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Hello and welcome to Marshall Matters with me, Winston Marshall. Today I'm joined by British comedy legends David Bediel.

David has been a stalwart of British comedy since I was a

little boy. He's a novelist, stand-up comedian, documentarian, television presenter, and most

importantly of all, as far as I'm concerned, the man behind the most beautiful, subtle and moving song

of the last 25 years, Three Lions Football's Coming Home. His recent book, Jews Don't

Count, was praised by Sarkir Starrma as brilliant and he's just wrapped up his stand-up tour,

Trolls, not the Dolls, which I was lucky enough to see at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London.

David, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you. That's a very nice intro. I'm going to have to

qualify just one thing that you said in it, which is, I mean, I'm certainly not going to qualify

what you said about Three Lions, but I am not the man responsible. I am the man responsible with

Frank Skinner and Ian Brody for that song. Of course. It was very much a co-written song. But that's a lovely thing to say about it.

You've done more of that song than I could ever have dreamed to have done

or anything I've done in music.

To have a song that is sung by the entire nation every two years.

I mean, it unifies the nation, completely beloved by everyone. Is that an overwhelming thing for you?

It's lovely. I'm going to qualify that as well because it unifies England. It's much hated in

Scotland and a bit in Wales, although I think they're slightly more tolerant of it in Wales.

It is beautiful, yeah. One of the things about Three Lions, I think, which is important to me is I think it's a really, really unusual example of an absolutely grassroots phenomenon.

In that, when we first released it in 1996, it was kind of weird in a way because we were left field writers of that song in the sense that it was given at the height of

Brit pop not not unreasonably to Ian Brody in the Lightning Seeds and he said oh I think

everybody on Frank Skinner should write the lyrics and then we because they're the kind of

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