As Carragher fights to save his Sky Sports career we reveal the scandals that cost TV sports broadcasters their jobs

Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher is facing calls for him to be sacked after he was filmed spitting at a 14-year-old girl whose father was goading him following the Reds’ 2-1 defeat at Manchester United – while driving his car.

Carragher apologised for his actions but was suspended by Sky Sports on Monday – he has been a pundit on the station since 2013.

He is not the first sports broadcaster who could lose his job over his actions – Yahoo Sport looks at some of the most famous sacked pundits in TV history.

Frank Bough

From the mid 1960s to 1988 Frank Bough was the face of BBC Sport, introducing Grandstand, anchoring World Cup programmes and also being one of the faces of the newly-launched Breakfast TV.

But in 1988 the News of the World ran a story that Bough had been involved in a sex and drugs scandal, involving him taking cocaine and wearing lingerie at sex parties.

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Having lost his squeaky clean front man of breakfast and sports television, Bough lost his job.

In 1989 he joined ITV where he fronted both sport and current affairs programmes but in 1992 the News of the World ran ANOTHER story about Bough’s private life which featured him visiting S & M prostitutes in a ‘torture chamber’.

The following day he appeared on TV with his wife and said: “I am feeling exceedingly stupid. I bitterly regret many of the things in my life, and if only I could undo them I would.”

Bough was sacked and has not been seen on TV since.

Ron Atkinson

The ITV commentator lost his job in 2004 when he made a grossly offensive racist comment about Chelsea’s Marcel Desailly when supposedly off-mic during Chelsea’s 2004 Champions League semi-final defeat in Monaco. He also lost his job at the Guardian.

Graham Richards

The BBC Radio Derby football commentator was banished to the twilight zone following his on-air quip that Leicester City’s Brian Deane “went down like the World Trade Centre'” following the terrorist attack in New York four days earlier.

Rodney Marsh

On a January 2005 edition of You’re On Sky Sports, Marsh joked David Beckham had turned down a move to Newcastle after hearing about trouble with “the Toon Army in Asia”. The previous month, around 200,000 people had died after an earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

Marsh had been a regular on Soccer Saturday as a live pundit alongside his former Fulham team mate George Best who died later that year.

Marsh was axed by Sky as a result of his quip.

Richard Keys

In 2007, introducing highlights of the Faroe Islands v Scotland Euro 2008 qualifier, the Sky anchor finished his link, then added the following open-mic flourish: “Daft little ground, silly game, f***off.”

Keys escaped the sack for this but in January 2011 he was not so lucky when he was forced to resign following derogatory comments about female assistant referee Sian Massey. What he said about the fitness of women officials and Massey were recorded and leaked.

Further clips of Keys and co-presenter Andy Gray behaving in a sexist manner were also leaked and although Keys apologised for the “prehistoric banter” and insisted “Such comments were made off-air to work colleagues, and were, of course, never intended to be broadcast,” both he and Gray were sacked.

David Icke

The former Hereford goalkeeper started presenting Grandstand in 1983 and became a permanent fixture on BBC TV.

Icke had been forced to retire from football early because of arthritis and in started dabbling in alternative medicine in a bid to relieve his pain.

In August 1990, his contract with the BBC was terminated when he initially refused to pay the poll tax and he fate was finally sealed a year later when he was interviewed on primetime TV show Wogan.

Icke had embraced New Age philosophies and hit the headlines for some bizarre beliefs and private life which included having a live-in mistress alongside his wife and the impending end of all life.

Wogan introduced Icke “The world as we know it is about to end”, and amid laughter from the audience, Icke dithered when asked if he was the son of God, replying that Jesus would have been laughed at too, and repeating that Britain would soon be devastated by tidal waves and earthquakes.

When Icke said laughter was the best way to remove negativity, Wogan replied of the audience: “But they’re laughing at you. They’re not laughing with you.”

Icke has not worked on mainstream TV since.