It’s as good a time as ever to plonk yourself in front of the TV to catch up on your favourite shows.
If you like you’re football, then you’ll love something that ITV screened earlier this week as legendary manager Harry Redknapp got together a group of ex-England internationals to play a match against some former Germany internationals.
Harry’s Heroes: Euro Having a Laugh sees the legendary manager try and knock the ex-pros into shape for the match against the old foes.
Of course, the likes of Ray Parlour, Paul Merson, David Seaman and Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock are not professionals any more and some find it difficult to stick to their healthy routines, which made for some hilarious telly.
John Barnes was working as ‘Arry’s assistant and has admitted that filming for the show may not have been primarily about the football.
He told Bonus Code Bets: “It was just like being on holiday with all the lads and wasn’t really much to do with football!”
However, the show wasn’t all about the ex-pros mucking about, a number of serious themes were touched on too.
Arsenal legend Paul Merson was forced to leave early during last year’s first series as he struggled to get on top of his problems with addiction.
This series showed Merse in recovery and the improvement he made in series two was remarkable. He was selected to be captain for the match against Germany having shone in all of England’s warm-up games.
However, Ruddock was forced to withdraw from the tour to have a pacemaker fitted in and the show touched on his health problems regarding his heart.
And Barnes believes that viewers fell in love with the likes of Merse and Razor as the show revealed them to be Normal Human Beings.
He added: “Because of the popularity of the show with people really falling in love with the characters and seeing that they’re normal human beings, like Paul Merson, and Neil Ruddock had some real empathy with the most people, not, not necessarily just footballers.”
Former Aston Villa star Lee Hendrie was also part of the squad and he opened up on his issues surrounding his mental health in a particularly poignant scene where he admitted to trying to take his own life.
And speaking to talkSPORT during Mental Health Awareness Week, Hendrie revealed he’s still dealing with depression.
He told Wednesday’s Sports Breakfast show: “Sometimes when you feel like you do in these situations and people give you the backlash of, ‘oh well, he’s only depressed’ – it’s not the case.
“There are a lot of people in these situations where they need to get out of because I still struggle at times on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis where I won’t get out of bed and stuff like that.
“It’s just like where do you turn? I struggle to speak to my wife about it because I feel like I’m a burden on her.
“But now she understands what I go through and the times that I need to talk and get the situation out because if you hide things under the carpet it’s always going to come back out and bite you.”
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