Ron Manager

Ron Manager was a character from the BBC comedy sketch show "The Fast Show", played by Paul Whitehouse. He appeared in every series, as well as in his own spin-off series, a Sky One comedy quiz show entitled "Jumpers for Goalposts".

An enthusiastic, ageing television football pundit, Ron takes every opportunity to launch into a string of incoherent partial sentence reminiscences, seemingly irrelevant to the game and leaving his co-presenters baffled. Many of his sentences begin with the question "Isn't it?" and he often mentions fond memories of playing with other "small boys in the park" and using "jumpers for goal posts".

During the first series, Ron and his two colleagues, Simon Day as the host and Mark Williams as Alan Hansen-esque pundit Tommy Buxton OBE, were in a small room that overlooked the football pitch, although in one episode, he was sitting on his own in an empty stadium. At this time, Ron was quietly-spoken and many of his comments at first appeared quite sensible, before they wandered into a different direction that usually involved reminiscing. In the final episode of the first series, he was seen rambling randomly, before disclosing that his wife had left him.

By the second series, Ron and his two colleagues had moved into brighter "Match of the Day"-style studio, and Ron's character was more energetic and louder-spoken, often shouting and occasionally bursting into song. This format remained until the Fast Show ended in 2000.

Ron was also in a spin-off video in 1999, entitled "Fast Football". Like the TV show, the video features Day and Williams and contains various footballing clips and out-takes from the last few years, interspersed with comments from the three panellists.

From 2000 to 2002 a column purportedly written by Ron appeared in Saturday editions of "The Guardian" newspaper.

In his autobiography "Blessed", George Best claims that Paul Whitehouse told him Alec Stock at Fulham was the inspiration for Ron Manager. Best described Stock as a "lovely bubbly character who had a romantic attitude about how football should be played" and as a manager "whose teams always played with style".