Perfect match (From Living Northeast)

Perfect match

1:43pm Thursday 18th February 2010 in

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Steve Carroll can’t find a sheepskin coat in sight at the home of football commentator Guy Mowbray.

ODD and nerdy. They are just two of the words Guy Mowbray uses to describe football commentators – and he is one of them... But when the BBC Match of the Day man doesn’t have a microphone in front of his lips, you would be hard-pressed to pick out what he did for a living from his Clifton Moor home, in York.

There’s hardly a football in sight. If it wasn’t for the ever-present sport on the family television, it would need more than David Frost to discover who lived in a home like this.

And don’t even ask about John Motson and his famous sheepskin coats.

You have to pop up to Guy’s office, a converted bedroom, to find any trace of his famous occupation. Buried with the computer games, or placed away in the cupboard, are the football annuals, DVDs and videos so essential to a man of his trade. Everywhere else, it’s almost a football-free zone.

“I never switch off,” says Guy. “It’s a 24-hour affair.

We have sports news or football, or some live sport will be on the television at every single point. But it’s football, it’s not really a proper job and, on the other hand, I don’t see the need to trumpet it everywhere.”

Guy and wife Steph moved into their four-bedroomed detached house eight years ago. Since then, their daughter Holly, now three, has come along and toys dominate their immaculately tidy home.

The location is handy for Steph, who works nearby, and it’s comfortable for Guy, who spends most of his time when he’s not at matches working from his spacious kitchen.

Not that Guy has had anything to do with the clean colours and the modern surroundings. “Colour is Steph’s department,” he says. “She likes everything to be absolutely tidy and moves things every day so that I don’t know where they are. I honestly have no eye for anything whatsoever.

“When we have house-hunted in the past, and when we will do in the future, I will go in and I can’t picture it unless it is as I want it whereas Steph can see a blank canvas and do something with it.

“I can’t do it. I’m just incapable – I look at it and either like it or don’t like it – but I am looking at their decor, not what ours would be so I leave everything house-wise to Steph because she is just fantastic with that.

“I just let her decorate. I don’t get involved in any of that. I have an office upstairs where it all is. I have got my videos and DVDs and research things and books.

“The cupboards are absolutely full of books. Everything is in there. But I don’t actually like working in there all too much. I like the company of people and I like going into an office.”

The kitchen is the centre of the house. It was originally two rooms, a kitchen and dining room, but, when Holly was born, it was opened up – essentially so they could keep an eye on her.

Instead, it’s become the space in which they spend most time.

Guy might have his office, but it is actually at the kitchen table where those hours of study – cramming statistics, trends and the snippets vital for a stint in the commentary box – takes place.

“I’d like a ground-floor office instead of sitting up in a bedroom,” he said. “It’s why I tend to do a lot sitting at the kitchen table. It’s the centre of the house – living room on an evening. I never go there apart from on an evening.

“The kitchen was originally a kitchen and dining room.

At the same time we had the conservatory put up, we had a wall knocked down. We totally remodelled the kitchen.

“That’s when we had our little girl, Holly. We wanted everything open. We didn’t want lots of separate little rooms. We wanted to see her and know what she was up to when she started moving around.

“When we had a kitchen and dining room – I always wanted that – to have it separate, but we never used it.

Since that came about we use the kitchen every day.”

Then there’s the conservatory. It’s enormous.

“It’s slightly bigger than we planned but now we’re glad it is this big. In the summer, we are always in there.

I was dead against it and Steph eventually wore me down because I love the garden but, in actual fact, I don’t know what we would do without it now.”

Guy has the best of both worlds. He thoroughly enjoys his work, and he can do it in relaxing surroundings.

A winner twice over, then.

“I like my house,” he declares. “I like to think it’s a comfortable house. It’s somewhere where people can come in and feel at home. Most of my family and friends who come in always seem to do that.”

■Guy Mowbray is currently presenting Late Kick Off every Monday evening on BBC1. Check local listings for further details.