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David Coleman ‘didn’t find Private Eye’s Colemanballs funny’

By William Turvill

The son of David Coleman has revealed the BBC Sport commentator didn’t like the Private Eye (picture: Reuters) column named after him.

The magazine’s long-running “Colemanballs” feature documents the errors of commentators in each fortnightly edition.

But Coleman, who died last year aged 87, “didn’t like people getting the credit for taking the mickey and running people down”, his son has told the Radio Times.

According to the Telegraph, Mike Coleman, the second youngest of his children, said: “He didn’t find Colemanballs funny…

“It was the same with Mike Yarwood doing impressions of him. He didn’t really get the humour of it, but I think deep down he took it as an honour that he was being mimicked.”

Meanwhile, fellow veteran commentator John Motson said: “What irritated David was that he used to get blamed for things he’d never said.

“Colemanballs attributed other commentator’s gaffes to him.”

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