Raymond Willikins is suffering a serious memory problem it seems.

By our man at the bar

Ex-England football starlet Ray Willikins looks likely to lose his job at Sky Sports after it was revealed that he is suffering from catastrophic memory loss.

This revelation came as he was found guilty of driving way way over the limit for the second time.  With the second charge he denied that he had been drinking enough to put him over the limit.  Yet clearly he had been.  

Of course Mr Willikins was not lying – no one would ever accuse a Chelsea man of that.  So the fact that he was already banned from driving must have slipped his mind, just as did the fact that he had had more than two little glasses of wine..

It is quite bizarre that no one at Sky Sports (producers and fellow pun-dits) ever noticed this drastic loss of memory while he was broadcasting.

This time round for his second offence he was found “slumped over his steering wheel” which is why I suppose he said he didn’t do it. He couldn’t remember how he got there.

So here we are, he was disqualified for two years in March and fined £2,000.  Now he has lost his licence for another three years, has to pay £4000 and has a12-month community order.  Whether he will remember the community order or where he has to go or what he has to do is open to debate.

Willikins is quoted in the press as saying that police procedures were a “fucking joke” but I think here he was describing Sky Sports attitude towards the accuracy of referee decisions – a typical bit of confusion for someone with profound memory loss.

So what do we do for memory loss?   Well the first thing is to avoid reading the papers, because as our friend the Doctor pointed out in the last piece, that only makes matters worse.  Indeed I have heard of cases where reading a paper can drive people to drink.  That’s why so many journalists drink.

But did the newspapers question exactly what Sky Sports were doing during this period of forgetfulness and unremembered drinking?  No they did not.  But they told us that he was dressed in a three-piece navy blue suit.  I rest my case.

Hero of the case was PC Skidmore, who we might guess does not like Sky Sports much.  “There was a strong smell of intoxicating liquor in the vehicle and around him,” he said speaking of the TV station studio.  As for the driving case,  “When he got out of the vehicle, he couldn’t stand up properly. He had to lean against the car.”

Willikins has always been somewhat forgetable, for he apparently has 84 identical caps in his house.  However he was not wearing any when he was handcuffed.

One particularly interesting part of the case involved the playing of the CCTV footage in which Mr Willikins under arrest said, “Fucking hell, I can’t even phone my missus. This is a fucking joke.  I’m not going to bash up anybody … this is ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.”

This shows that much of Mr Willikins mental faculty is still there since he is clearly able to remember events but confuses one with another.  Clearly during the CCTV clip he was contemplating Sky Sports coverage of football.  If only he had been focussed enough to describe the station in this way on air.

Willikins, who played for Chelsea, Manchester United, Milan and Queens Park Rangers and was awarded an MBE in 1993 for services to football, declined to comment as he left court.

So there we are.  Disqualified for two years in March and fined £2,000 after a breath test showed he was nearly four times the legal limit.  This time he got a 12-month community order, £4,000 in costs and another three years without a licence.  Sadly the District Judge did not see fit to order him to attend either a psychological clinic for memory loss or a drinking clinic, which would have been the best thing for him.