Shamed out of the UK, Andy Gray and Richard Keys are still talking a good game
Andy Gray and Richard Keys took football coverage to a new level before a fall from grace but the infamous pair are back doing what they do best
In the era of Twitter gaffes and mobile phone cameras, it seems barely a week goes by without a sporting figure shooting themselves in the foot. Few falls from grace, however, have been quite as spectacular as that of Richard Keys and Andy Gray.
As the nucleus of the football coverage on the then newly formed Sky Sports channel in the early 1990s, when it had just secured broadcasting rights to the nascent English Premiership, the pair became household names in the UK.
Gray, formerly a formidable striker for Aston Villa, Everton, Wolves, Rangers and Scotland, was largely responsible for introducing British football fans to the in-depth, forensic play-by-play analysis that is now ubiquitous, and his impassioned commentary of matches - on Sky Sports and Electronic Arts' wildly popular Fifa series of console games - was an inescapable soundtrack for a generation of fans.
Neither of us has anything to hide from, neither of us feels any shame about what others tried to do to us
Keys, meanwhile, was the dependably opinionated studio anchor with a whiff of the Alan Partridge about him, and together they were the lynchpins of Sky's coverage for almost 20 years.
That winning run came to an abrupt end in January 2011 when several video clips were leaked that feature Gray and Keys exchanging off-camera remarks widely deemed to be sexist.
From expressing their incredulity that a woman could be an assistant referee to Keys' sexually charged "did you smash it?" line to former Liverpool and England star Jamie Redknapp, to Gray asking a female co-presenter to tuck a microphone pack down the front of his trousers, the videos saw Gray sacked and Keys resign amid a storm of controversy.
Virtual pariahs for a spell, the pair have since resuscitated their careers with a Sony award-winning show on British radio station Talksport, prominent roles on Qatari satellite TV network Al Jazeera's beIN Sports channel and occasional engagements on the after-dinner speaking circuit.