KELLY BROWN Shouts of anger from on-screen players fail to hit the target

Well, I don’t think so, but my darling hubby seems to have other ideas.

Like many other women up and down the country, over the years I have had the pleasure of watching him get worked up over a vast array of sporting events and voicing his opinions.

Dodgy tackles, duff decisions, poor play – you name it, he has shouted at the telly about it.

Of course, it is not the telly he is actually talking to but the people on the other side.

Not that the referee or players can actually hear him of course, but that doesn’t seem to stop him.

But not content with getting worked up over real-life sporting events, fantasy sporting events receive the same treatment.

You see when he plays his football game on the XBox some evenings I don’t need to look at the television is see how well he is doing – I just have to listen to how cross or happy he is getting.

If he is winning it is all smiles, laughter and of course praise at how brilliant his game is. But if he is losing... well, that is a different matter entirely.

Cue shouting at the players in 
the ‘stupid game’ for not doing what they should be doing, complaints at 
the ref for making the wrong decision and even huge protests at what the make-believe commentators say if he does not agree with them.

With real-life sporting events you can of course say ‘they can’t hear you babe’, but what do you say when it is a computer game? ‘They can’t hear you because they don’t exist babe’?

Now I will of course own up to occasionally venting my feelings at people on the telly – especially on Question Time or the Jeremy Kyle Show (whoever thought those shows would ever be in the same sentence?). But at least they are real people.

It has to be one of those man-things I will never understand.

My brother also gets worked up in the same bewildering way – often accusing the computer of cheating to stop him from winning. In that case does this mean if my microwave has not heated my soup up enough, it is trying to stop me from eating?