had worked with Paul Gascoigne on a documentary about his return from injury called Gascoigne – The Fightback. Afterwards, Gascoigne said to producer Neil Duncanson that it was a shame that British viewers would be unable to see his Serie A games. England players David Platt and Des Walker were also with Serie A clubs at the time. Chrysalis approached the Italian Football Federation regarding UK broadcast rights for the Lazio games. The Federation were unwilling to offer the rights to just Lazio's games, but encouraged a bid for the rights to show all Serie A games. Channel 4 outbid Sky to take the UK rights for Serie A. This also involved negotiations between Channel 4 and RAI, the holder of the league's international rights for 1992–93. On 6 September 1992, Channel 4 transmitted its first live Italian match – Sampdoria v Lazio. Gascoigne did not play due to injury, but the broadcast had three million viewers. Veteran broadcaster Kenneth Wolstenholme linked off screen, and Peter Brackley and Paul Elliott commentated. Paul Gascoigne was the intended presenter of Gazzetta, a highlights programme. The title was a play on his nickname, Gazza, and the programme contained voiceovers by Wolstenholme. Gascoigne hosted the first few episodes, but didn't always turn up when he was supposed to film, and he was soon replaced by James Richardson, a producer who had not worked in front of the camera previously. Gascoigne continued to be the subject of many interviews and reports in the series. Richardson became the host of the series's main two programmes: the live weekly Sunday afternoon match titled Football Italia, commentated on by Brackley (or sometimes Gary Bloom), and Gazzetta Football Italia on Saturday mornings, which contained the highlights of the previous week's matches and a piece on Italian culture. It would also consist of interviews with players, often Gascoigne, usually walking around an Italian city. These were often deliberately humorous, such as when Richardson performed the lambada with Attilio Lombardo. A regular part of Gazzetta had Richardson explaining football stories from Italian newspapers as he sat in the sunshine outside a café. During the last series, which was broadcast in the early hours of the morning, Richardson sat at a café outside the Pantheon, usually in front of a large ice cream or dessert, and a proportion of each course would vanish between each set of match highlights. Other contributors to