I’ve been listening to a lot of Elvis Costello lately for some reason and I stumbled across this absolute gem earlier.

Your friend and mine, James Richardson, with the aforementioned English songsmith during the broadcast of a Genoa derby.

As well as Elvis proving he knew a thing or two about early 90s Serie A (the moment when football reached its zenith obviously), it allowed Jimbo to give a Sud Curva masterclass in song title puns. What a pro.

From the front page of today’s Irish Examiner: Bertie Ahern watches the Arsenal-Man U game in 3D in Fagan’s. Insert your own joke.

Emmet Ryan of Action81 was there for us – you can check out his report there, including the former Toiseach’s opinion.

I saw this in the latest episode last night and thought of you guys.

And here’s some good dancing from my favourite character in the show.

Seinfeld, they said, was a show about nothing. However, it covered everything – the minutae of life, from bakery line etiquette to favourite t-shirts to soup. But one thread that ran right through its nine seasons was sport.

Jerry Seinfeld himself is a sports fan, of course, a New Yorker whose allegiance is firmly with the Mets while co-creator and executive producer Larry David is a Yankees man. So is George Costanza, of course, who is more or less based on the Curb Your Enthusiasm star.

They say there’s a Superman reference in every episode – either verbal or visual – but there’s twice as many sports allusions.

Joe Sports Guy has vowed to chronicle every sporting reference in the show, starting with baseball. And because I like making lists as much as the next man, here’s my top three.

3. Kramer, becomes the Tour’s Oldest Tennis Ball Boy
The Lip Reader, Season Five
Boy: Hey pops, isn’t there a better way to spend your twilight years?
Kramer: I may be old, but I’m spry.
Boy: The try-out lasts three-and-a-half to four hours; are you up for it?
Kramer: Oh, I’ll be up for it, punk.

Kramer lands a ball-boy job at the US Open through Jerry’s new deaf girlfriend who is a linesperson at Flushing Meadow. Predictably, Kramer’s new career is short-lived, as he steams into Monica Seles during warm-ups and costs her a shot at the title.

George gets a job with the Yankees
The Opposite, Season 5
Jerry: Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle … Costanza?!

This, like so many plot-lines is born in the coffee shop; there George realized that every instinct he’d ever had was ultimately proved wrong. “Goodbye, tuna on toast. Hello, chicken salad on rye … UNTOASTED!”

He eventually finds himself interviewing for a job in the House That Babe Built – though a beautiful woman he managed to pull. He admits to a litany of previous failings in the workplace (being fired for having sex in his office with the cleaning woman, etc). He gets the job.

1. Keith Hernandez and ‘The Second Spitter’
The Boyfriend, Season 3
Newman.: Wow, it was McDowell.
Jerry: But why? Why McDowell?
Kramer: Well, maybe because we were sitting in the right field stands cursing at him in the bullpen all game.
Newman: He must have caught a glimpse of us when I poured that beer on his head.

This programme – shown on this side of the Atlantic as a two-parter – is one of the most memorable episodes, and an inspired send-up of Oliver Stone’s JFK film. Jerry debunks the theory that baseball star Hernandez once spit on both Kramer and Newman (played by Wayne Knight who also starred in JFK, and Basic Instinct incidentally.

I reserve the right to change and add to that list; there’s so many to go through. Anyone else have some favourites?

“Ireland did not win the World Cup! No football team won this tournament, Bill.

[Raising voice to talk over three other pundits now wearing comedy green hats with clapping hands on the peak] This so-called football tournament was dragged into the Stygian darkness of Satan’s anti-football by our representitives.

“I’m not saying Trapattoni has done a bad job but we should be ashamed of ourselves for celebrating this – the final nail in the coffin of this beautifaul sport.

“Real football people will bloody well know how I feel. Real fooball people. [while he jabs a pen at Kenny Cunningham]

“The faceless corporate war mongerers who ran this bloody circus are laughing all the way to the bank. Bread and fucking circuses, eh Gilesey?

[throws the pen at Ronnie Whelan’s head] “How dare they serve up a binary, industrial, mechanical, art-less scoreline. 1-0? 1-0?! Football is art, music, theatre on, this, our biggest stage. Argentina played football wrapped in silk. Trap sent our poor lads out to play in dirty cotton.

This performance [aggressively punching quotation marks in the air] is an Orwellian nightmare from which I am yet to wake. Big Brother is watching. Big bollixing Brother. Big pricking, bollixing Brother.

“Well no. No! Two and two – Gilesy will tell ye too, he went to Synge St – two and two is four. This World Cup has disgraced the nation.

“Hyperbole? Ah Bill, jaysus. We’re a fucking laughing stock, Bill.”

I had a had a chat with Ireland legend Damien Duff during the last international break about Subbutteo, Florence and the Machine and, I’m not ashamed to say, one of my favourite TV shows, Entourage.

The HBO sitcom – which revolves around a young film actor and his friends in Hollywood – is peppered every year with plenty of celebrity cameos and the world of sport (look out for LeBron in the season finale later this year) is always well represented.

So here, in case the Duffer is browsing his favourite blog in a Dublin hotel today ahead of the Italy game on Saturday, is my top five sports star walk-ons on Entourage.

Phil Mickelson: Lefty turns up in a four ball with a studio exec and Ari. He’s not as wooden as you might expect. I can’t find the footage but there’s a pic above.

Michael Phelps: here’s the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it debut on the show. The Irish Examiner deputy sports editor told me that the crew just happened to bump into the Olympic hero in New York and he was more than keen to try his hand at acting.