​A Brief History of Football in British Comedy

We're not going to bullshit you with some high-minded pretence as to why this article exists. Let's just call it what it is: an excuse to watch clips of great comedy shows taking the piss out of, but also celebrating, the beautiful game.

In his original incarnation as part of the On the Hour and then Day Today teams, Alan Partridge was a sports anchor. Actually, that's not fair – he was the sports anchor. The Partridge character was an amalgam of every cringeworthy broadcast journalist you've ever seen, and was sufficiently well-rounded that Steve Coogan is still getting milage out of him 20 years on.

Among his finest moments was this countdown to the 1994 World Cup, which spawned such modern standards as "he must have a foot like a traction engine" and "that was liquid football".

Younger readers may be surprised to learn that it's not just football that existed before the dawn of the Premier League. Comedy was also popular pre-1992, with Monty Python playing the part of Bob Paisley's all-conquering Liverpool. Their Philosophers' Football Match sketch remains genuinely funny four decades after it was made, assuming you vaguely recognise some of the names (Beckenbauer doesn't count).

Harry Enfield and Chums traded off an ability to churn out technicolour characters and memorable catchphrases at the rate the Southampton academy produces sellable English talent. Julio Geordie (played by Paul Whitehouse) was their piss-take of foreign imports to the Premier League who quickly adopted the local culture.

First, we know Father Ted is not set in Britain. But it was made by a British production company and shown on British TV, which will do for us. Plus, it's probably the best sitcom ever.

On top of that, it's littered with more football references that any British comedy we can think of. Like all normal Irish men, Father Dougal wears a mid-90s Republic of Ireland shirt to bed, while the parochial house is adorned with a framed photo of former national team coach Jack Charlton.

In the Christmas Special, Ted recalls that Dougal's prediction for his next advent calendar window was "Ruud Gullit sitting on a shed." Dougal owns a hamster named Ronaldo after the great Brazilian striker, and reads Gary Lineker's Book of Ghost Stories. And when he is asked to read the last rites in Latin, Dougal can only mumble the names of some of the top Italian footballers of the time – Costacurta and Baggio – a gag explained by co-writer Arthur Matthews' fondness for Channel 4's Football Italia.

But that's minor stuff compared with the full football-themed episode that graced the third and final series. We don't really need to say much more than 'all-priests five-a-side over-75s indoor challenge football match'.

Father Ted was co-written by Matthews and Graham Linehan, the latter not a football fan. Linehan then went on to write the IT Crowd, which featured an episode satirising his own alienation from football and hence conversations with other men. Lead characters Moss and Roy are equally unfamiliar with the sport, but mange to break into the male sanctum by learning a few crucial stock phrases, such as "the thing about Arsenal is, they always try to walk it in." As appropriate now as it was seven years ago.

The Armando Iannucci Shows are an inexplicably underrated gem of British comedy. Like Linehan, Armando felt largely alienated by the sport – until he made a surprise discovery. It turns out that when football fans chat in the pub, they are receiving their info from experts hiding in the cellar; they even have Lou Macari's mobile phone number.

The Likely Lads was broadcast in the 1960s, before England's World Cup win created the crushing sense of expectation we know today, and charted the lives of typical northern lads Terry and Bob.

In the series one episode No Hiding Place they try to avoid finding out the result of the England match before highlights are shown on TV. They eventually succeed, but when they come to watch the game it transpires it's been rained off (yeah, but it is actually funny, honest). Almost all of that would be just as appropriate today, expect that no one bothers to watch highlights of an England match anymore.

Alas, with this episode being from what might as well be a thousand years ago, we cannot find a YouTube clip. Here instead is an image of what a similar situation might look like today.