Former Soccer AM presenters Tim Lovejoy and Helen Chamberlain have revealed how they really felt about the ‘Soccerette’ segment on the hit TV show.
The Soccerette feature was introduced in the late 1990s and lasted for several years, and would see a young female fan modelling a shirt in front of the ‘Fans of the Week’ while being interviewed by Lovejoy.
Lovejoy would ask the woman their relationship status, with fans cheering if they said ‘single’ or booing if they had a partner or were married. The woman was also asked how old they were, with their response being met with fans shouting ‘great age’.
The woman would then line up in the middle of Lovejoy and a fan, with the trio strutting the catwalk to music and cheers from the assembled crew.
After Soccer AM was axed in 2023, PR guru Mark Bowkowski told MailOnline the cult TV show ‘ran out of steam’, with ‘brash and laddish’ features such as the Soccerette no longer proving as popular as they once did.
Reflecting on how he now feels about doing the Soccerette feature on a weekly basis, Lovejoy told the Mail’s podcast Soccer A-Z that it would not have a place in the modern world.
‘We would never do it now,’ he admitted. ‘I cringe sometimes when I look back at some of them because they’re not really suitable for today’s world.’
However, Soccer AM legend Tubes insisted the women themselves really wanted to be on the show and would write letters to apply to go on.
‘The girls enjoyed it. They loved coming on,’ he said.
‘That’s the key for me, they all applied,’ Chamberlain added.
And Lovejoy revealed how the catwalk was his part of the segment – even if the men weren’t the best at it.
‘You’d get them up, watching men walk up and down. Why can’t men walk up and down the catwalk!? That was the funny bit, I thought, watching these guys trying their hardest to catwalk,’ he said.
Chamberlain added: ‘That was also the nice bit about having a soccerette in the middle of you two because if it had just been you and a fan it would have been really ugly to watch every week!’
Soccer AM proved to be a huge hit for Sky.
The 90-minute football comedy show included a variety of segments as well as sitdowns with some of the game’s biggest players and managers.
Russ Williams and Helen Chamberlain were the original hosts, before Lovejoy replaced Williams two years in.
Lovejoy, who hosted it through until 2007 before being succeeded by Andy Goldstein, and later Max Rushden, would regularly cause havoc in one of the many segments he came up with.
Soccer AM was the first live show on Sky to have to go on a broadcast delay due to lewd references and swearing. What started as a three-second delay soon became ten seconds.
Sky Sports’ schedule has been subject to drastic change in recent years, with shake-ups to their presenters or shows not uncommon.
