I've just got back in from a weird old gig at Gods own club, Manchester City. It's an evening they have called 'Adopt a Player' which at first sounds like a charity and then you realise they're multi-millionaires so don't need adopting, although it did get me thinking it would be pretty cool to have one about the house (for the record I'd adopt Peter Crouch, "here Pete, you couldn't do that lightbulb for me" or "Hey Crouchy, can you clean the leaves out of the guttering, I haven't got a ladder"). essentially it's a way of local businesses advertising in the match programme, so for example it'll say "Robinho, sponsored by Mike's Bikes, Hyde Rd". According to Nedum Onouha, there's a bit of competition in the changing rooms as to who has what, as for part of the season a few years back he had nobody and so every week it had a picture of poor Nedum with "do you want to adopt this player?" underneath. Nobody did.

Anyway, they rang a few weeks ago and said they knew I was a big City fan and as Bernanrd Manning was no longer with us, would I do it? They didn't have a lot of money but would throw in executive seats for a match, I thought well that's fair enough, there is a credit crunch on and then I remembered that we're supposed to be the World's Richest Club with 500 squillion pounds to spend on Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Kaka, Messi, Pele, Maradona and bringing the late great George Best back for a run out. But I decided to let it go, never had executive seats before and even though I've got a season ticket, thought it might be funny to leave my brothers in our normal seats and then go and sit in comfort eating prawn butties with my dad (I think I might be his favourite now).

So I got there at 7 o clock even though my set didn't begin till 9.30 as they said I could sit with the players until the meal started. I thought here we go, finally this job starts to pay off, all those weeks sitting next to Charlie from big brother or whoever, I finally get to meet some of my sporting heroes. So I went into this room that was used by the chairman on match days, private bar and comfy chairs, big plasma screen ironically showing the build up to the United game. In there are sat Shaun Wright Phillips and Michael Johnson and quickly followed by the whole of the first team, all dressed in weird and wonderful individual ideas of what they all find fashionable, I was in my black suit and black shirt, no tie and shiny black shoes, like Johnny Cash if he'd got free dinners at Burger King.

I didn't know what to say, they were obviously wondering who the hell I was, I was trying to work out who some of they were as I usually only see them in their football kits! Robinho for the record likes tartan golf trousers and has a necklace around his neck with the letter 'R' about the size of my hand, the origin of the word 'Bilng' came from this necklace I think, it was massive, if he fell in the Ship Canal it'd take him down, easy. Elano was dressed in a white jacket, like a Brazilian John Travolta, Micah Richards looked coolish mostly in black, with a Clint Eastwood type scarf, although he did have his trousers round his arse so you could see his boxers, and a belt on, now surely it's one of the other! I had a little chat with Michael Ball about his time in the West End and told him how much I'm enjoying his Radio 2 show instead of Parky, but apparently that's a different Michael Ball, I don't know who was embarrassed more! The barmaid was chattier than the players as for sometime I was just sat like a schoolboy twiddling my thumbs, too nervous to say hello to any of them.

I'd rang Richard Dunne earlier in the day as I'd met him a few months back and he came to see my Apollo gig with his missus the other week, I was worried that my material about footballers might not go down to well in front of footballers but he said "don;t worry about it, the ones who get it, get it and the others are Brazilian". He arrived late as he got stuck in the Man United traffic, which I thought must be horrible, like if gary Neville got stuck in some City Traffic, nightmare.