Okay, I stand accused and guilty. One of those little black mini-dishes adorns the front wall of the house and the addiction to Sky Sports is incurable. And on days like Saturday - high noon - when my team are playing my twin brother's (that's Leeds against the other United) it does the heart good to lose all professional impartiality and roar like any idiot at the goggle box.
This is what live sport on television is all about, even if the preamble in the studio beforehand failed miserably to convey the real passion of the occasion.
All strait-laced Gary Pallister could prophesise was that there would be goals (lots of them) and that it would be a draw. He was sort of right; there were goals, two of them, and it was a draw. It's a shame, though, that those without a dish had to wait until the sun had travelled halfway around the globe before getting to view things on the terrestrial channels.
Be that as it may, the footballers on view were also making the fashion statement that it is cool to be a slaphead - which is exceedingly good for all of us who are challenged in the hair department. Juan Sebastian Veron has been sporting a bare head for some time and David Beckham is one cut of the razor blade away from being a full member of the society, but Danny Mills, who looked like someone out of Schindler's List, has gone the whole hog, looks scarier than ever and proves that you don't have to be good-looking to be bald.
There's no sign the smoothies in the Sky soccer studio intend to follow the lead of those on the pitch, however. The immaculately groomed Richard Keyes and Pallister (neither with a hair out of place) tried to be relaxed - too relaxed? - in the run-up to the big game and it wasn't until the voice of Andy Gray got his tuppence worth in that the real passion came across.
Gray - in his role as co-commentator and analyst - works because, unlike some sycophants, he isn't afraid to call a spade a shovel. He is opinionated and to the point. He has a voice that can be mimicked in pubs. He has emotion. He is good.
It must be said, too, that Gray idolises the ground Veron walks on and he seems to drool into the microphone whenever the Manchester United midfielder passes the ball. It's not like the bold Andy to be stuck for a word and it came as a surprise that motormouth couldn't finish off some sentences as United went into overdrive in the first half hour of the match.
"The pace of this game and the pace Manchester United have come out of the traps is . . . er . . . it is . . . admirable." Admirable? Quite. Listening to the match commentator Martin Tyler, however, didn't make you feel good to be a Leeds supporter.
"Haven't won here in 20 years! Haven't won here since February 1981." Cue camera zooming in on grey-haired man on sideline. "There's Eddie Gray. He played in that game. The winning goal was scored by Brian Flynn!"
Tyler sure is a good man for the statistics. Rolls them off his tongue whenever a ball goes out for a throw-in or there is a break in play for injury. But the way he uses the statistics would make you wish to have John Motson - remember him? On the BBC? - back doing more matches. Motson was on Radio 5 on Saturday morning and, truly, there is no man with greater knowledge of soccer stored in his head. He can remember the most obscure details and his enthusiasm is infectious.
Back to the match, and there were still no goals at the break where Keyes, in his oh-so-gentle way, reminded Pallister of his pre-match prediction and the former England defender talked of the "resolution" in the Leeds defence. Of how they had only lost once in 25 Premiership games and how they now had the "full belief that they can win the Premiership." "Yes, but are we going to have a winner?" asked Richard. "Draw, with goals," replied Pallister, undeterred. The second half was much better for armchair supporters who follow Leeds.
Robbie Keane may have been, as Gray put it, a "lucky boy" to stay on the pitch after his shove on Beckham, but you know that you have arrived as a world-class footballer when the Old Trafford crowd boo your every move and the lad from Tallaght, despite his substitution, should have been the man-of-the-match. And if the yellow card rather than red went his way, then the other side of the coin was shown when his free-kick goal was disallowed.
Mark Viduka's goal was, as Gray informed us, "borderline offside". And, after viewing the replay, "He's off . . . fractionally off." But it counted and, for a time, it seemed that all Tyler's doom and gloom statistics would become old statistics. But Man U's supersub, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, changed all that and at the end of what Gray described as a "fantastic, absolutely brilliant" match, we could all catch our breath.
Meanwhile, in the early hours of yesterday morning, Channel 4 brought us a slick, half-hour package on the horse racing from Belmont. In a no-nonsense format, they showed all eight races and, rather than showing them in order, brought us the main one - Galileo's - first. The American dream horse Tiznow, though, won the big one and jockey Christopher McCarron, who was interviewed by a horse-riding reporter out on the dirt track, told us how Tiznow had a "high degree of intelligence for a horse, he knows it is boring in the barn".
The American TV graphics, with the riders' colours in a 1-2-3-4 running order at the bottom of the screen, was effective and Tom Durkin's commentary - "Here comes the European challenger, Johannesburg," he roared of Aidan O'Brien's horse in the juvenile race, ". . . Johannesburg has won it, now a champion on two continents" - captured the thrill of the races.
An all-round package that was succinct - perfect for the time it was shown - and to the point.
