The Rams goes Nuts!

You may be aware from our previous entry that unlike Arsenal and Liverpool, The Rams did not end the season empty handed after scooping the Nuts Football Awards Supporters of the Season. The first we heard was from an email to the Ramspace Editor, Nuts were coming to Pride Park with some "Nuts girls", could we find some willing volunteers for a bit of filming? The premise as summarized by the editor was "basically he wants the two girls to be in the truck and they will give (the depressed) Derby fans a cup of tea, a biscuit and talk about the season." Needless to say, we managed to find a couple of volunteers...

Never let it be said that Ramspace are snobbish because we do bits for The Observer and Times Online. The gist of what Nuts wanted to do is stated in the intro but using a camper van rather than the elaborate media truck we anticipated. In practice it was somewhere between Carry on Camping and Blur's Country House video.

The theme of "tea and sympathy" was that the girls gave us a cup of tea then asked about the season. On receiving his cup of tea, a mate quipped "that's the only cup we'll be getting this season" to much laughter. It was a brief insight into the process to see that this needed three takes - by which time we could have also done with some canned laughter.

"Girls in vests, in a camper van, with his reputation?"

Next it was on to the Awards ceremony  at Cafe de Paris off Leicester Square. It wasn't exactly a galaxy of stars but in attendance were: Steve Claridge, Dave Beasant, Warren Barton, Chris Kamara, Mark Bright, stacks of models and what appeared to be a couple of tables of young London footballers.

The nicest bloke by far was Kevin Day who works on Match of The Day 2. He chatted to us for quite a while and had previously met one of our lads when MOTD2 filmed the Rams at Fulham.

Day was presenting the Bargain of the Year Award (nominees: Phil Jageilka, Ken Jones, Elano and winner Roque Santa Cruz) and made comment of the night by saying how strange it was to be reading a list of £5m-£6m players as "bargains" when clubs were going out of business for the sake of a hundred grand. It was a timely reminder that life exists outside the Premier League and completely out of kilter with the frivolous style of the ceremony.

When our moment came, we were called to collect the award from an ex-Big Brother contestant, Chanelle.

The host Dave Berry pointed the microphone to our man and asked something along the lines of "you're the worst team in Premier League history...etc...now your getting an award from  Chanelle" to which we responded with a quip like "it gets worse, an award from another loser" (the exact transcript of this exchange is in the brain cells destroyed by complimentary ice buckets of Champers, WKD and beer with cocktails on the side). We were soon off the stage with our contribution edited out for the silver screen.

"Ramspace take to the stage watched by literally hundreds of TV viewers"

It was then onto the aftershow and a chat with a few of the ex-footballers present, all of who it has to be said were up for a chat and some banter. In keeping with The Times style, here's a smug shots special...

One of the briefest chats of the evening was with ex- Rams full back Warren Barton. After an opening gambit of "things have been going downhill ever since we signed you" I suppose it's not surprising. At least we didn't ask him for a lift home in his limo.

Dave Beasant, thoroughly nice bloke  who didn't mention Forest once.

Once we had scooped the award, the girls were queueing up to be see with us...ok, every five minutes one the lads would shout "quick, it's Naomi, 23 from Doncaster, grab the camera"

"And finally, the award for liggers of the year goes to..." I can count six bottles in this photo, three of which are champagne.