SIDELINE CUT: Actor James Cordon's warning about the distractions at the heart of sport and, in particular, the England football team rang true, writes KEITH DUGGAN

THE LOOK on Fabio Capello’s face said it all. He was smiling all right but the expression was uncomfortable. If he had yet to be convinced of the eccentricity of the English nation, by whom he has been entrusted with delivering a World Cup, he was left in no doubt after Sunday night.

BBC’s Sports Relief, where the various stars and celebrities of the English sports scene do their bit for charity, manages to illustrate the best and worst of the relationship between the state broadcaster and the sports that dominate English minds and English hearts. Central to yesterday week’s broadcast was the appearance of “Smithy”, actor James Cordon’s character from the Gavin and Stacey show.

If you haven't come across Smithy, he plays the classic middle Englander: west London, regulation jeans, trainers and zippee, mildly overweight, preoccupied with takeaway food, football and – in what marked his memorable entrance to the television show – the New Order song World in Motion, which was Eng-er-land's official World Cup song for Italia '90.

Over the past year, Cordon has managed to do the impossible, which is persuade sports stars that it is okay to loosen up and even lose face on television; that it is okay to laugh at themselves. It is almost forgotten now that there was a time when sports stars, from WG Grace to Joe DiMaggio through to Muhammad Ali and John McEnroe, were almost as celebrated for what they said as what they achieved. When you had someone like George Best, who had a cutting tongue to complement the unfathomable skills and famous good looks, his observations on his own life, whether made in sobriety or not, were so true and accurate and devastatingly quick-witted that he became his own chief critic.

Best, incidentally, delivered what remains the most subtle and cruellest quip on modern football when a Sky television presenter innocently asked him if David Beckham – then in the full glory of his fame and game – was a better player than Rodney Marsh.

“He probably is,” Best said, appearing to give the question serious consideration. “But Rodney is 56 years old now.”

Mike Tyson, for all his ills and disgraces, possessed something of the same helpless tendency towards introspection and occasional flashes of wit, but the boxer was such a damaged and destructive person that it was impossible to know when he was speaking seriously and when he was trying to shock. But he talked. Couldn’t stop talking.

It is hard to pinpoint when the idea that self-expression as something dangerous caught hold in sport but it coincided with the injection of unprecedented wage packets, the proliferation of agents, the vogue for “media training” and the high brick walls behind which athletes secluded themselves in McMansions, dwellings which people are occasionally granted fleeting access through television shows like Cribs and which turn out to be uniformly vast, expensively and theme-decorated, landscaped and almost always depressing.

This is a time when sports stars either reveal absolutely nothing about themselves – through carefully prepared and incredibly tedious rehearsed answers – or absolutely everything, as has happened with Tiger Woods.

Smithy first brushed shoulders with England’s mega-stars for a Comic Relief sketch last year when he played an average Joe Soap who stumbled into an England meeting and ended up giving Beckham, Ashley Cole, John Terry, etc, an inspirational speech which culminated in his quoting the World In Motion lyrics verbatim. The sketch was hugely popular and Cordon found that other luminaries of the sports world – Fred Flintoff, Jenson Button, even the perpetually glum Andy Murray were willing to volunteer themselves for laughs at their own expense.

His training scene with the Manchester United team, who he leads through a dance routine not seen since Jane Fonda’s workout videos were the new sensation, has become a You Tube classic, although Wayne Rooney is the one megastar who seems to care less what he looks like as he is enjoying the absurdity of the moment.

“Smithy’s” rise to fame was recognised during the Sports Relief broadcast yesterday week when they showed a clip filmed at last December’s Sports Personality of the Year awards ceremony. In it, he bounded up on stage to accept a mock coach of the year award from Steve Redgrave.

The idea was that Smithy would deliver a speech scolding various athletes for their shortcomings and that they would play along, looking suitably offended or displeased as the occasion demanded. Most of those involved blew it, of course, with terribly hammy expressions – particularly from Gary Lineker, BBC’s idea of suave and a presenter who is soon going to out-Lynam Des Lynam when it comes to suggestive smirking. On the way up, Smithy stopped to embrace Capello, who took it all in good spirits but looked a little bit uneasy at what was happening around him.

On the stage, Cordon began his routine. Some of the gags were predictable – “What are you now Giggsy? 46, 47? Tell you wot, how you were never picked for England is beyond me . . . ”

But the interesting thing is that once he was up there, once he had their attention, Cordon did not settle for easy laughs. He used the opportunity to deliver what sounded like a plea from the heart and from the public, from one of the millions of geezers who his alter ego is supposed to represent. And as the camera panned around the room, it was clear that what he said was registering.

“All of you! You’ve lost your way. You’ve become muddled somehow. You’ve forgotten what’s important. I don’t see a room full of sporting legends here. I see a room full of people looking for their next sponsorship deal, book deal, TV series.”

And the room wasn’t laughing so hard now.

When he said: “You wouldn’t see WG Grace on Ready, Steady, Cook,” the laughter was quieter. When he said, “Don’t believe in your agents, don’t believe in your publicists,” some faces had stopped smiling entirely.

Whether by accident or design, the sketch and speech deviated from being an in-joke to being something of a lecture or a moral warning. Some of the stars played along until the end – young Tom Daly, the diving lad, for instance, shook his head in mock disbelief.

But there were plenty of others who understood that, through the knowing quips, they had been given a message that held an undeniable truth. And that it had been delivered from a character who will wear the Three Lions around South Africa this summer and fill the Olympic stadium in two years’ time.

It would be fascinating to know what Capello made of it all. The first thing the Italian will probably do is seek to establish just who the hell WG Grace is in case there exists a combative central midfielder with whom he is unacquainted. But Smithy’s speech surely echoed Capello’s own beliefs about the distractions at the heart of sport and, in particular, the England football team. It could be said the England boys were, as Just William might say, good eggs for sending themselves up in a Smithy video.

But whatever success English sports stars achieve, winning the World Cup is a national obsession. And there is a danger, surely, in larking around for the cameras, in sucking up to a funny man and in showing you can laugh at yourself. The trouble is that it boils down to another distraction. And unless Rio and company can triumph in South Africa this summer, then the joke falls flat.

Maybe that is why Capello alone looked perturbed as Smithy told it like it was, as only he could.

“All of you! You’ve lost your way. You’ve become muddled somehow. You’ve forgotten what’s important. I don’t see a room full of sporting legends here. I see a room full of people looking for their next sponsorship deal, book deal, TV series.