Jose Mourinho brought to book in his ‘last interview’ (apart from all the others)

View from the Sofa: Clare Balding Show, BT Sport

(BT Sport)

It’s a good job Jose Mourinho left Chelsea the very day that Clare Balding had him as a guest on the first episode of the second series of her eponymous show. Because then the channel could bill it as “Mourinho’s last interview”. And we could gloss over the utter vacuousness of the entire show.

The channel was right; it was Mourinho’s last interview, if you don’t count every press conference the former Chelsea manager did after 2 December, when the programme was recorded.

And man, did we learn a lot. Like the fact that when she is star-struck, Balding goes all mother-of-a-three-year-old.

“Do you really? Wow,” she gushed, with a breathy, elongated “wow” when Mourinho admitted he enjoys playing away from home “and the stadium is against me”.

Yes, there was a little insight into Mourinho’s troubles this season, such as when he plaintively said he just wants to “win a match”. This was in response to a question about what makes him happy. Y’see? It was deep as a puddle.

Still, Mourinho was not on the BT Sport couch to open his heart. The reason he was briefly there (he didn’t stay for the whole show) was laid bare around 10 minutes in, with one of Balding’s questions, which began: “You’ve just released a book...” It was one small step away from “remember, shoppers, it’s just a week until Christmas”.

Things got a little more interesting when Steven Gerrard joined the party – and went into detail about the time Mourinho had given him a letter, hand-delivered by John Terry, asking him to join Chelsea.

But, after that brief interlude delving into the murky world of tapping up players, Gerrard swiftly brought us back up to ground level by dropping the bombshell that Jürgen Klopp, the Liverpool manager, delivers “big, big cuddles”.

And in that exchange, Gerrard unwittingly exposed the problem with this programme. It doesn’t know whether it is a Thursday night sports chat show, broadcast on a sports channel, or a fluffy, Friday night light entertainment vehicle for BBC2. Of course, it is both – making it a spork of a show, doing two jobs adequately, but neither well.

There was a segment where Balding had asked famous friends of Gerrard – the comedian John Bishop and Wayne Rooney, the England captain – to supply some questions for the ex-Liverpool midfielder.

So we got to hear the phrase “massive laceration of the penis” – sadly, not uttered in relation to Brendan Rodgers – and we learned that Stevie G watches X Factor, but Mourinho definitely doesn’t.

Then we discovered the real reason why Gerrard had interrupted his busy off-season back home in Liverpool from Los Angeles to be interrogated by Balding.

“Now,” she said, building a little tension. What was she going to ask? The truth about the night that we can’t talk about for fear of legal recriminations? Whether he really does have a tattoo of Rafa Benitez inked on an intimate part of his anatomy? Nope.

Balding continued: “You’ve written a book...”