Jesus on stilts! Just when you thought the Come Dine With Me (Channel 4, Thursday, 10 June, 9pm) franchise was feeling tired, they come along and pull a Footballers Special out of the bag and had me falling about laughing.

Getting Frankie Worthington, Carlton Palmer, Razor Ruddock and John Fashanu together was an absolute masterstroke on the part of Come Dine With Me’s producers. So odd was the relationship between them that I’m utterly convinced that they should have their own fly-on-the-wall show where, basically, we get to laugh at them being hopeless on a weekly basis.

See, most modern footballers (Jimmy Bullard is something of an exception) are utter, utter bores. They talk like trainee security guards who have just come off a night shift and are practising for a job-interview in the mirror. However, these buggers were priceless.

In Frank Worthington, we had a pot-bellied fella with a sarcastic tongue, an Elvis infatuation and a greased back mop that was perilously close to a mullet; in Carlton Palmer we had a oddly likeable streak of piss; in Neil Ruddock we saw the typical wisecracking wideboy who clearly hasn’t bothered sticking to the strict athlete diet in favour of pork scratchings and cackling constantly; in John Fashanu we have a strange combination of a man convinced of his intelligence despite persistent evidence to suggest the contrary and the quiet, measured demeanour of a evangelical turned serial killer.

Together, with their constant chattering, these men made for TV that made me laugh more times than Russell Howard’s entire stand-up career. That said, I’ve had more mirth from Animal Hospital’s sequences of cats being put down than Russell Howard’s comedic career.

From Frankie’s starter of avocado drowned in Sarson’s, to Carlton Palmer’s gameness in an Elvis wig… to Frankie’s spelling out of what the word ‘palatable’ means in the face of a minging pie made by Fash… to everytime Fashanu spoke… there were unintentional (and some intentional) sniggers to be had.

Seriously. Channel 4. Give them a show now. We’ve got the new Osbournes on our hands here.