In a clear sign of my latent contrarian streak, there was a moment earlier in 2025 when I was starting to warm to Michael Owen.
Owen is widely known as a charisma vacuum, the man who has infamously watched less than 10 films in his life and whose soul is untouched by a single work of art.
But using the analogy of being able to destroy a house with no chance of creating one to explain how defending is easier than attacking was the rarest of beasts; a genuinely funny and quotable Owen line.
Was it time to reassess our perceptions of him? Was the sun now cold and ice now hot? Was nothing sacred in his frightening world of ours?
Happily, Owen’s blind ranking of Christmas Dinner items is both incredibly dull and incredibly on brand. I can’t stop watching it.
These things are entirely subjective and down to individual taste, but starting by putting gravy at number nine should’ve resulted in instant execution.
Yorkshire puddings are given short shrift, because you apparently cannot have them with turkey for a cast-iron reason in the Owen multiverse.
While declaring pigs in blankets as overrated brings us dangerously close to agreeing with him for the second time in 12 months.
But nothing has captured the essence of the former Liverpool and England striker more than the line ‘Sprouts? Now we’re talking’.
Definitely one for his tombstone, that. Closely followed by ‘parsnips are the main ones’.
As ever, Owen’s opinions could be considered off-kilter in the hands of a man with more charisma.
Indeed, Jack Grealish is charmingly sweet in his own ranking. But Owen’s delivery throughout the clip suggests that paint watches him dry.
Stop what you’re doing immediately and watch this. pic.twitter.com/Vp9NLUW5sc
— ELLIOT EASTWICK’S WORLD FAMOUS HOT SAUCE (@WorldFamousHot1) December 18, 2025
For his part, Owen is insistent that the popular perception of him as a personality-free zone is a misguided invention by the mainstream media.
“I am probably the life and soul of the party,” he told The Mirror in 2023 about his Christmas plans. “I’m a right attention seeker.
“It has all got to be about me, if we are hosting, I’m the one starting the games, or dancing on top of the tables.
“If I was going to do a karaoke it would be to something like Summer of 69, or Tracey Chapman Fast Car. I’m not really into that modern stuff. It’s the old classics.
“Apparently, I am quirky. I think I’ve got an image in the world that is very straight, and boring and everything like that. But everyone I meet, they will be like, ‘Oh my God, I so wasn’t expecting you to be like you are.
“I think when I was coming through, when I was 17 or 18, I was managed in a certain way. The press had an image of me they wanted to portray.
“So I was this whiter than white angel. It probably never sat that well with me. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t up to no good. As I say, I never really went to nightclubs and the time, but that image has probably stuck and everyone just thinks I’m boring.
“I think if you ask Gemma [his daughter] or my missus, they’d probably say, ‘bloody hell, the world has got you so wrong’”.
It’s very possible that Owen has a deeper cultural hinterland than is commonly thought, but it’s being hidden extremely well if that’s true.
This is a man who takes a throwaway content idea, a chance to make him relatable to the masses, and leaves us with the impression that he pre-records Sunday Brunch. His brain needs to be studied for science.
All we’re saying is that gravy needs to be much higher than number nine to alleviate the dryness of Owen’s persona.
By Michael Lee
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