Channel 4, Tuesday Sky One's Inside Wayne Rooney was an attempt to quantify the essence of greatness, of what some call a manifestation of genius. Here is a young man who can seemingly bend events to his own will under the most pressured circumstances. Millions of people are currently worried about a bone in his foot. He's much maligned for his apparent lack of social intelligence, but his status among his people is something you almost hope he doesn't give a lot of thought to.

What must it be like, being inside Wayne Rooney's mind?

For that, you'd probably need to have a HD TV. In the meantime, what we got was Paddy McGuinness (Peter Kay's mate from Max and Paddy. The one who isn't Max) being sporadically amusing as he tested himself against the physical and mental efforts of the boy wonder.

We heard about Rooney's vision, his fitness, his strength, his proud chin that indicates a warrior's temperament. It offered some quasi-scientific data as proof of. . . well, his talent. But we knew he was talented. This was like some sort of dvd extra, a behind-the-scenes, a making-of, for those whose curiosity overwhelms their desire to simply gaze and wonder.

Why not just enjoy the film?

Meanwhile, on ITV: "David Beckham is the most famous footballer in England, but what do we really know about him?" We kid you not. Their promo for a documentary inside the world of Beckham managed to be both hilarious and deeply tragic in the space of 25 seconds.

As Sky One attempted to get inside his less photogenic teammate, Becks has allowed a documentary crew to paint 'an intimate portrait'. Rooney once visibly told his captain to "f**k off" live on TV during an England game, demonstrating vividly the lack of respect the England captain now commands. Hardly surprising, as he continues to rage against the dying of the hot lights. If he was the one in Rooney's current predicament, it's doubtful whether England would have their prayer mats out as they did four years ago. What do we really know about him? That he's wealthy enough to avoid the indignity of any more 'intimate portraits'.

Not like the good old days of course, when men were men and dogs found trophies. Channel Four asked Who Stole the World Cup? and ultimately failed to answer their own question. But what they did provide was a thoroughly entertaining caper-style reconstruction of the events in 1966, when somebody swung by a museum in swinging London and helped themselves to the Jules Rimet trophy. As England became a laughing stock in the eyes of the football community (ah, the good old days) a silversmith by the name of George Bird was commissioned to create a replica as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, an FA official received a ransom demand and called the police.

They managed to nab the none-tooclever voice on the other end of the phone, but he claimed to be a middleman, saying that he worked for 'the Pole'. While he was in custody, the trophy was dumped in a garden, probably by a panicked Pole, and was sniffed out by Pickles the dog.

So now the FA had two trophies instead of none, the genuine article and the replica. Paranoid about further embarrassment, they decided to swap 'em. So did Queen Liz hand Bobby Moore a fake trophy? It was certainly enough to get you to the other side of the ad break. But no, apparently the one we see in Moore's hand pretty much every day these days is the solid gold original.

A policeman snuck into the dressing room afterwards and handed Nobby Stiles the replica, locking the original up for safe-keeping. So as Bobby and the lads toured England showing off their new toy, that's exactly what it was. It might as well have been made of chocolate.

The replica was given back to Bird the silversmith and the original made it to Mexico for 1970, where it was given to champions Brazil for keeps. That went missing in 1983, but what matter? Fifa had a new trophy and all was well with the World Cup. But in 1997 Bird decided he'd rather cash to keeping a secret and told all about the replica, putting it up for auction. This was news to Fifa, who knew nothing of a second trophy.

It had a reserve price of £30,000, but as rumours spread that the FA might have mixed them up and that this might be the actual original, the price rose to around £254,000. The mystery buyer?

Fifa, unwilling to risk a private collector getting their hands on what Pickles found. It turned out to be the bronze replica, proving to be the most lucrative commission Bird ever got. It now resides in a football museum in Preston, under more security than the original ever was.