LOCKER ROOM:Keanologist burbles away in bath giving Beeb boys steamy inside track? Roy's not mad, it's us

BRACE YOURSELF, Bridie.

I am in the bath. Gloriously and colossally naked. I have the mobile phone welded to my ear. I am holding forth. I am sweating. I am quite the spectacle.

In the 37 years or so of his turbulent existence Roy Keane has spent maybe 10 hours in rooms with me, trapped there in the fraught and unnatural circumstance of being interviewed for this paper. This I feel qualifies me to be an Explainer of Roy Keane to the English.

I have no real clue as to why Roy Keane left Sunderland. I am in the bath. I have the mobile phone welded to my ear. I am holding forth to the BBC. My views have the substance and value of the frothy bubbles hiding my modesty.

Me and the Beeb are wondering whether Roy Keane is mad.

I should say to the BBC first off that I am a fraud. My 10 hours with Roy Keane have been far more interesting for me than they have for him. I should say I find Roy Keane way more interesting than he finds me. I should say it stands to reason that anybody who has spent enough time with Roy Keane to be able to offer a qualified opinion on what makes him tick wouldn't be going on the radio to peddle that opinion. Instead I am holding forth happily. And anyway the BBC wouldn't care. Today it's all Keano, all the time.

"What is Roy Keane thinking?" asks the voice on the other end of the phone. In the bath I pause as if tuning in telepathically to Roy Keane's thought process.

He could be thinking that he'll have the pepperoni 12-inch with garlic bread. He could be thinking the dog needs walking but the world has seen enough photos of Roy Keane walking the dog in times of trouble. Hopefully he isn't thinking, "there's that fraudulent tosser on the radio telling people what I am thinking". I burble on happily with my half-baked theory that modern football is a halfway house between circus and asylum and perhaps the most ringing act of sanity a man can make is to walk away from it all.

"He doesn't seem very well liked", says the BBC man to the Explainer of Roy Keane to the English. I am in the bath with a towel over my head so my voice won't echo off the white tiles and the gentle lapping of the water on my gut won't be audible to the English. There is a lot of steam. Some from the water. Lots from me. This is my fifth interview of the day as a Keanologist. I am a full blown geyser of steam.

I first interviewed Roy Keane in late 1993 in the Four Seasons Hotel near the airport in Manchester. He walked into the hotel and everything froze like a four star Pompeii until he had passed through. I asked the usual dumb questions. He gave the usual thoughtful answers. He was young and considered mad, bad and dangerous to know back then. I asked him what he had spent the previous night doing. He said he had gone to bed early with tea and biscuits. He said that's how mad he was.

He asked me how did I get to Manchester. Had I kids. What was the job like. What time was my flight home. What would I do between now and the flight home. Would I like to come to his house. Could he give me a lift.

Footballers never ask these things. They never wonder about the workings of the world. I have a friend who travelled to London once for an arranged interview with an Irish international. The player had forgotten he had arranged the interview and asked could it be done the next day. My friend explained he had just flown here. The player said 'well get in the car we can talk on the drive home'. So they did and when it was finished the player pulled in on the hard shoulder of the motorway and said 'cheers, mate, I'll let you out here'. He wasn't being a bastard . They just don't think.

I was disappointed Keane wasn't driving the big red Merc he had been reported as owning. It had a registration something along the lines of Roy 1.

I asked him about it and he blushed. "Yeah. I was driving around making a complete fecking eejit of myself," he said.

We drove and he said to me he would never have driven about at home in Cork in such a thing. He was embarrassed to think he had driven around Manchester in it.

He doesn't seem very well-liked? I venture that being well-liked by the populace isn't the point of Roy Keane's existence. Being faithful to himself seems more important. Being the guy who left Mayfield. Every ending he has experienced since then has been ugly and messy and painful. Being well-liked wouldn't be a currency he would place a lot of faith in.

"Hmmm," says the BBC man.

There is a radio silence. A solecism in itself. I have run out of things to say. Me, a fat man in a steamy bath in another country with a mobile phone to his ear and no opinion worth anything more than the radio callers from their motor cars, I have dried up.

Is Roy Keane mad?

Football is mad. Several times today while waiting for the disc jockey to come to me on air and ask me to pour my bucket of steam down the phone I have heard little audio collages of Royisms played. Everything parsed and analysed to an inch past reason.

I am just a little fragment of the Tower of Babel over Roy Keane's head, a contributing voice to the madness of media which feeds into the madness of crowds which underpins the madness of modern football.

Ron Atkinson made some crass racist remarks into a live mic a few years ago and has spent the rest of the time telling the world firstly, that he is sorry and secondly, that he has said sorry enough. Can he please get back into football? Alex Ferguson announced his retirement but could not retire. Terry Venables throws his pearly king hat into the ring for every job there is. Bryan Robson, God love him is working they say as "an ambassador" for Manchester United.

Football is full of men who live by the tabloid and die by the tabloid. Full of broken down adrenalin addicts who accept the absurdity of the world they live in without question. Football is full of managers who fret 24/7 for their teams and for their jobs and never for their sanity. They are on a rollercoaster. Wheeeeeeeeeee! A rollercoaster which has a paying audience. Wooooooooooooo! An audience which obsesses as much as they do.

Football is mad. The attention we give it is mad. The importance we accord it is mad. The pretence at there being binding loyalties is mad. The clammy desperation to extract meaning and morals is mad. The thin line between the winners' steps and the bacon slicer is mad. The fickleness. The cynicism. The money. Mad. Mad. Mad.

Roy Keane decided it wasn't for him and stepped off the rollercoaster and went home with his wife.

I'm in a bath talking to a man I've never met before and feigning an expertise I don't possess for a radio audience who are all either angry or disappointed with Roy Keane. I'm just a little vibrating atom in this raging, boiling body of noise.

Roy Keane is at home playing with his kids. Is he mad? Too darn right he is. Mad as a fox, Bridie.