I'm Sam Delaney. No pause at all then? No. Well, we're together in a studio. Is

that why there's no pause?

There's no delay like there usually is on our link cups between London

and Sunderland. How come there's no delay from London to Sunderland, but there is some Sunderland to London? So that means you pause. Are you blaming the delay for

your

regular pauses?

Yeah, I don't leave a pause. You know I've maintained this throughout. There's only two explanations. Either it's a dodgy connection or you're inserting the pause as some form of

pathetic power play. I'm going to need you to get a second mobile phone and film me talking to you on the first mobile phone. You're going to need a burner phone.

What are you going to do if I don't? Sue me.

I might do.

All right. Do it. But you know you're going to have to face in

court. Yeah, all right. Fair enough. Right. The pause continues then. Yeah. Nothing I can do about it. Yeah. Right. It's the Keane Odyssey 2 part. Fuck knows. He's just won the Champions League and, well, the treble with Manchester United. I

bet he's going to say something like, we'd won every trophy, but it still wasn't enough. As far as I was concerned, we'd done nothing. He's

talking about recreation recreational activities he's talking about the two sides of roy keen there's roy keen the family man yeah wife and kids and all of that but there's another guy he says bursting to get out the guy who used to love hanging out with des walker taking the piss swapping insults looking for a bit of mischief, living for the moment. Roy, the mischief maker, rarely out. He would to dear. Prankster Roy. Roy, the mischief maker, brings to mind a court jester, perhaps, or a harlequin dressed in fine silk gowns with little puffy balls on the ends of his arms and a hat with bells on. I

fucking hate Harlequins. You fucking hate Harlequins? Yeah, they're fucking dickheads, aren't they? Is that not racist? No. It's not racist. It might have been back in olden times, medieval times, when they were all over the place, but I think now...

Is the Harlequins in Games of Thrones? No.

Well, fuck no, I don't know. But Game of Thrones isn't set in medieval times anyway. It's set in a fantasy land. Is

it not set at a particular time? Is it not set in the past? Is it an alternate universe?

I think it's supposed to be on a different planet, to be honest.

I think it might end up being like, do you remember St. Elsewhere that was on in the 1980s? Oh, yeah. It was set in the hospital in Boston, I think it was. Right. It turned out there was like eight series of it, and it turned out in the final episode, the whole thing had existed solely in the mind of one of the doctor's sons. Fuck off. Seriously? It was autistic. Yeah.

What is the point? The entire series. Did you follow the whole thing? Yeah, I watched all of it. Did you feel let down by that? Yeah. I thought

it was all right, actually. I didn't feel that let down. And he had a snow globe that he played with, and the hospital was inside the snow globe. And the explanation was the whole thing happened in his imagination.

Sounds like a deep dive. And the boy

was called Tommy Westfall. Right. He was the son of Dr. Westfall. And there's now on the internet, because that's where all sensible stuff is, there's the theory of the Tommy Westfall universe. And it's because there was an episode of Cheers where the doctors from St. Elsewhere appeared.

Oh, yeah.

As guest characters. Crossover. Crossover stuff. And this universe spreads out kind of from there. There were other episodes of programmes where St. Elsewhere characters appeared. You've got Cheers, you've got Frasier. Of course, yeah. That series spun off from Cheers. And basically, 80% of all American TV exists in the head of this kid. Autistic

kid. St. Elsewhere, was it fun? Was it funny? Yeah, it was. was funny

and serious. Oh, good. I think it's on all four.

Have you ever seen Nurse Jackie? No,

I never got around to that. Really

good. Is

that funny and serious?

That's funny and serious. That's

probably in the Tommy Westfall universe.

It's really funny and really serious.

Right. Shall we talk about Roy Keane?

Yeah. Roy

Keane the Harlequin.

Oh, yeah. I hate Harlequins, yeah. They're not funny. I mean, they seemed funny in medieval times, but since then, we've had everything from Monty Python, The Office, The Day-to The Office, and elsewhere, great stand-ups like Dave Chappelle, Eddie Murphy and his prime, you know, all of this shit. Will Tapper and Shunters Club. It's fun, you know, compare that to some cunt in a colourful costume just fucking ringing bells and titting about. And waving

some fucking little rags around and stuff like that. Yeah,

it's absolute shit.

I wonder if Harlequins are part of the Tommy Westphal universe. No,

because I think Tommy Westphal's better than that. Tommy

Westphal doesn't control what he thinks about.

I'll

tell you that for nothing. We'll do a deep dive on it one day. So he says the plan was agreed. This is not Tommy Westphal, this is what he came.

We'd

meet in Mulligan's, an Irish bar in Manchester at five o'clock. By one o'clock I I've finished my treatment. This is going back to when he was recovering from his... Oh,

so he's rewound before the Champions League victory.

Yeah, it is.

Is he playing with time and narrative structure? He is. Well,

Dunphy is. Yeah. Yeah. Dunphy's gone, well, you know, we've just had a highlight of your football career there, Roy. Now I think we'll switch to a low light of your personal life.

One of your bleakest times. Yes.

He says, I had a few hours to kill, a rare luxury. Of course, footballers have plenty of time off, or apparently off. God, where's this going? Alas, what appears to be free time isn't generally really free in the sense that you can do what you like. What may seem like free time in, say, the afternoons is in fact rest time, recovering from morning training. I had plans. I had things I wanted to do, but my body and my boss was telling me I had to rest.

They weren't playing ball. This was not what Rikeen was about. Rikeen to keep moving at all times permanent motion I needed to find Des Walker where was he? there needed to be some swapping of insults and a little bit of mischief like one of them harlequins it was harlequin time as far as Roy Keane was concerned time to put the Christian the costume on get my bells and my rags little coloured rags and get on the phone to Des Walker Des let's go out harlequinning. Like the old days. What do you mean you're playing for Sandaria now, you bastard?

And then it's not just rest time, it's always thinking, he says, about the last match, the next match, and increasingly in the modern game, commercial, media, extracurricular duties, designed to make money or create goodwill for you or the club. Goodwill? I didn't become a footballer for goodwill. What

the fuck would I be needing goodwill for? Come on. I came here to win and to achieve and to destroy the opposition. The last thing I need is goodwill. In fact, I judge myself on the base of how much bad will I've attracted. I'm a bad harlequin. Evil harlequin. I tried to get that going as a nickname in the dressing room, but it never caught on. I tried to not embarrass and Manchester United, later Celtic, but nobody was saying, hey, lads, why don't you start, I'm a bit part of my nickname, Kino. I was thinking maybe you could all start calling me the Bad Harlequin. But they never would, I don't know why. Jealous, probably, because they knew it was such a fucking great, a cracking fucking nickname that none of them would have the brains to come up with for themselves. For

about a week and a half I went to the training each morning, pointed at myself with me thumbs and went, the Bad Harlequin's here! Bad Harlequin in the house! Catch on. Eventually I just let it drop.

Still

rankles with me though,

to this day. Don't worry I've got a list of names of players who never called me the Bad Harlequin. Dunphy,

can we call this book the bad harlequin? Or the fantastic tale of the bad harlequin?

I don't know, Roy. I'll ask the publisher. Maybe

a bit long. Time off, he says, when I look back on the average season and add up the days when I am actually off, there are very few. Oh God, he's trying to fucking say that being a footballer's hard work. Yeah, God, definitely want to swap with that. As I got all the... I've gradually come to appreciate that from day one in July, when you report back for pre-season training, until the end, which may be a World Cup qualifying campaign. And then, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'd arranged to meet Norman Whiteside in the Griffin in Bowden, or Bowden, at 12. Norman Whiteside

Norman, Norman, I meet you in the pub at midday It's the bad harlequin Who? You heard what I said, just be there Norman

didn't get out much he was intrigued, obviously he came along I knew the bad harlequin thing would get under his skin. Capture his imagination. Fire his synapses.

Also, he loved being in pubs. He was a massive piss head. As far as Norman Whiteside was concerned, this was the win double. He got to be in a pub with a man who was calling himself

the bad Harlequin. And possibly have his curiosity sated.

I knew for a fact he'd be there atday, possibly earlier, possibly a lot earlier, knowing Norman. He

was there every day. Norman had retrained as a podiatrist. Did you know that? Nope.

Interesting fact

there for you. He was still a popular character at

Old Trafford. What is a podiatrist? The foot doctor.

Foot, yeah. He's a still popular character at Old Trafford, respected for two reasons, and then he puts in brackets make that three.

Don't know what that means. Note to Dumphy, make that three not two, you prick. He's

got an excitement point after it as well, so that's probably what it means ah there we are his talent he just explains it the next bit i didn't read on no

three

reasons his talent he took no prisoners on the pitch and he was a leading member of the work hard play hard drinking club that sir alex had banished from old trafford a couple of years after he arrived norman brian robson paul mc and Kevin Moran were all fantastic players, part Stuart Pears, part Des Walker, but in the best or worst of World Trafford traditions that stretched back to Matt Busby's days. They mixed outstanding achievement with some pretty spectacular sessions. That culture was still thriving when I arrived at the club in 93, and many of my happiest Manchester days were spent enjoying a few pints in the griffon in my silks. My coloured rags flying around the