CHANNEL Five’s new Football League highlights programme is quite something.

I haven’t been that confused in front of my television set since I tuned in mid-series to Twin Peaks.

In what can only be described as a heady mix of Jeremy Kyle meets Top Gear, presenters George Riley and Kelly Cates did their best to keep the banter up in the first programme of the series. I don’t blame them.

The unstructured format, the forced crowd participation, the awful sound and 1970s league tables ripped straight out of the pages of Shoot magazine – yep, this was the worst TV idea since someone instructed Keith Chegwin to drop his pants in the jungle.

Channel Five need to take an axe to the whole thing, stop hopping from division to division for highlights, and find some guests a little more ‘special’ than Martin Allen and Adam Virgo.

Don’t get me wrong, old ‘Mad Dog’ Allen is a character – jumping in rivers, table tennis. Classic bantz, as I think the kids say nowadays.

But at 10pm on a Saturday night I want some insight, not a League Two manager still steaming from the fact his team were beaten at Leyton Orient and trotting out clichés that would make Sammy Lee blush.

Flicking over to Match of the Day was like entering a completely different world. The verbal banter between Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer and Danny Murphy sounded like they had been scripted by Galton and Simpson in comparison.

The Beeb’s biggest error with the Football League highlights was that they scheduled it at a time when only security guards and insomniacs could appreciate.

Channel Five have got the right slot, 9pm, two decent operators in Riley and Cates, and a decent set of commentators at first glance. It’s just that they got every single other thing so horribly wrong.

They have the rights for the next three years, so they have plenty of time to put things right. I’d start by getting all the audience members out of camera shot – and if you absolutely ‘have’ to speak to one of them, at least make sure there is a microphone on him/her.

I’m sick to death of this obsession with feedback. Mitchell and Webb once did a brilliant sketch about a news channel demanding people’s opinions on an ongoing story, and Football League Tonight very quickly descended to the same degree of parody.