Watch the awkward moment Sir Alex Ferguson gatecrashes Rio Ferdinand and Michael Carrick podcast recording - before legendary Man United boss makes firm demand to former stars
Ferdinand posted footage of him in conversation with his ex-Man United team-mate Michael Carrick, who has since embarked on a career in management.
The clip showed the pair mid discussion, before Ferguson appeared in the background of the restaurant where they had set up to record.
'What's this,' Ferguson said upon seeing his former stars and the set-up to record the podcast, which is also part of Ferdinand's YouTube channel.
Ferdinand and Carrick both immediately respond 'alright boss', before Ferguson quickly issues a demand to the duo.
'I'm not doing this podcast,' Ferguson responds.
When the Boss (Sir Alex) walks in & interrupts your recording… wait till the end when his phone rings 😂
Even after 12 years, we still can't find the courage to tell him off!!
Rio Meets Michael Carrick 👌🏽 pic.twitter.com/Z9NNS0CP8l
— Rio Ferdinand (@rioferdy5) July 21, 2025
Ferdinand and Carrick were quick to reassure the 83-year-old, who has spoken infrequently since retiring in 2013, that the cameras were not there for him.
'No, no, no. We're going to talk after. You go and get a coffee, boss,' Ferdinand said.
'No, we're just finishing now,' Carrick adds, with Ferguson replying 'Oh, you're just finishing?'
Carrick replied: 'Yeah, don't worry, this is not for you.'
The pair continued to reassure the 13-time Premier League winning boss, with Ferdinand saying 'We're going to get a bit of food with you after. You've not dressed for the camera, boss, have you? You've not dressed up for the cameras.'
'Have a quick coffee, boss, and we'll be with you in a sec,' Carrick continued. 'Did you think this was for you?
Ferguson offered a cheeky comment two his former Man United stars as he walked away to find a seat.
'I'll go sit over here, I just want to listen to the nonsense that you talk,' Ferguson said.
Ferguson would ultimately interrupt the podcast recording again, with Ferdinand's clip revealing that five minutes later the former manager's phone loudly rang as they continued to record.
'It's fine, it's the gaffer, we've just got to get on with it,' Ferdinand declares when Carrick asks whether they need to record the section of the podcast again.
Carrick and Ferdinand's reverence to Ferguson comes with the pair having won five and six Premier League titles respectively under his management at Man United.
The pair were part of Man United's 2008 Champions League winning side, as well claiming two League Cups under his management.
Ferguson has also been known to have passed on advice to his former players who have moved into management, with may have been a topic broached during their subsequent meal.
Carrick had served as manager of Middlesbrough from October 2022 until his sacking back in June.
He had guided the club to the Championship play-offs in his first campaign but suffered defeat in the semi-finals, before eighth and 10th place finished in his next two seasons in charge.
Ferdinand's podcast with Carrick had included a discussion about Ferguson's impact on his career, as well as his time as a coach at Man United under Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjær.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
27 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘Robin Williams said: 'I'll buy the club!'': how The Comic Strip set the UK comedy scene ablaze
It was the moment comedy broke with sexism – yet it happened in a strip club. It was a fervour of free creative expression – yet it retained a commercial, careerist edge. It was one of the longest-running and most successful brands in UK comedy history – which few people could now recognise. At the Edinburgh fringe this summer, The Comic Strip Presents … will be memorialised in a series of film screenings and Q&As with its creator and prime mover Peter Richardson. Richardson was the impresario behind the legendary comedy club The Comic Strip, which opened in 1980. When he and his star performers – Rik Mayall, Alexei Sayle, French and Saunders among them – created Channel 4's The Comic Strip Presents … a couple of years later, he could legitimately claim to be the man who brought alternative comedy to television. This being a celebration of an iconic moment in UK comedy history, one might assume Edinburgh's Usher Hall or the 750-seat Pleasance Grand has been set aside to host. But one might assume wrong. 'When I started [showing these films] about a year ago,' Richardson tells me, 'we didn't have the money to advertise them. So we'd arrive at theatres that had about 30 people who had somehow read our minds that we were going to be there. And 30 people in a 300-seat cinema can be hard work.' The Comic Strip Presents … ran for three series on Channel 4 from 1982-1988, then it moved to the BBC in the early 90s before making a return to Channel 4 for one-off specials, the most recent in 2016. But it's not a big name in comedy – far less so than, for example, The Young Ones, the BBC sitcom starring some of the same talents and broadcast at the same time. 'It wasn't good television,' admits Richardson, 'because it wasn't repetitive, and television is about repeating a formula and people getting to know it well.' And was it even comedy? One of the show's stars, Mayall, argued that it shouldn't have been called The Comic Strip, and that 'Interesting Films' might have been a better fit. In fact, the series was – like Inside No 9 more recently – a tonally varying anthology show, a suite of standalone films united only by sensibility, and by the performers bringing them to the screen. 'I told Channel 4,' says Richardson, ''These performers are so good they don't need to be stuck playing one-dimensional characters. They can play all sorts. One week they can be a heavy metal band, the next week they can be The Famous Five.' You could call it bad television, because you're not seeing more of the same. But as it's gone on, it's become a collection of very memorable one-off moments and that's what people now remember.' The performers also included Adrian Edmondson, Nigel Planer and Richardson himself, with a rotating supporting cast that included Keith Allen, Robbie Coltrane and more. At the time, they were setting the UK comedy scene ablaze. That all started at the Comedy Store, a strip club and the anarchic HQ of what had recently been called 'alternative comedy'. Richardson's coup was to cherrypick the most exciting voices of that generation, and cart them off to another strip club, a little less anarchic, a few blocks up the road: the Raymond Revuebar. Here, with the financial support of the Rocky Horror Picture Show producer Michael White, he opened The Comic Strip club – a name that seems obvious, although 'the New Depression Club' was, according to Edmondson, a very near miss. For a year from 1980-1981, the Comic Strip was the hippest and hottest comedy night in town. 'The bouncers at Raymond Revuebar had a simple rule of thumb for who was directed where,' Sayle later wrote. 'If they reeked of aftershave they were sent to the strip show; if they smelled of beer they came to us.' Celebs piled in: Bianca Jagger, Dustin Hoffman. Robin Williams came and demanded to perform, to impress his guest, David Bowie. Sayle offered him 15 minutes. Williams said: 'I told [Bowie] I'd do an hour'. Sayle: 'You can't.' Williams: 'I'll buy the club!' Sayle: 'We don't own it. It belongs to a bouffant-haired pornographer.' The buzz even reached the pages of the London Review of Books, whose critic noted, 'within seconds, [Sayle] has the audience agape. Most of them, it seemed, had never been called cunts before.' Then Channel 4 came calling, looking for cutting-edge talent to help launch the new broadcaster on to the country's airwaves. Richardson was given carte blanche. 'They said, 'What do you want to do?' and I said, 'I want to make six films, all different.'' The first, Five Go Mad in Dorset, was transmitted on the station's opening night, and the controversy around its satire of Enid Blyton attitudes gave that event a front-page news fillip. But Five Go Mad will not be celebrated at the fringe this summer, says Richardson. 'Taking the piss out of racism and sexism [in that way] is long gone,' he says. 'It's not a funny issue like it was when we did it in the 80s.' One option might have been to re-edit the episode – a course of action in which Richardson, now 73, has freely indulged as the Edinburgh shows have come together. Not for him a bask in the glory of his youthful success. 'What we've done,' he says, 'is revisited the films and said, '30 years later they need some adjustment.' Because things go faster now.' Western spoof Fistful of Travellers Cheques has been 'cut back a bit'. So too has late-period favourite Four Men in a Car. And a scene has been trimmed from The Strike, the show's faux Hollywood movie making mincemeat of the miners' strike. That one bagged a Golden Rose of Montreux comedy award, and starred Richardson (the only performer to appear in every episode) as Al Pacino playing, er, Arthur Scargill. 'I could do Pacino much better now,' he laughs, 'because I worked with John Sessions on Stella Street.' So now, he says, slipping into a convincing Italian-American accent, 'I can do Al.' Stella Street was another of Richardson's TV hits, undertaken when The Comic Strip Presents, by any measure his life's work, was in abeyance. Even when he was a jobbing comedian, in double act The Outer Limits with Nigel Planer, Richardson was a child of amateur film-makers and a wannabe film-maker himself. With The Comic Strip, he made movies for cinematic release: The Supergrass in 1985, and Eat the Rich two years later. Further TV specials included Red Nose of Courage, telling the tale of John Major's flight from the circus to parliament, and 2011's The Hunt for Tony Blair, imagining the ex-PM on the run having been accused of a series of murders. Both will be screened at the fringe, MC'd by comedian Robin Ince and with special guests including Sayle and Allen. Richardson is modest about the achievement of having brought these 30 years' worth of films to the screen. 'I always thought we were the new Ealing comedies. And [Ealing Studios at its peak] made about 150 films over 20 years, of which about 15 are remembered. So our strike rate isn't too bad. We made some flops, but at least one or two out of each series are really good.' Some, indeed, are carved on this writer's heart – notably Bad News Tour and More Bad News, the show's two-part heavy metal spoof, which predated This Is Spinal Tap and ended up with Edmondson, Mayall and co performing live on stage, under a hail of beer glasses, at the 1986 Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington. Richardson is at peace with the under-appreciation of The Comic Strip Presents, acknowledging that, as a bloody-minded sitcom refusenik way back when, he is the auteur of his own misfortune. He is delighted to be bringing the remastered films to Edinburgh, a city in which, back in the day, he and Planer once toured as a support act to Dexy's Midnight Runners. 'FrontmanKevin Rowland complained,' he says, 'that we didn't do new material at every performance.' Expect no new material at these screenings – but a new experience, perhaps. 'It's a great thing,' says Richardson, 'to show them in the cinema. You don't often get to share comedy television with an audience, and it changes the whole experience: people laughing around you. We've discovered that there is an audience around the country who want to see these films on the big screen and talk about them. It's fantastic that something we created 30 or 40 years ago is still creating laughter. I love it.' The Comic Strip Presents … is at the Fringe is on 2, 3, 8, 9 and 10 August at Just the Tonic, Edinburgh
Reuters
30 minutes ago
- Reuters
Rowland targets multiple titles after Formula E breakthrough
LONDON, July 21 (Reuters) - After 11 seasons that have produced 10 different champions, Formula E's new title-holder Oliver Rowland believes the all-electric series has become less of a lottery and he can break with the past. The Nissan driver, who clinched this year's crown in Berlin on July 13 with two races to spare, told reporters ahead of his home British season finale at London's ExCel this weekend that the championship was fairer now. "In the early years we had this qualifying system which was just mental, where the top six in the championship went out on a track that was one second slower than (for) the next group and then half a second slower than the next group," he said. "You could never pull away in the championship. You would basically get in the lead and then just start last in the next race." In 2021, the last year before the Season Eight change, 18 drivers remained in title contention heading into the final two rounds. Seven of the 11 championships, including the first three, have been decided in the final race. Only Frenchman Jean-Eric Vergne has so far managed to defend a Formula E crown, winning back-to-back titles in 2017-18 and 2018-19. The current qualifying splits drivers into two groups of 11 based on championship position, with odd numbers in one group and evens in the other, before the top four from each advance to knockout duels. "It's kind of much fairer and I think you have the opportunity to see people winning more back-to-back titles," said Rowland, 32. "I think it's a little bit fairer now in terms of not being as much of a lottery. I expect that you will see the same guys towards the front and more repeat winners moving forward," said Rowland. While this year's drivers' crown is won, Nissan are fighting Porsche for the team and manufacturers' titles. Rowland said his ambition for the future, without the pressure of chasing a first title, was to try to cement himself as one of the top drivers in the series. "It's a good motivation to have, to try and win three or four (titles)," he said.
Daily Mail
41 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Double delight for Matildas fans as two of the team's stars drop huge news about their love lives
Matildas fans are cheering this week after the heartwarming news that both Clare Wheeler and Alex Chidiac have experienced happy milestones with the loves of their lives. Wheeler, who plays for Everton in the UK, announced her engagement to partner Jeremy with an Instagram post on Monday. Sharing a photo of herself showing off a sparkling ring alongside Jeremy on an Italian beach, Wheeler captioned the photo with six digits: '17.07.25'. The news sparked a wave of Australian teammates rushing to congratulate the newly engaged couple. Mary Fowler posted: 'Yayyy congrats you cuties.' Hayley Raso wrote: 'No way, this is sooooo beautiful. Congrats you two.' Teagan Micah posted: 'Screaming! So happy for you both.' Meanwhile, Melbourne Victory star Chidiac tied the knot with her long-term partner Erin. The A-League star posted a series of photos from the ceremony at the Sun Theatre in Melbourne's inner-west, which left her Matildas teammates overjoyed. 'Congratulations you two! Looked amazing,' posted Courtney Vine. 'Love it Chids, so happy for you both,' wrote Emily Gielnik. The dual celebrations come at an interesting time for the Matildas after some mixed results so far in 2025. However, new coach Joe Montemurro is confident the team will be ready for the 2026 Asian Cup. 'I've had less time to prepare teams for big tournaments,' Montemurro said earlier in the month. Chidiac, who plays for Melbourne Victory, also received many well wishes from teammates 'The good thing about it, we're going to have a lot of players who are in season [for the next window], so they're going to be at least physically - and from a rhythm perspective - in tune. 'That was the biggest thing over the last 20 days - you saw the players, the rhythms were up, down, everywhere. 'All of them had to be managed physically. 'We won't have that problem [next time]. So at least we can go forward with players that are ready to go.'
