The most annoying advertisements on television have forced me to rearrange my sock draw

Comedian James Corden will be on our screens after every England World Cup game.

I can reveal the most annoying advertisements currently running on TV. They are the ones for Betfair, where a bunch of chaps are lounging around on sofas in their sports casual gear, drinks in hand, spouting banalities about football like they are the ghosts of David bloody Mellor.

In one of them, for instance, they discuss the Premier League relegation struggle, saying things like, "Yeah, but what about Hull or Bolton?" and then someone else pipes up, "I've got a feeling West Ham will go down," at which a third says, "Yeah, that would be heartbreaking." And somebody chuckles at one point because, you know, this is a really fun conversation to be having. I may not have remembered the dialogue exactly right because I have not seen the ad for a week or two, so with a bit of luck it might have been permanently pulled, and everybody associated with it taken out and shot.

I fear not, however, because I gather the ads are part of a big idea, which some advertising exec may well, as we speak, be working up into a major concept. The lads in the ads, whom we are assured are real football fans, are apparently known as the Betfair Front Room Five, and have been appearing in a series of similar commercials talking about football in the way advertising people fondly imagine we lads do when we cannot find a copy of FHM to read.

Various advertising executives and "creatives," including one with a French name and an exotic accent, explain all this in a clip on the internet – which regular readers, whom I thank for the outpouring of sympathy on my BT Broadband problem, will be thrilled to hear I have been accessing all week in a local coffee shop, where I am currently on to my sixth loyalty card, and wired like a stand-up comic on a nationwide tour.

Maybe my irritation levels are at a caffeine-related high, but my big problem with the Betfair ads is that friends simply do not sit around on sofas talking like that in real life. People without friends might, when they call radio phone-in shows. One might even talk about football in this stilted fashion to make conversation with the newsagent; but if I know someone well enough to be invited into his front room and share his lovely sofa, and then he starts bending my ear about whether Manchester City have the strength in depth to make a late run for the top four, I start wondering whether it might not have been a better plan to stay at home and sort out my sock drawer.

The people behind the campaign say it underlines what ad men like to call the proposition; that Betfair is the closest thing in the industry to striking a bet with a mate. Up to a point, yes, but your mate is unlikely to ask for three different identification documents, proving address and credit-worthiness, and will probably also not try and interest you in his highly-addictive Casino Games, giving you the opportunity to take your gambling to what the Front Room Five would undoubtedly call the next level.

Because that is the kind of gambler cuddly old Betfair – like every other bookie – is really interested in; not chums wanting to bet a fiver on Wolves staying in the Premier League. Ageing überlad Danny Baker voices the Betfair ads, just to underline how fun and matey it all is.

Presumably the Danny de nos jours, James Corden, was unavailable, as host of Sky's sports/comedy panel show A League Of Their Own, which is amiable enough, but fails to be very funny, which could be seen as a fatal flaw.

It really only has two jokes. One team captain, Freddie Flintoff, likes a drink, and the other, Jamie Redknapp, spent a lot of time injured – and that is more or less it on the joke front.

Some of the questions are fun, though; like which WAG's celebrity fragrance is the most expensive (Intimately Beckham at £55 apparently) and which sports person's autograph fetches the most on eBay? It is all pretty pointless, and had I not been watching for professional purposes, that sock drawer would have got a good seeing-to.

I am told there will be many more of these sport/comedy shows come World Cup time – Corden, I believe, is booked to appear after every England game – so if they are the kind of shows you spurn, you might want to make alternative arrangements. Perhaps you could invite your mates round for a fun evening discussing the deficiencies of Algeria's midfield.