"When Steve McClaren said that he wasn't in the entertainment business, I asked him what he was doing in football, because the game is all about entertainment. Fans go to watch their team win, sure, but they also want to enjoy the game while they're about it"

“Hall: This is all nonsense you're getting all hot under the collar about nothing. It's the Great British patois. All great truths begin as blasphemies, so why castigate Rooney, young tender sweet bud-on-the-vine Rooney. Your average ten year old can instruct you in oral and anal sex.”

“Kelly:Welcome to the last ever Fighting Talk!”

“O'Connell: Which sporting nation would you like to see have a renaissance?”

“Hall continues: Swearing is endemic in our language. It's there to stay... realise it!”

“Hall: Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is a wonderful country - I've been there umpteen times and it is being brought to extinction by Mugabe. The average life expectancy is 33, so if you are not dying from Aids, malnutrition, starvation, deprivation or stagnation, don your flannels, black up, play leather on willow. Mugabe as captain and witch doctor, imagine him out at Lord's casting a tincture of bats' tongues and gorillas' gonads.”

“It saddens me that the game has sold its soul to television. What we see now is a televisual game, and it cannot bear the weight of its publicity.”