With some ridiculous knowledge, funny moments and great on-screen relationships, Jeff often helps bring the show together and has been a regular feature on Soccer Saturday for nearly 30 years – and is the iconic face and voice behind so many incredible footballing moments.

He joined Clive Holland on the Clive Holland Show on Mental Health Awareness Week where he spoke about his best moments on Soccer Saturday – but Clive started out by asking him just how much pressure he feels every weekend presenting to millions of people and the toll that it can have mentally.

“It would have affected me more when I was younger. I think the thing is, that it's a different sort of pressure - it's almost a fun sort of pressure. I'm lucky to have one of the best jobs in the world. They pay me well to sit and talk with my mates about football! So any pressure I feel is just self imposed pressure when you try and get things right.

“What you do get the pressures from is in your everyday life, when people expect you to be exactly the same off screen as you are on screen and, of course, from the beast that is social media - because everybody has a view. Normally their views are often different than yours. We all know about the sort of views that people get on social media and the effect that can have on your mental health.”

Jeff did go on to talk about the impact of social media on mental health though, even detailing some of his close colleagues struggles over the years…

“I'm fairly fortunate in that most of the people who follow me on Twitter are nice, reasonable, good natured people – but you get bits and pieces of abuse here. We were talking about this just over a week ago now with Lee Hendrie and Paul Merson.

“In their lives, they’ve been superstars, absolutely in the spotlight - a dream lifestyle as far as people are concerned. But when it all ends, it becomes very difficult mentally. Lee was talking about how he blocked everything out after he finished playing football. He lost all of his money, his house was repossessed, the house he bought for his mum was repossessed - everybody thought, ‘he’s a bit of a jack the lad, the world is his oyster’, but in actual fact, he was cracking up and he thought about suicide on many occasions.

“Likewise with Merse [Paul Merson] his gambling addiction, alcohol addiction and drug taking – he’s over that now and he's winning the battle. There will always be a battle with his mental health but it happens to people in every walk of life.”

As Clive and Jeff began to talk through his role at Soccer Saturday over the years, Clive had to ask about the infamous ‘I don’t know Jeff’ moment from Chris Kamara that is recognised almost everywhere across the country, if not the world – which Jeff was so pivotal in:

“Kammy [Chris Kamara] was our match reporter down there [at Fratton Park], and on my vidiprinter in front of me it said there's a red card - Anthony Vanden Borre had been sent off in the Portsmouth game. So naturally, we flew straight to Kammy.

“I asked him about it and he looked blank. I mean, he always looks blank! He said ‘Red card Jeff? No, I haven’t seen anything’, so I said to him to ‘Get your fingers and toes out and count how many players are still on the pitch!’ I said that my sources were telling me that Anthony Vanden Borre was being sent off – at which point the penny dropped and he said ‘Oh, I saw him going off but I thought he was being subbed!’. You couldn't make it up!

“The clip of that went viral at the time and the following day. Channel Nine in Australia rang Kammy and asked ‘Would you like to talk us through it?’ and Kammy loves a bit of a spotlight, so he did it. What he didn’t realize was the Channel Nine had a caption screen photo of Kammy, and a caption on the bottom which said the ‘The World's Worst Football Reporter’ - you know, a bit harsh. It's amazing that it has survived years and years on though.”

There is obviously an awful lot of preparation that goes in to all the work on Soccer Saturday, with Jeff often listing more statistics than possibly thought – so Clive asked the big question: Is someone telling you them, or do you really remember every single stat for every game on a Saturday afternoon?!

“I spend a lot of time preparing for days before. It's all about preparation. Every week, I will physically spend a couple of days handwriting notes - they stick in my mind much better that way, so I hand write for a couple of days notes on every game, whether it be Premier League, Championship, League One and Two or National League, the Scottish League as well - I'll have a little portfolio of facts.

“Obviously, the bigger the game, the more facts I've got - there's a sliding scale. So the on the day, if somebody scores their 25^th goal of the season or has seven in seven games or three red cards this season, or scored a hat trick against the same team in the previous game - I should know that.

“If you think of John Obi Mikel, for instance. He's been playing for Stoke this season and in his life, he has scored two goals. It's something like two in 331 games now. So every week religiously, I document the fact that he scored two in 331, two in 332, two in 333. So the next time that he does score, I’ll know. But what it means is that 95% of the preparation doesn’t make it in to the show and has never seen the light of day.”

You can catch more groundbreaking interviews with celebrities like Jeff as well as industry professionals on the Clive Holland Show between 2 – 4pm, Monday to Thursday!

Can’t wait till then? You can catch Clive’s weekly podcast down below!