Mark Littlewood’s World Cup Cuppa

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be asked to appear on a World Cup show of any description.

UK Live is a new YouTube channel launched a couple of weeks ago by former Talk presenter Mike Graham, and one of the other presenters (during the World Cup at least) is former IEA boss Mark Littlewood who seems to be moonlighting from regular gigs on Talk and GB News, not to mention his day job as director of Popular Conservatism.

Mark’s show, World Cup Cuppa, focusses on the World Cup ‘with a bit of a political twist’. Episodes are broadcast live between 12.00 and 1.00pm, Monday to Friday. Each day Mark is joined by one or two guests and he’s clearly been raiding his old IEA contacts book because guests to date have included the IEA’s Chris Snowdon, Patrick Basham (Democracy Institute), and John O’Connell (TaxPayers Alliance).

Funnily enough, I had lunch with John a few weeks ago and when we weren’t discussing work we were talking about football. John is (or was) a season ticket holder at Tottenham but he moved to Norfolk a few years ago and now watches Norwich as well.

Chris supports Middlesbrough which led to some amusing banter with Mark (a Southampton fan) given the fact that Southampton were thrown out of the Championship play-offs at the end of last season after being caught spying on their opponents during a training session.

The opponents were, of course, Middlesbrough, and Southampton’s victory over two legs was subsequently erased from the record books, denying them the chance to play Hull in the play-off final at Wembley. Ironically, Middlesbrough (who were reinstated at Southampton’s expense) lost the final, thereby becoming the first club to lose both rounds of a Championship play-off in the same season!

But I digress.

As I discovered over lunch, John knows a lot about football and speaking to Mark on World Cup Cuppa he impressed me even more with his knowledge, casually dropping the names of World Cup footballers from several decades ago.

Patrick, meanwhile, discussed the results of some World Cup-related polling the Democracy Institute has carried out. I’d like to say I can remember what they were but I was distracted by the fact that Patrick was speaking from a small, dimly lit hallway in what appeared to be a safe house.

John, in contrast, was in what looked like a small baronial hall with whitewashed walls and wooden beams, all beautifully lit by a tasteful lamp.

Anyway, my guest spot is today. I’ve been asked to talk about England’s final group match against Panama (a team I know nothing about) and I’ll try not to repeat what everyone else has been saying about the Ghana match. I’m hoping that I might be asked about Scotland as well because the England and Scotland matches are the only ones I’ve watched from beginning to end.

As it happens, when I was initially asked to appear on the programme, my support for Dundee United was mentioned as a reason I might be qualified to talk about Scotland, but I wasn’t so sure, hence this reply:

I’d love to take part but I’m not a Scotland supporter - I lived too long in Scotland for that so I’m probably neutral, at best. I have views, though, and I do follow Scottish football so if that works for you I’d be happy to do it. However, someone like Brian Monteith would be better - he’s Scottish, a Hibs fan and a former MSP.

I still think Brian would have been a good call but they went for a former Bay City Roller instead.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed there are no technical gremlins because World Cup Cuppa has not been without some technical challenges, including a power cut on the second day that delayed the host’s appearance for almost 30 minutes.

I should add that Mark is presenting the show not from the USA (or Mexico or Canada) but from Cala d’Or in Majorca, which is a short distance from Porto Petro where my wife and I were on holiday last month. He has also been wearing an impressive selection of football shirts but I shan’t be following suit (no pun intended) because the last time I wore a replica football jersey was in 1974.

Anyway, here’s a small but interesting fact I may try to shoehorn into the conversation. In 1967 Dundee United were one of a number of European clubs invited to spend the summer competing in one of America’s first attempts at a professional ‘soccer’ league.

In the absence of home grown clubs and players, the American promoters simply imported foreign teams and rebranded them. United, for example, became Dallas Tornado. Two years later they were invited back and this time they represented ‘Dallas Tornado’ in something called the International Cup.

(Another interesting fact, for me at least, is that ‘Dallas Tornedo’ played in tangerine and in 1969, after playing in various combinations of black and white for 46 years, Dundee United changed their club colours to … tangerine.)

Anyway, that was almost 30 years before Major League Soccer (MLS) was launched in the US in 1996, and almost 60 years before the 2026 World Cup. There’s no direct link with either but despite a series of setbacks in the Seventies and Eighties it demonstrates how far football has progressed in the USA since I was a child.

It does however remain an anomaly that the USA first competed in the World Cup in 1930, and again in 1934, long before England or the other home nations took part. Famously, when England did finally deign to enter (in 1950) they lost 1-0 to America in what is still regarded as one of the biggest World Cup upsets of all time, although our subsequent record against America isn’t much better – 1-1 in 2010, 0-0 in 2022. In other words, England have never beaten the USA – where football is still a relatively minor sport – in the World Cup.

England (and Scotland) have of course been on the end of many World Cup ‘upsets’ and disappointments so nothing that happens in this World Cup will surprise me. We’ve just got to take it on the chin and, dare I say, man up.

PS. There’s something about UK Live that reminds me of the late L!ve TV. There are no Norwegian weather forecasters but the AI newsreader has the same vibe as L!ve TV’s News Bunny. Or is that just me?

Mark Littlewood (above) presents World Cup Cuppa on UK Live from 12 to 1.00pm