Typically, he quickly got them talked about, putting together an incendiary panel of pundits for the 1970 World Cup. But the LWT franchise did not reach far beyond Watford, and it would hurt him when northern taxi drivers asked him what he was up to these days. And the answer, as most had long suspected, turned out to be precisely nothing. Taking Coventry to the top flight, on the other hand, and laying the foundations which have kept them there for 30 years, is something of which anyone would be rightfully proud.But the question to which many armchair fans wanted an answer was what, exactly, in his playing and managerial careers qualified him to inflict his opinions on the nation for the next 30 years.

Everyone knows him, even if they do grind their teeth down to the roots whenever he opens his mouth. And winning is something he knows a great deal about, albeit that his most famous success, the abolition of the minimum wage, probably owed more to being in the right place at the right time. And to be fair to him, who doesn’t? Try to think of any figure in British football who is more instantly familiar to football fans of all ages and you may be puzzling for a very long time.So in that sense at least, Hill is a winner. Peace on Earth and goodwill unto all men, even him.
It was an enthralling, not to mention educational, story, although the very first image was possibly the weakest.

Gerald Scarfe had been hired to provide a study of Hill, but his considerable talents as a caricaturist could still not do the subject justice. The tone of Giles Smith’s biography of Jimmy The Chin rarely strayed from the affectionate – his leading role in a sanction-busting football tour of South Africa merited just 20 seconds of airtime – but this is Christmas, after all. Which is why Are You Watching Jimmy Hill? (BBC2) was such a timely reminder that once upon a time at least, Hill seemed to know what he was talking about. And where almost everyone else is concerned, he is nothing more than the malign presence at Des’s right hand who makes half-time miserable.

Thirty- five years in the game, three promotions, three trips to Wembley and never sacked Loyalty, he would say, there ain’t much about.. Jimmy Hill is a generational thing. To anyone who can remember ration books, he is that half-decent Fulham player who became a successful manager at Coventry City, and then an intensely irritating television pundit. If you spent your youth turning on, tuning in and dropping out, parts two and three are the only ones which apply.