The Match of the Day pundit has been doing research, of sorts...Back of the Net's John Foster has the details...
Tiresome BBC pundit Mark Lawrenson has been spotted buying up large quantities of unsold Christmas crackers at a SainsburyâÂÂs in Amersham, sources reported yesterday, presumably to replenish his supply of jokes for 2013.
Lawrenson, who despite being paid to appear on television always looks like heâÂÂs just brushed his hair with a hedgehog, is understood to have taken advantage of the supermarketâÂÂs 80% reduction on many Christmas items, including their range of own-brand crackers.
And this is not the first year that Lawrenson has swooped for festive bargains, according to his BBC colleague Mike Ingham.
âÂÂFor Christmas, he gave all the Five Live team these little plastic toys that clearly came out of last yearâÂÂs crackers,â said Ingham. âÂÂExcept for Alan Green, who got a paper hat with a rude word written on it. But itâÂÂs obvious that the main appeal of the crackers for Lawro is their jokes.âÂÂ
Yes, this is a terrible Photoshop, but we aren't going to apologise
Ingham, who did not wish to be named, exclusively revealed to FourFourTwo the process by which Lawrenson inserts Christmas cracker jokes into his match commentaries.
Ingham: âÂÂSome of them heâÂÂll just use straight up during games. During QPR-West Brom last year, I asked [Lawrenson] something about Heidur Helguson, and he replied by asking me what the difference was between swine flu and bird flu, and came out with some rubbish about âÂÂtweet-mentâ and âÂÂoink-mentâÂÂ, and I wanted to kill him.
âÂÂI know he got that from a Christmas cracker. It canâÂÂt have been a Penguin bar; the BBC staff canteen stopped stocking them in 2007 when they noticed LawroâÂÂs jokes had all become puns about fish.âÂÂ
But, continued Ingham, the Christmas-themed jokes are not the worst of it.
âÂÂHe takes the Christmas ones and mixes up the questions and responses, so you get things like âÂÂWhy does Santa have three gardens? A mince spy.â And then he looks really pleased with himself and chuckles through his nose for the rest of the game. I never thought IâÂÂd say this, but it makes me long for Alan Shearer.âÂÂ
Meanwhile, Shearer has been seen buying a heavily-reduced hardback copy of âÂÂAlan ShearerâÂÂs Big Book Of Football Factsâ at a WHSmiths in Gateshead, a look of troubled determination reportedly etched on his massive face.
Editor's note: this is satire and not a serious accusation - all quotes are fictionalised. But you knew that, because you're not stupid.
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