Footsie rallies as 'Arry takes shares in North London venture

TV VIEW: SKY NEWS is to be avoided these nights, particularly around the time the stock exchange thingies are opening on the other side of the world, because the BREAKING NEWS banner across the bottom always brings a cataclysmic newsflash, one that indicates the world economy is in as good a shape as our bold prediction that Hull City would be relegated by November.

One night the banner told us something like "Nicky has dumped 952.58 points" and we had to ask if that was a bad thing. It was, we were told, and it's not "Nicky", it's "Nikkei". So, it's just relentless gloom and doom, for Nicky, Nikkei and the rest of us.

But you know how it is, someone shouts "DON'T LOOK!" so you look. And we did, on Saturday night. Flicked over to Sky. BREAKING NEWS! Nicky was grand, partly because he was probably closed for the weekend, but Spurs had dumped Juande Ramos.

Then - BREAKING NEWS: Portsmouth have given Spurs permission to speak to Harry Redknapp!

Then - BREAKING NEWS: Harry Redknapp to take over as Spurs manager!

Well, stone the crows, so much news had broken in those few short minutes we were left as dazed as all the lads who joined Portsmouth because they wanted to play for 'Arry. Spare a thought, in particular, for Jermain Defoe who left Spurs for Portsmouth.

"Oh fiddlesticks," he probably didn't quite say if, like ourselves, he was tuned in at the time.

'Arry, then, is the new guv'nor at White 'Art Lane. How that will play on the Asia/Pacific markets we won't know till later today. Hopefully the Hang Seng index and Jakarta Composite will rally, although you just never know with India's BSE 30 index.

Unpredictable.

"A big surprise?" Richard Keyes asked Glenn Hoddle yesterday.

"Well, it is a big surprise, but," he said, leading us to hope he might go down the path of Les Ferdinand ("I was surprised, but I always say nothing surprises me in football").

"But a lot can happen in 24 hours," said Glenn, not realising it had all actually happened in five BREAKING NEWS minutes.

"I'm happy for him also," said Ruud 'Also' Gullit, "Harry is a good manager also," although he refrained from agreeing with Glenn's half suggestion that it was a good thing that Spurs had given up on foreigners and gone down the English route. Ruud's looking for a job, after all.

But we were happy, too, for Spurs devotees because these have, indeed, been dark days. They might even be able to check their email again without finding any of the following.

"David Blaine was gutted to hear that his record of 48 days in the box doing absolutely nothing has been broken by Darren Bent."

"You can buy Spurs, The Glory Years from most shops, priced £200. That's £5 for the tape and £195 for the Betamax player."

Like Dave Mackay, Ossie Ardiles and Martin Peters, they'd agree, the old ones are always the best.

Anyway, Spurs won yesterday - seriously - in 'Arry's first game in charge, so all's well again.

But speaking of dark days, Liverpool beat Chelsea without Fernando Torres, which somewhat undermined our bold prediction that Liverpool had no chance of beating Chelsea without Fernando Torres.

In the build-up to the game Sky Sports placed Robbie Keane on a kiddies' bed, complete with a Liverpool duvet and slippers, in a room bedecked with Liverpool wallpaper and lampshades, and asked him to talk about his childhood obsession with the club.

To say Robbie looked uncomfortable would be akin to saying Michael Phelps can swim.

They also hired a child actor to roam what were supposed to be the streets of Dublin, to show Robbie dreaming of playing for Liverpool as a kid.

Maybe we were too sensitive, but it looked a bit like downtown Fallujah on a particularly bad day, but the real Robbie smiled through it all, in a "is this nearly over?" kind of way.

"A good sport, Robbie," said Richard back in the studio, before asking Ruud if he thought Robbie and co could end Chelsea's 196-year unbeaten home record.

"With Meelan we had the same record also," said Ruud, so Richard cut to the ads.

Without Fernando Torres, then, Liverpool beat Chelsea, which, of course, came as no surprise to us. They're now three points clear of Hull, who remain our tip for the title.

Jamie Carragher was ecstatic in his post-match interview. Except Ruud couldn't understand a word he said.

"Can you translate that," he asked Richard.

"Maybe subtitles?"

As 'Arry once put it, "Samassi Abou don't speak the English too good."

And with that the FTSE soared.