Over the past few days, we have heard no shortage of hilarious stories about Jack Charlton. The best one of all involved a quip about the pope, but that wasn't the only story that came out of that visit to Vatican City.
The Ireland team's papal audience during Italia 90 has been spoken about plenty at this stage, but hearing Jack Charlton tell the tale of how he fell asleep in the middle of it is absolutely hilarious.
It's made all the better by the fact that Podge & Rodge are the ones he's telling, appearing on their show back in 2008.
When we got there I thought it would just be a reception, but the audience theatre in Rome holds 8,000 people. It's bigger than a football ground!
All of a sudden someone said 'the Pope is coming'. He came through the door at the back and went straight to the microphones at the front, blessed the audience, and read his lesson in Latin four around 15 minutes.
Then another bishop got up and read it in Portuguese for 15 minutes. There were six different bishops who got up and repeated what he had said.
I found it very hard to stay awake. I thought it's going to get out of order here, because there's a bank of photographers up there. I'll nod off, someone will take a photo and it will be on the front page of the News of the World
I found if I watched the Pope it helped, because he used to sit through this three or four times a week.
Every 15 minutes he would look up and bless the audience. I must have just fallen asleep, but as I woke up the Pope was on the third part of his blessing and he was looking right at me.
He had his hand in the air and I thought he was waving at me, so I wanted to wave back!
Brilliant!
You can watch the full interview here.
