‘Some months ago I took out a subscription to MUTV as I thought it might be amusing to poke some gentle fun at the skewed view of the world as seen from an exclusively Manchester United perspective.
As it turned out, United were doing rather well at the time, so there was nothing much to laugh at, and I never bothered with the piece. However, despite my very best efforts, I have never managed to unsubscribe, and the red propaganda continues to infest my airwaves.
Occasionally, should I fail to find an old Top Cat on the Cartoon Network, I will watch an interview on MUTV with one of the United players. The fearless probing will invariably include a question on the lines of: "Exactly how wonderful do you think Sir Alex Ferguson is?"
If it is a player who has recently joined United, he will certainly be asked: "How did you feel when you found out Manchester United were interested in you?" the correct answer to which is: "Ooh, like a giddy schoolgirl. To be chosen by Sir Alex to do his bidding. Is there any greater honour that can be bestowed upon a young man? I felt like Julie Andrews in the final reel of Sound of Music."
This guff goes on night after night and there is clearly a market for it, especially from overseas judging by the provenance of many of the emails read out. But I fail to see the appeal. With all possibility of dissent eradicated, what is the point? My experience of football fans is that however staunch their support for their team, they still like to tell the manager, and even more the board, exactly where they are going wrong. Even my teenage son who supports Manchester United - kids, eh? Try and bring them up properly, and still they go off the rails - finds MUTV tedious.
Granted, interviews with footballers, wherever they are conducted, can be mind-numbing at the best of times, but on shows such as Football Focus and On The Ball at least they try to give them a visual lift, with some shots of the footballer getting out of his expensive car, playing a round of golf or cooking pasta in his hi-tech kitchen.
Ryan Giggs, on Friday night on MUTV, was just grabbed off the training field and plonked into a studio where he did a half-hour interview show in his training top, shorts and football socks.
The Giggs interview was followed by a programme previewing the Villa game, called Countdown 2 Kick-off, which carried an interesting echo of United's past, before corporate smootherie took hold. Paul McGrath, who played for both Villa and United, was booked as a guest, but failed to appear. There will be those who believe the explanation "because of the traffic on the M6 , " but others will like to think that that bender he famously went on with Norman Whiteside and Bryan Robson is still going on.