BEFORE I sat down to the ratings phenomenon that is ITV's Footballer's Wives my only previous insight into the life of a footballer's wife was seeing them on Match of the Day sat in the executive box swathed in expensive fur and gazing mournfully around the stadium in every direction except the pitch.

Needless to say the fiction is infinitely more exciting than the reality.

The third series opens at a funeral of somebody called Chardonnay, the assembled mourners are more Corleones than Keegans and our heroine, Tanya, a kind of weather-beaten Denise Van Outen, reads a ludicrous tribute to the deceased that is actually the chorus from Robbie Williams' Angel.

Presumably the only thing keeping the actors from laughing are concrete-thick layers of make-up encasing their faces.

After 20 minutes we get the first indication that this was indeed a programme centred around football with a few brief words between a fat Brian Clough-type character called Frank and ex- Eldorado rent-a-baddie Jesse Birdsall about "missing out on Europe" and "phone calls from Juve"

The action switches to a luxurious villa in Thailand and we can be forgiven for thinking we've died and woken up in a 1980's Duran Duran video with every soft focus shot teeming with black ash furniture and tiger skin bedspreads.

We are introduced to Conrad and Amber, a couple blatantly based on Posh and Becks but without the charisma and social conscience, engaging in some rather dubious bedroom action.

Thus we are treated to an interlude of 70s soft porn with cheesy music, satin sheets and a piece of equipment that Amber obviously picked up at an Anne Summers party back home. Indeed, all that was missing was a bloke with tight shorts and a bushy moustache turning up at the front door with a tool box to clean the pool.

It seems that Conrad, when he isn't parading his skinny frame and bouffant hairdo on a catwalk, is embroiled in dodgy dealings with Chinese Triads and Thai ladyboys not to mention his bizarre agent complete with Panama hat and fat cigar and clearly reading from Eric Hall's Monster, Monster bible of football parasitism.

Back home the club captain, someone I vaguely recognise from Hollyoakes is having a spot of trouble with his Mum, Gillian Taylforth who seems to be steadily working her way through the dressing room and has now reached management level with Webbsy the Gaffer' who, incidentally, is the only character to step foot on a football pitch showing a new recruit around a ground that looks suspiciously like Stamford Bridge.

The show culminates in a star-studded bash at Conrad and Amber's to celebrate his return to England and who should turn up amongst all the Ferraris and Gucci suits, but Des Lynam, an old smoothie with a tache, sans tool box but he did seem to spend a worrying amount of time around the pool.

Where is the football in all this? The clichs; the boy done good'; and the padded anoraks with the initials on? It might as well be called Hairdressers Wives.

Mind you, judging by how hard it seems to be for most professional players to kick a ball about convincingly week-in-week-out, not having to watch D List soap stars attempting to recreate Maradonna's 1986 World Cup wonder goal is probably a blessing in disguise Footballers Wives is tabloid football rumour meets soap opera, Heat Magazine with sex and after an hour and a half I still don't know the name of the team.

Will I be watching again next week? Might be.