Nobody is safe. Hold your tongue, wherever you are. You don’t know who is watching, listening or worse yet, recording.

Now, no male can ever say they have never bantered with their guy mates about something discriminatory. We all have. That doesn’t make such remarks right, but this debacle should certainly remind everybody that complacency is a formidable adversary.

According former Sky Sports News presenter Sam Matterface, Gray was not a pleasant character to work with.  “He had an aura; an air about him of being untouchable,” said Matterface. “I’m not really surprised that another incident has come to light. I always had the feeling, even though I had cordial exchanges with him, that he wasn’t very popular among the people he worked with.” He was complacent.

The prevalence of media recording devices (smartphones) means that anybody at any time has the means to incriminate you. So next time you make that suggestive remark about the intern’s blouse, just remember that anybody could be watching, listening or in the worst case, recording. Somebody BIG was going to take a fall for complacency and Andy Gray was that man. Momentous fall.

Having been involved as Sky’s chief football pundit since the Premier League began, Gray clearly thought he was superior to everybody else. 20 years of experience and work is your own back yard, particularly if you’ve been occupying the same job for that period of time.

With Gray sacked, there is immense pressure on Sky to remove Richard Keys. The presenter phoned linesman Sian Massey to apologise for the disparaging remarks made about her inability to fulfill her role owing to her gender. Standard saving face ploy (SSFP), methinks.

Above you will find a video of Sky’s Champions League panel at Stamford Bridge, for one of Chelsea’s European ties. The exact date is unknown, but the panel includes Keys, Jamie Redknapp (Tottenham manager Harry’s son), Graeme Souness and Ruud Gullit.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald:

“Did you smash it?” Keys is shown asking Redknapp before a live television segment from Stamford Bridge football stadium in Fulham.

Keys and Redknapp are sitting with former player-turned-managers Ruud Gullit and Graeme Souness and they are talking with someone off camera about a woman named “Louise”.

Redknapp replies: “I used to go out with her.”

A few moments of silence follow while Keys fiddles with paperwork and his mobile phone.

He then says, laughing: “Mind you, that’s a stupid question, if you were anywhere near it, you definitely smashed it. You could have gone round there any night and found Redknapp hanging out the back of it.”

This type of alpha-male banter is not uncommon. I’ve been involved in some; you (men, and some women) have been involved too. What’s impressive is that Redknapp wasn’t dragged down into stoking Keys’ wordplay. It would seem rare that an ex-England footballer would have such foresight. Forget about ‘off-air’, perhaps he knew that YouTube is always ‘on-air’.

With pressure on Sky to can the man who would give Alec Baldwin a run for the ‘Sleaziest Man of the Year Award, Ongoing’ I thought it quite appropriate to draw your attention to one of my posts from last year. The post’s subject was also guilty of making ‘Comments-that-bring-a-company’s-ethos-into-disrepute’, except his were on-air and broadcast to the entire football-watching community of the UK.

So be careful when you’re lured into making a risqué comment because you’re hankering for your friends’ chuckling approval. Remember Andy Gray, who right now must be having the biggest LC in the history of that soul-destroying frame of mind.

[Sources: Guardian; SMH]

Main image via The Daily Mail.