There’s no easy way to say this, but I suppose duty calls. As a radio presenter, Stan Collymore is really rather good. Sorry, but there it is.

I’ve previously tried to avoid reading about the former footballer (Liverpool, Nottingham Forest and so on ). He always seemed rather pleased with himself and not what you’d call a happy role model. There were stories about his relationship with Ulrika Jonsson and incidents of dogging (which I should explain, as we are gentle wireless folk, involves sex in public with strangers). So he’s proved something of a revelation at Talksport .

Among other things, he co-presents an evening show with Danny Kelly (which certainly helps: imagine painting the spare- bedroom ceiling with the help of Michelangelo ). I’m not saying Stan will be doing The World A at One in the near future, but he is amusing, quick-witted , and is interested in serious sporting issues – ticket prices, for example – rather than just the usual banter.

When footballers are so clapped out they can hardly run 10 yards to swear at the referee, they’ve often found steady work in broadcasting, and they’re rarely any good. The best presenters of sports discussion shows have big personalities. They take risks. They have something to say. If professional footballers have anything to say, they are trained from an early age to keep it to themselves. Even the saintly Gary Lineker struggled at first. When he started at Radio 5 Live Five , he was so wooden, they probably had to touch him up with Cuprinol after each show.

The very minimum requirement for a good radio presenter is an easy speaking manner. If you sound as if though you’re relaxed and enjoying yourself, this will rub off on the listener. Stan and Danny sound as if they’re having a hoot. Steve Claridge , who pops up all over the place on Radio 5 Live Five , also has a particularly lively and infectious manner. Does a producer tickle his feet as he talks?

Sometimes you can enjoy yourself a little too much. Ian Wright , once of England and Arsenal , has an afternoon show on Talk S sport that always sounds as if though the listener is intruding on a lads’ night out.

So who is the best sports person turned radio presenter? Jonathan “Aggers” Agnew appeared to slip easily from the cricket pitch to the commentary box. In the best cricketing tradition, he is something of an all-rounder: both commentator and reporter. And , of course, he was Brian Johnston ’s straight man in one of the best-loved radio incidents of all time: when Johnners collapsed in laughter at the phrase “Botham failed to get his leg over” .

Yet Aggers confounds the idea that players should always be first in the queue for sports- presenting jobs. Good as he is, he’s not nearly as gifted as either Johnston or, more especially, John Arlott , a former policeman who had such a gift for language and imagery that he once described a stroke by Clive Lloyd as “knocking a thistle top off with a walking stick”. How do you compete with that?

For me, the best sportsman-broadcaster was probably Cliff Morgan, the Welsh rugby international who presented Radio 4's Sport on Four for 10 years from 1987 . Like Arlott, he had a rich voice that made sport into a noble calling. Like Arlott, he cared about words. Unlike many sportsmen, he really understood broadcasting. He wasn’t only a programme presenter, he was a BBC executive — head of sport in Wales.

So let’s not get carried away. As they say in footballing circles, all credit to the lad Stan, but to be fair he’s not yet the finished article.

Paul Donovan is away

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