Richard Sutcliffe: Corden will never be in same league as Baddiel and Skinner

No, not to a time when any England defeat to the Germans was at least honourable. Or even when the main talking points of a major tournament were not how much a ball swerved in the air or whether some plastic horns should be banned.

Instead, the days to hanker after are those when an attempt at a humorous show about football was, well, funny.

Certainly, the couple of James Corden's World Cup Live shows that I had the misfortune of catching on ITV recently were no laughing matter.

With a set and format that are a blatant rip-off of Chris Evans's Nineties show TFI Friday, the latest offering from the omnipresent writer and star of Gavin & Stacey is truly awful. Stilted, lacking in originality and over-reliant on the crowd 'whooping' on cue to create a sense of anticipation, the show is a mess from start to finish.

Only ITV can answer just why it is so bad, though one major flaw has to be the booking of guests who seem to know next to nothing about football, never mind the World Cup. If Corden was not such an awful interviewer, World Cup Live might just be able to get away with this. But he isn't, and it doesn't.

Such dross is enough to leave those of us who ended many a Friday night on the town during the mid-Nineties by rushing back home to watch Fantasy Football League on BBC2 dewy-eyed with nostalgia.

Having started life on Radio Five with Dominik Diamond as presenter, the programme switched to television and into the control of comedians Frank Skinner and David Baddiel.

In a set designed to look like the flat the pair shared at the time, the show saw football personalities and celebrities compete against each other in a fantasy league competition.

Two guests would appear each week to chat about their team, while also enjoying plenty of banter with both the presenters and Angus 'Statto' Loughran, the resident expert on facts who was always clad in dressing gown and pyjamas.

Gradually, regular features such as 'Phoenix From The Flames', whereby Baddiel and Skinner would recreate famous footballing moments, 'A Few Things We've Noticed From Watching Football This Week' and 'Jeff Astle Sings' evolved.

The relaxed and off-beat manner of the show made it a huge hit with football fans, with even the theme tune – a re-working of England's classic 1970 World Cup song 'Back Home' – striking the right note.

Fantasy Football League became so popular that a song likening Jason Lee's haircut to a pineapple became a regular on the country's terraces, whether Nottingham Forest were playing or not.

Other classic moments included guest Matthew Le Tissier putting a Portsmouth fan down with the comment 'I thought this show was about the Premiership' after being heckled, though my personal favourite was the parodies of the Saint & Greavsie show.

This was, let's not forget, a time when Sky Television had only just wrestled the live rights to the top flight from ITV and leaving the channel with the relative scraps that were Football League games.

Baddiel and Skinner, dressed up as Saint & Greavsie, lampooned ITV's new switch of focus by billing clashes such as Southend v Grimsby into a 'must-see' event.

It was cruel, but achingly funny and why Fantasy Football League is so fondly remembered almost 15 years later. Something that will never be said about James Corden and his World Cup Live, which this correspondent can't help but think TFI nearly over.