Merse lost his tooth and classic Kammy - Stelling's best Soccer Saturday moments

Having started out as Sports Saturday in 1992, it became a purely-football based programme from the 1998/99 season fronted by legendary presenter Stelling on Sky Sports.

More than two decades on and Soccer Saturday is still as entertaining.

In that time there have been a number of priceless moments involving Jeff and pundits, including Charlie Nicholas, George Best, Paul Merson and, of course, the always hilarious Chris Kamara.

talkSPORT.com recently took Jeff on a trip down memory lane and he recalled some of his favourite Soccer Saturday moments.

Nightmare start

Although his Soccer Saturday mates have been caught napping on air a few times, Jeff himself has been left rather hot and bothered too - one of the worst ones coming at one of the worst possible times.

He said: "So it's the first weekend of the season a few seasons back, ten minutes in and the vidiprinter breaks! That was just impossible. We had no goals coming in, nothing until a bit after half time.

"Eventually it kicked into gear early in the second half which should've been great news but it wasn't great news because it sent through every score from the eighth minute onwards - it came in an absolute flood. You talk about King Cnut trying to hold back the tide, there was no way of stopping these scores coming through.

"It was one of the worst shows on record and it was the first Saturday of the season."

A cracker!

Former Arsenal and Celtic striker Nicholas' stuttering comeback advising Jeff to wear his glasses is a clip that frequently does the rounds on social media.

On that bizarre episode, Jeff said: "There were so many incidents with Charlie. The 'you should've gone to Specsavers' line was a classic but Charlie was always easy to wind up. Sometimes he got his revenge as he did there."

However, it's a running joke involving players from Nicholas' native Scotland, who all had the same surname, that Jeff loved the most when winding up Nicholas as the host delivered the perfect and unexpected punchline.

"In Scotland there were a couple of players called Jacobs and I think if there's a gag worth doing you may as well do it about 30 times! Every time a Jacobs scored I'd say it was a cracker.

"So one day Jacobs scores and I go 'Jacobs has scored, guess what sort of goal it was Charlie', he jumped in two feet first and shouted back 'a cracker, Jeff!' and I went 'no Charlie, it was a penalty.'"

The tooth hurts

Another former Gooner Jeff had lots of fun with is Merse, who's still on Soccer Saturday now.

What Merse says doesn't always make total sense - but his words just work. And Jeff points to when Sergio Aguero fired in that goal against QPR as one of the former Arsenal man's finest hours.

Jeff said: "There have been plenty, but my best memory of Merse was on the day of the Aguero goal against QPR that won Man City the title in 2012.

"He's got a brilliant turn of phrase, people can relate to what he's trying to say. He paints a picture in his own way. When Joey Barton got sent off he said it was like a scene from Platoon!

"And when the goal went in he said 'everyone's piling on top of each other, they've got love bites and everything!'"

There were a other moments that caught everyone unawares, though.

Jeff added: "Merse's tooth fell out live on air!

"I think someone put it in a glass of milk in the hope he could have it reattached. So he spent the rest of the day without his tooth which was pretty hideous!"

Not the Best attendance

Now to one former panellist who's no longer with us in Best. A regular pundit on the show until 2004, Jeff described the former Manchester United star's passing a year later as the toughest period of the show he's ever been confronted with.

But Jeff always remembers the fun Best brought, when he showed up of course…

On Best, Jeff said: "Brilliant footballer, one of the greats. People talk about the Lionel Messi's and Cristiano Ronaldo's and rightly so but of his generation, George was right up there.

"He wasn't the world's most reliable when it came to Soccer Saturday. We arranged for a cab driver to come to his house and his wife would put him in the cab and told the driver to go straight to Sky, do not stop.

"But there would be occasions where George just wouldn't turn up. If George Best tells you to stop at the pub, it takes a bold taxi driver to turn him down.

"Occasionally he wouldn't show up so we had a substitute always ready in case he didn't turn up. Alan Mullery, Nigel Spackman both lived quite locally and would be in every week and would be on the panel if by 11:30am George failed to show.

"A man of many talents and attributes but reliability wasn't one of them."

'Has there been a red card?'

And finally, when you talk about funny Soccer Saturday moments, you can't not mention the legendary Kammy.

He was responsible for one of the iconic moments of the show as he revealed he missed the sending off of Anthony Vanden Borre during a clash between Portsmouth and Blackburn.

Jeff recalled: "The producers are laughing but can see I'm puzzled because all I've got is the production team saying someone's been sent off.

"I said to Kammy 'count the players on your fingers, I'm there and you're not' sort of thing. He's still in denial and then I got confirmation on the vidiprinter that Anthony Vanden Borre had been sent off.

"I go back to him and say 'Kammy, my sources tell me that Anthony Vanden Borre has been sent off' and then he came back with the famous line 'oh yeah, I saw him go off but I thought he'd been subbed'.

"At this point the entire production team is doubled over with laughter. Nobody could believe it.

"His defence was he was in a position where he was surrounded by the crowd so he couldn't see or hear much. It was a brilliant broadcasting moment."

One that may have escaped the Soccer Saturday fans' consciousness is the time he got the penalty taker wrong during a Newcastle vs Sunderland match.

Sunderland were awarded the spot-kick, which was to be taken by Davide Santon (who was playing for Newcastle).

After a few seconds Kammy realised his error and quickly corrected himself, revealing the penalty taker was in fact 'one of the Sunderland players'.

Jeff added: "I remember it vividly because we can't show any of the game behind the reporter at all but Kammy said there was going to be a penalty so I'm desperately trying to keep him on the air so we don't go off to something else and miss the drama of a penalty being taken.

"When I asked him who was going to take it he looked over his shoulder and said it would be Davide Santon.

"I then said 'Kammy, I can assure you it won't be Santon'. 'How can you be so sure, Jeff?' 'Because Santon plays for Newcastle, Kammy and the penalty is to Sunderland!' A classic Kammy moment."

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