Martin O’Neill can be a prickly character at times, as Robbie Williams discovered to his cost while visiting the BBC studio at the 1998 World Cup.
The former Take That star, who had recently embarked on a successful solo career, unzipped his jacket on air to reveal a t-shirt that read ‘Des is God’.
Des Lynam, the host of the BBC’s coverage, responded by saying that, ‘There are two idols around here; you’re one and Martin O’Neill is the other.’
Following Williams’ quip that he was just ‘idle’, O’Neill delivered a scathing assessment of the singer’s abilities.
“To be fair, like, you’ve done really well because I thought you would struggle after Take That. I really did think that,” he said.
“You can’t play, you can’t write, you can’t play guitar. I thought you’d really struggle. Gary Barlow probably kept the band together.”
The exchange is fondly remembered as one of the funniest, and most unexpected, to have happened in coverage of a major tournament.
O’Neill was asked about the incident in a recent interview with FourFourTwo and admitted that he didn’t intend his comments to be as harsh as they seemed.
“I did say then that Angels is a great song!” he laughed. “That’s his best.
“I wanted to say to him that despite the fact he hadn’t written the songs in Take That, and despite the fact that he’d been bombed out of the band, he was doing well. But it came across as, ‘Listen, you have no talent’. He even said, “Oh, thanks a lot!”
“It became a moment, but if I hadn’t been interrupted by Alan Hansen, I would have said that he was doing really well. I think he was holding a concert in Paris and came to see us because he loved Des Lynam. But he took what I said in good jest.
“I met him later when I was manager of Celtic: we were in the same hotel and he invited me to his concert the next day. I couldn’t go, but he’s a good lad. And what a great career he’s had.”
