Funny, charming and kind...yes, it's Frank LampardOn Monday night, I attended the Pride of Britain Awards and invited Kevin Pietersen to join me.

'Can I bring my mate, Frank Lampard?' he asked.

Now, as an Arsenal fan, I've never really given Lampard much positive thought. He has always just been that annoying irritant in midfield for West Ham and Chelsea and someone who seemed to personify the 'flash Harry' ethos of modern-day footballers.

But I'll confess that my admiration for Lampard has grown sneakily but steadily in the last year or so.

First with the way he dealt with being booed by England crowds - no whining, just playing better and better until they cheered him. Then with the courageous way he played on after his mother's tragically early death.

And finally by his extraordinary phone call to a London radio station to remonstrate on air with a presenter abusing him for being a bad dad.

What all these things showed me was that Lampard's got guts, spirit and pride to match his prodigious ability.

And KP assured me: 'He's one of the nicest blokes you'll ever meet.'

So I was genuinely intrigued to see what he's really like. Which is smarter than I thought he'd be (apparently he has an IQ of 150 which puts him in the top 0.1 per cent of Britons when it comes to intelligence and top 0.0000000001 of British footballers), as well as funny, charming company and extraordinarily patient and polite to the constant stream of people bothering him all night for photos or autographs.

The next morning Lampard texted me, thanking me for the evening (even his spelling was correct) and inviting me and my three sons to a Chelsea game to meet the players.

'We'd love to but unfortunately we're all still allergic to Ashley Cole,' I said.

But it was a kind, thoughtful offer. I misjudged Mr Lampard and I suspect I'm not the

PIERS MORGAN IN THE MAIL

Well, Piers Morgan has just soared in my esteem. To be honest he was fairly low in the pecking order of moi's esteem list - somewhere slightly above Louis Walsh but below David Mellor (remember him?). But both these articles have gone a long way towards entry into my good books !

What a charming story. That brought a smile to my face.

how anyone could turn down meeting the team i will never understand...

This is the Hugh McIlvanney, from the Sunday Times at the weekend. I normally see him as fairly anti-Chelsea and to me this is a bit like praise through gritted teeth, but high praise it is ! and well deserved. and well worth a read.

Would like to hear Dorset's views on it and Hugh McIlvanney in general :P

11 September 2009 The Sunday Times

It needn’t be in the preferred tipple of multi-millionaire footballers, that old credit card obliterator Roederer Cristal, but there’s good reason this weekend to toast a significant personal anniversary. When Frank Lampard took the field for England in Ukraine yesterday it was 10 years to the day since he gained his first cap against Belgium at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light. Neither match carried much meaning (the 1999 occasion was a friendly, the other obligatory sparring, with the right to a world championship challenge in South Africa next summer already secured) but anybody who cares about football should be heartened by the story that has unfolded through the intervening decade.

Lampard has developed into one of the most accomplished midfielders of his era, the kind of skilful, committed and productive professional the finest players of any earlier generation would have appreciated as a teammate. All of that has long been undeniable. Yet, though demonstrations of his extreme value to both Chelsea and England have been powerful and consistent, it seems to me there is still sometimes a whiff of reluctance about acknowledging just how remarkable what he brings to the game really is. But perhaps when some people’s attitude towards him is less enthusiastic than mine (which, admittedly, wouldn’t be difficult) the source is basic aversion to his persona rather than a residual scepticism towards his abilities. Only a fondness for baiting him could explain the continuing eagerness of two or three journalists to toss the hoary “fat Frank†insult at a man whose level of fitness leaves all but a handful of his competitors embarrassed by his profitable mobility.

At first glance the virulent resentment he engenders among West Ham fans might appear more understandable, since he left the East End club for Chelsea in an £11m transfer deal in 2001. But others who have migrated to richer pastures, Rio Ferdinand and Joe Cole for example, don’t attract the intensity of abuse showered on him. Frequenters of Upton Park tell me he was never particularly popular while he was there. Maybe family connections — not so much being the son of a prominent former player, Frank senior, as having his uncle, Harry Redknapp, as his manager — stirred the suspicions of nepotism that blur assessments of performance. It has also been suggested that the core working-class support may have persuaded themselves his geographical identification with them had been diluted by his years at a fee-paying school, Brentwood, where he took 10 GCSEs, including an A-star in Latin, and was encouraged by his teachers to do A-levels and go to university.

But that’s a pretty convoluted sociological prejudice to attribute to the chaps in replica shirts. Are we supposed to surmise now that their objections to him as a smart-arse deepened after hearing the reports that in recent IQ tests at Chelsea his score was above 150? The sustained vileness they visit on him possibly has more to do with the extent to which he has rammed down their throats the realisation of how grossly they under-estimated what they were losing eight years ago. Alternatively, of course, they may simply have decided that, everything considered, they found him unlikeable.

It hasn’t always been an unmitigated love-in with Chelsea followers either. Occasional evidence has emerged of bitterness over his tendency in the past to be kissing the badge on his shirt one minute and being ruthlessly demanding in contract negotiations the next. But, to my mind, there’s not a pro in today’s financially bloated football who does more than Lampard to persuade his employers he is worth his gargantuan wages, and very few who do nearly as much. His dedication to improvement is unmistakable and the results have been manifested on the pitch season after season. Even the miseries that have afflicted his personal life lately (the death of his cherished mother, Pat, 18 months ago and the more recent break-up with the mother of his own two daughters, Elen Rives) have not stalled his progress, which is made all the more impressive by the clear proof that he is not somebody capable of self-protective insularity when the real world intrudes harshly into his professional existence.

Some may have wondered, in fact, if he was too inclined to grieve publicly as they watched him raise his eyes to the heavens after the scoring of goals in the period following his mother’s death. But his admirers’ claims that we were seeing the open directness of his nature were supported by how he responded to references on a London radio station to his split with Rives. Angered by mentions of the arrangements made for his children that associated his behaviour with the words “weak†and “scumâ€, he didn’t take the familiar celebrity option of wheeling on a PR minder or agent but rang the presenter of the programme and engaged, on air, in an abrasive exchange.

He doesn’t shy away from confrontation on the field but in general is sensibly calm, relying on intelligence and excellent technique to hurt the opposition. His passing is insistently imaginative, crisp and accurate and his movement off the ball is often inspired. He is such a master of the geometry and timing of penetration that it is natural for him to accumulate as many goals in a season as a leading striker. Extraordinary physical soundness permits his manager, whether it is Fabio Capello with England or Carlo Ancelotti at Stamford Bridge, to regard inclusion of the 31-year-old Lampard’s exceptional gifts as an almost constantly available asset (the midfielder once had a run of 164 consecutive appearances for Chelsea before finally succumbing to a virus).

By now it may be possible to guess that I have a rather high opinion of Frank Lampard as a footballer. If only the old game had more like him.

Yep, I read it Andy and would have got around to posting it on here had you not beaten me to it. At least I think I would [eventually] because whilst I am an admirer of the McIlvanney style, and he is a prime reason for being a Times reader, there has been this nagging doubt in the back of my mind that he can be as self-servingly selective as a Rod Liddle or a Patrick Barclay. For instance, his reference to ‘two or three journalists who toss the hoary “fat Frank†insult’ is a clear and unambiguous finger point at Rod Liddle, yet he did not limit the field, as I believe he should, by referring to ’a colleague’ or, as I’m sure someone like Martin Samuel would do, come out and actually name names.

For me, his timidity often outweighs his hard earned status and can also be seen in his reluctance to write on controversial topics headlining Manchester United in general and SirAlex in particular. This probably stems from a longstanding love of the club and a shared love of all things equine with Ferguson, but I did find it ironic that within the same Sunday Times pages yesterday Rod Liddle was left to knock seven bells out of the ref ridiculer while Hugh missed [or wasn’t brave enough] to even get the slightest dig back on behalf of club or country pursuit chum - bet he regrets it in hindsight!

Still, credit where it is due, he does write really well, Frank's ten years was a great subject to choose and he is a worthy beneficiary of his words of praise. Also, staying in friendly mode towards Times writers, Patrick Barclay has joined the criticism of Ferguson this morning, which must have been a wrench for someone so besotted by the fellow Scotsman’s mind games when Rafa had his tilt at them last season. Benitez doesn’t look quite so quixotic now, does he Patrick?

Top man. Nicest guy in football bar none.