THE UNACCEPTABLE FACES OF FOOTBALL
Andy Dawson and Bob Mortimer talk FFT through the genesis of Athletico Mince, the popular podcast that’s like no other, and how the whole thing came about over a couple of pints and a portable plastic greenhouse
Manchester United defender Phil Jones won’t go upstairs because of the house monster, QPR chairman Tony Fernandes recommends some soup in a Stockholm restaurant, and Leicester striker Jamie Vardy breaks a potter’s hand with his chin. And then farmer Harry Maguire runs over the potter with his tractor.
Of course he doesn’t. But these are just a few highlights of a morning spent watching a recording of Athletico Mince, the increasingly unhinged podcast that has veered away from its football-based origins into a fantasy world with the loosest foundation in reality.
Created by self-facilitating media node Andy Dawson and millionaire television celebrity Bob Mortimer, the genesis of the show ultimately lies in an ill-advised supermarket purchase.
“Bob started to follow me on Twitter,” says Sunderland fan Andy, “which I was thrilled by as I’ve always been a big fan. What happened was I’d been to Lidl, and bought this portable plastic greenhouse for £25 that I was pretty pleased with. I tweeted about it and suddenly received a tirade of abuse from Bob, telling me it was a load of shit, that it would just fall over in the slightest breeze, and what a waste of money it was.”
“It was a terrible unit,” admits Bob. “There’s no two ways about it. The only way it could be purchased is on impulse by a foolish man.”
Following a period of mutual antipathy, one thing led to another. While the greenhouse remained unopened in the garage, Andy was invited to a recording of House Of Fools, and a couple of pints later the idea of a football podcast was hatched, albeit tentatively.
“I think I’d become aware of them, but in a sort of gentle way,” says Middlesbrough fan Bob. “I knew that Ricky Gervais had a podcast. My guess would be that I’d never listened to a podcast, but I was aware they were a thing. And around this sort of time, I’d just had my heart operation.
“Jim Moir [Vic Reeves] who I work with knows nothing about football. Absolutely nothing. In all these last 30 years we’re always referencing celebrities, but there’s never been one mention of a footballer as it means nothing to Jim.
“He’d know the name Pele, but wouldn’t be able to put a face to him. So I always had it on my mind that I’d like to do something around football, because in 50 years of following the game I’ve never actually done anything about it media-wise. I don’t know if ‘pompous’ is the word, but I think we felt we had things to say about football.”
Athletico Mince then, is very different to Athletico Mince now, as Andy readily admits. “Listen to the first couple of episodes – we’re just looking at quirky football stories that had appeared online that week,” he says.
“Manchester United had announced a new tractor partner, and Liverpool midfielder Joe Allen had been on the cover of Chicken & Egg magazine. They were real things, so we were kind of talking about them, but then it soon went off on tangents. It took a few weeks to find its feet and work out exactly what it was and what it was going to be.”
Bob concurs. “One of the most depressing things is when there’s a little voice at the back of your head saying, ‘That’s just derivative,’” he explains. “I felt like it had been covered so many times from Fantasy Football onwards – ‘Which ground’s got the best pie?’ – and when we actually tried doing something on football, I thought it had been done better by people who know what they’re talking about. I can remember a moment criticising one of Yaya Toure’s performances for Manchester City and thinking, ‘What the fuck? Who cares? I’m not doing that any more’.”
According to Andy, “It soon became obvious that there was so much more to talk about than just football. We’ve said for a long time that it’s not really a football podcast, it just has elements of football in it.”
“It’s a nice arena to pluck from,” adds Bob, “because we’ve all got our prejudices against teams or footballers. I’ve got Harry Maguire down as a dozy farmer – a dead obvious one. I think it’s just the look of him and kind of the way he plays. Whenever he strides forward, it’s tractor-like...”
Through his TV work with Reeves, Mortimer is well established as a comedy genius and national treasure. However, Andy manages to hold his own alongside the more experienced man, not least in his re-imagining of former England manager Roy Hodgson as a furious goblin-fancier, obsessed with tabletop fantasy roleplaying game, Warhammer.
“I’d watched the video that’s been around for years, where Roy is swearing his head off,” says Bob. “Suddenly he’s quite a nasty little bastard. Andy was happy to do him, but then with Athletico Mince we don’t want it to be anything to do with football, so we said we’ll put him in the Warhammer arena.”
It’s a similar leap of logic that casts Vardy as a laidback mediator with a deadly chin.
“I was looking for a Leicester player to do,” continues Bob. “There’s a lot of them from the home counties, especially these youngsters, so they’ve got no voice. So I look for someone who’s from somewhere and try that accent.
“It’s not attempting their voice, just their accent. I have no idea where Jamie Vardy’s from. I was once doing an impression of Paul Mccartney and someone made the mistake of saying it wasn’t bad, so I wanted to use the voice. I thought, ‘Fuck it, Vardy can have it’.”
The podcast character is so far removed from the footballer that they’re basically just using his name and chin. Likewise elf-worrier Hodgson, whose voice Andy admits is based on Steptoe and Son’s Harry H Corbett.
“That’s the little trick,” reveals Bob. “Mine and Jim’s comedy, for example, has always been the same, but we had one show which was a very big success called Shooting Stars. Because viewers were comfortable as they could see Jonathan Ross or Chris Evans, they would then bother to listen to our comedy. So it’s a similar trick here in a way, because it’s Roy Hodgson. It’s just fucking nonsense.”
As for Bob’s breakthrough show, Andy says, “I was a huge fan of Big Night Out, and that was one of the things that made me realise
“I’VE GOT HARRY MAGUIRE DOWN AS A DOZY FARMER. IT’S THE WAY HE PLAYS. WHENEVER HE STRIDES FORWARD, IT’S TRACTOR-LIKE...”
I wanted to do comedy and writing. It seemed really easy – they weren’t doing anything me and my mates weren’t doing. A lot of comedy before then was rooted in Oxbridge and the Footlights club, whereas he and Jim were just titting about in a pub and ended up on telly.”
Dawson certainly couldn’t have imagined it at the time, not least for technical reasons, but he now produces a podcast with Bob Mortimer.
“It helps to have someone of Bob’s profile to get a podcast up and running,” he readily admits. “I would recommend that thoroughly.”
The pair record Athletico Mince every few weeks in London. FFT was privileged to sit in on episode 84 in a basement studio at Soho Radio, Bob finishing some sushi with his ‘brass hand’, Andy sporting a ‘WORRHAMUH’ T-shirt.
Sitting face-to-face, laptop-to-laptop, it was impressively all done in one take, with a writer and photographer attempting to stifle their guffaws in an enclosed space. And perhaps counter-intuitively due to the madcap nature of the content, it was partly scripted, albeit individually, thus ensuring the authenticity of the mutual reactions.
As Bob explains, “In the early days I just had about 10 lines, bullet points, but it’s better for putting a bit of graft in.”
Just like his brass hand, it’s now a well-oiled machine, following the format of exchanging comedy names, a bit of a song, and a quiz in the style of The Price Is Right. Then we’re into the deranged characters, with some kind of squad rotation in place. The only real football chat came in the photo shoot, with a cursory appraisal of Boro’s appointment of Jonathan Woodgate and a brief analysis of Sunderland’s key deficiencies: can’t score, can’t defend.
Mortimer is a particularly shrewd observer of the game, however, successfully predicting that Norwich and Sheffield United would be promoted from the Championship last season.
As for his beloved Middlesbrough, he says, “I always think the most you can hope for is that your season goes to the last few weeks – even if it ends up with relegation – so there’s a little story to follow and a belief in some sort of outcome. And we went to the last match [missing out on the play-offs by a point], but we’ve not been great to watch and it’s pretty soul-destroying. I’d never felt like that before. We’d been bad in the past under Aitor Karanka and so on, but it hadn’t been week in, week out and, Jesus, it’s not a pleasant experience.”
He has previously tried to muster a portrayal of outgoing manager Tony Pulis but concedes, “I feel a bit rotten doing Boro as it’s my club.”
As well as spending his youth at Ayresome Park, hurling pies and obscenities at visiting goalkeepers, Bob is also a veteran of several World Cups, including following England in their dismal 1982 campaign.
“It’s such a good thing to go to a World Cup when you’re young,” he recalls wistfully. “It’s funny, I’m 60 years old now and I still return to my memories of that World Cup in Spain.”
Regular listeners of Athletico Mince will be aware that it was at this World Cup that Bob’s mate, Micky Drink, accidentally dropped the keys to their Ford Transit in a cesspit and had to dive in to retrieve them.
He still gags at the memory of the stench that day, one of several true stories recounted on the podcast. The rest of it may be absolute gibberish, but it’s definitely worth half an hour of your time.
As Mr Fernandes says in his best Godfather accent, “Life’s too short to be a dope.”