

Despite all the usual denials and non-committal press releases coming out of ITV at the time, Evans was spot on and when it aired in 2001 their new show The Premiership was screened at 7pmâ€¦ for a bit.

Not even the acquisition of Des Lynam as anchor could woo any viewers to the new slot and after two months of getting half the ratings Cilla and ‘Our Graham’ used to pull in, one of the bosses in the ITV command bunker looked over grimly at a lowly subordinate and uttered in a gravely voice: “Make the call.”

No doubt Cilla had a lora lora laughs after the powers that be were forced to grovel to her to return to her rightful time. Still, the main thing was Blind Date was back on at seven, the football was back at 10.30, and balance was brought back to the world of television schedules.

Tomorrow we will be going right back to 1863 to see what the happy-happs were then in the world of football, and no, it wasn’t Jimmy Hill’s debut.