Host Out Of Focus - Famous Colin Murray

Famous Colin Murray will once again be in town to host the Chester FC Awards Dinner this Saturday, following a well-recieved debut at last year's event.

Murray has been asked to miss the Champions League final in order to confirm to a room full of besuited Chester fans that he does indeed still talk to CFC Media Screwdriver Jeff Banks.

"I'm gonna see if he wants to camp in my back yard the night before," chatters Murray enthusiast Banks.  "We can tell ghost stories and stay up late.  It'll be boss!"

Murray is best known for having hosted the first season of late night panel show Street Cred Sudoku on UKTV Gold 2, which is something that actually happened.  Murray's shock departure on the eve of the second series is widely accepted to be the moment that the show jumped the shark, Andy Goldstein taking the reins and guiding the show towards its inevitable cancellation.

"It was an exciting period for TV," reminisces telly expert Edna Antfarm.  "There aren't enough panel shows around, so basing one around an inexplicably popular puzzle game was genius.  Of course, there was the twist that the show then had nothing at all to do with Sudoku, but that just added to the mystery of the whole thing.  It's missed as a show and as a concept."

Colin is also notable for being host of radio-based panel game Fighting Talk - something about which he is still actively excited.

"We're constantly improving and I'd like to take this opportunity to announce that The Jestrian will definitely be joining us on the next season of the show," says Murray, who will look like a proper douchebag if he doesn't follow through on that invitation now.

Murray's love affair with the club started at the inception of Chester FC and the Northern Irish presenterman earned rave reviews when he donated £2,000 to the club on the provision that Perry Groves and Pat Nevin be named as unused subs at each home game.  Far from being a charitable practical joke, however, Murray now admits that this was something altogether more sinister.

"Perry cornered me one day after our radio show," recounts a visibly shaken Murray. 

"He said that if I didn't help him to play professional football again, he'd Monster Munch me in the Super Bass and Graeme Hick me down the Gryll Bears.  Something like that anyway.  I didn't really understand him, but it sounded like a threat, so I did what I could.  I paid the money, then posed on Devachat as a series of dullards commenting how funny it'd be if Neil Young put him on the bench one time.  If we're being honest, he wouldn't have done any less of a job than Jamie Rainford, would he?"

And Murray's Chester connection runs deeper still.  As host of Match of the Day 2, he regularly sits opposite former Chester right back Lee Dixon and watches on in amusement as Dixon rocks back and forth in his seat wishing that just once he'd be allowed to do the Saturday edition of Match of the Day.

"I don't think Dixie likes the hilarious puns I read out at the start of the show," muses Murray.

Following last year's fiasco when Murray put questions to Michael Wilde and George Horan only for them to dizzily grunt one word answers at him whilst facing away from the microphone, it is thought that this year Murray will concentrate on manager Neil Young, who talks for so long that he hasn't actually finished his post-match chat from the Marine game yet.

Colin Murray is available from all good record stores.