Richard Keys claims he had ‘no idea who’ Gabby Logan was when she joined Sky Sports as a 23-year-old in 1996. It’s fair to say their dealings over the past 30 years will have gone some way in clearing that up.
Keys says he got Logan her first job, as he was a friend of her footballer father Terry Yorath, who died aged 75 this week.
But the exiled Sky Sports presenter’s relationship with Logan has since been mired in controversy, from accusations of sexist comments to threats of legal action – and it took another cringe-inducing turn when Keys shared a seemingly thinly-veiled dig towards the Match of the Day presenter in a tribute to Yorath on Thursday.
‘Sad to hear the news of Terry Yorath’s passing,’ Keys, 68, wrote on X in a post now viewed more than nine million times. ‘He was a warrior & won fans over wherever he played. He was great for us at Coventry & the reason I got Gabby a job at Sky. I had no idea who she was when we met but I knew her dad. RIP Terry. Your daughter did you proud.’
The seemingly insensitive post was met with widespread furore among football fans and pundits alike, with TNT Sports presenter Laura Woods leading outrage towards Keys – who she branded a ‘t**t’.
Dan Walker, who worked alongside Logan at the BBC, also called Keys out, writing: ‘Richard, just imagine what it would be like for Gabby, or a member of her family, to read this. I’m hoping you have just worded this badly and it isn’t a dig at a really difficult time. There is still time to change it.’
Though Keys – who works alongside his broadcast partner Andy Gray on beIN Sports in the Middle East – maintains his words for Yorath were ‘entirely misrepresented’, it is the latest in a toxic war of words series between the two.
The feud entered public consciousness in 2022, when Logan claimed in her memoir that Keys and Gray made jokes about refusing to have sex with pregnant women in front of her in 2005, when she was expecting twins.
‘I was seven months pregnant with twins, and I was huge. I looked like I’d swallowed a space hopper,’ she said. ‘In full earshot of me – and anyone who might be listening in our business-class cabin – Richard said: “So, Andy, what do you think of pregnant women?”
‘”I’m afraid I don’t find them very attractive, Richard. In fact, I never slept with my wife when she was pregnant with our kids.”
‘”So you didn’t have sex, Andy?” Keys asked. ‘”No, I didn’t say that, Richard.”
‘Then they laughed their heads off at their little “comedy” routine. I was embarrassed, of course, and thought their comments were especially cruel, bearing in mind they both had children and wives of their own.’
Logan added that the broadcasting duo ‘were dinosaurs, waiting to become extinct.’
Elsewhere in the book extract, Logan alleged: ‘I don’t really want to write a lot about Richard Keys; he was dismissed, along with Gray, when they were caught talking lewdly about the lineswoman Sian Massey, and after he was caught asking pundits in the studio if they would ‘smash it’, referring to another woman.
‘In one painful-to-listen-to monologue aimed at saving his UK career, he tried to argue that he couldn’t be sexist, because he’d helped get me a job and kick-started my career. He truly didn’t get it.’
Keys and Gray, who parted ways with Sky in 2011 after leaked tapes showed the pair making derogatory sexist comments about Massey, strongly deny the accusations.
They then hit back at Logan in a joint interview with the Daily Telegraph soon after.
Gray said: ‘I was really disappointed. My life’s about today and tomorrow, not 10 years ago. Or in that alleged case, 17 years ago. I want to move on with my life.
‘I find it difficult when people who don’t know me have such a damning view of me.
‘I’ve never been able to get my head around it. What I can’t understand is the people who’ve never met me, who don’t know me or my family.
‘I’ve got three daughters, for f***’s sake, and I’m supposed to be a sexist? Come on. I was brought up by a mother on her own.
‘Richard used to say to me, “Don’t worry about it, leave them.” But for some reason, it gets to me. I’d like to be more like Keysy and say, “F*** the lot of you.”‘
‘I did more for her (Logan), in the early part of her career, than anybody,’ Keys added.
‘Andy and I were easy targets. It’s easy to have a go at us. I don’t intend to see her in court, but I think there are things that can be settled away from that.’
With Logan’s claims in her memoir serialised in the Mail on Sunday, Keys threatened legal action against the newspaper.
‘With reference to an article published by The Mail on Sunday written by Ms Gabby Logan,’ he wrote on Twitter, now known as X, in October 2022.
‘Ms Logan has made a number of wildly inaccurate allegations in the process of defaming my reputation.
‘I have referred the matter to lawyers with a view to proceeding with libel action.’
He then penned a 1,000-word post on his blog slamming Logan’s ‘serialisation of smears’ and maintained that he resigned from Sky and was not ‘dismissed’ as she had claimed.
‘How sad that somebody I haven’t seen for 30 years – and for whom I went out of my way to help start their career – feels the need to take the cheap and inaccurate option by smearing me – together with virtually everyone in the industry (including, it seems, the entire Sky business) – in her upcoming autobiography,’ Keys wrote.
‘Producers, directors, cameramen, sound technicians, statisticians – everyone it seems – has either belittled her or tried to block Gabby Logan’s career. Except they didn’t. In fact, I can’t think of anyone who’s had more of a leg up.
‘Let me say this. I’ve dealt before with the incidents surrounding my resignation from Sky. I repeat – resignation. I was not dismissed. I’ve taken responsibility for my part in what happened. It’s more than time to move on.
‘They gave [Logan] the nickname “Gabbler”. She always had an awful lot to say – not a lot of it very complimentary. If you don’t mind, I find reading Logan’s serialisation of smears very sad.’
Keys left Sky Sports following the comments about Massey, considered a pioneer for women in football refereeing, and after further clips emerged of him and Gray making sexist comments off-air.
‘Somebody better get down there and explain offside to her,’ Keys said about Massey.
He then apologised for his ‘prehistoric banter’, saying: ‘Such comments were made off-air to work colleagues, and were, of course, never intended to be broadcast.
‘If off-air conversations of television and radio presenters were recorded, there would be no one left working. That is not to defend what happened.’
Keys and Gray were hired two years after they left Sky Sports by beIN to host Premier League and European football. They have been presenting on the Doha-based channel ever since.
Keys had presented Sky Sports’ coverage of Premier League football from its inception in 1992 and was the face of the broadcaster’s Super Sunday coverage, before his departure.
He has continued to share his opinion on British broadcasting in the ensuing years, and directed a further dig towards Logan and fellow broadcaster Kelly Cates – daughter of Kenny Dalglish – when warning the latter about the perils of becoming MotD host.
Writing in his blog in December 2024, he posted: ‘Congrats to Kelly Cates on her new job. I’m proud of her but not surprised. Success has many fathers and I’m sure there’ll be a few people lining up to take credit for her career, but Kelly, Kenny and me know the truth.
‘Kenny and I once fell out about her getting a job at Sky. ‘It meant she didn’t finish Uni’ he said to me. ‘No’ I replied. ‘But you asked me to get her a job’. Her dad is a man of many contradictions – but that one was a belter. I’m not holding my breath expecting he’ll call now to apologise.
‘Kelly is good. Very good. But I’m still surprised she’s making the move. There’s nothing like presenting live football. I would never have made that decision. Highlights shows are deadly dull.
‘MotD desperately needs fresh blood, but I’m not sure it will survive for very much longer. Eventually Grandstand died for similar reasons – the march of time.’
He added: ‘Gabby Logan is someone else I opened the door for. I did that because her dad had played for Coventry and I was a big fan! She’s good – but a handful.
‘I’m told by people that work with her now nothing has changed. Oh well – one day maybe.’
After the latest post following Yorath’s death, Keys said: ‘What a shame my words for a footballing hero of mine were entirely misinterpreted. Terry Yorath was a fabulous guy. A warrior. My affection for him meant I was more than happy to help him & his family in any way I could. Gabby’s career would make any father proud. RIP Terry.’
Logan has since shared an an emotional statement on Instagram detailing their final moments together.
‘Thank you for your messages of love and support today, it has meant the world to us,’ she said. ‘Our Dad a warrior on the football pitch, captaining club and country, a kind hearted and generous man off it, would have hated all the attention. (Well most of it).
‘The stories that have been shared by strangers with us today have been enormously comforting. He touched so many people’s lives.
‘We knew he had limited time, but it is still a shock. Yesterday afternoon [Wednesday] I sat by his bed in St James Hospital Leeds and we had a debate about whether roast potatoes were better with calves’ liver than mashed potatoes.
‘That was the meal he’d decided he wanted when he went home, tomorrow [Friday]. I left and went to work, he was looking forward to watching Newcastle v his beloved Leeds. He won’t go home tomorrow. But he is reunited with Daniel [Logan’s brother who died aged 15] and that will feel like home.
‘I am sorry he had to deal with so much pain, the tragedy of the Bradford Fire was forever in his heart and losing Daniel defined the second half of his life.
‘Thank you Dad for instilling your passion for fairness. Thank you for playing rounders, or making us race each other after dinner, even though Louise always beat me. Thank you for not making me pay you $1,865,986 after I kept losing at cards on double or quits, when I was eight years old.
‘Thanks for teaching me the value of money by challenging me to eat a pot of mustard at dinner in return for £5 so I could buy a pair of shoes I wanted when I was 12 (even though mum was horrified). Thank you for giving me a life long love of sport. Thank you for being a relentless tease with a wicked sense of humour.
‘And to the wonderful staff on J16 at Jimmys who cared for him with such tenderness, you are all Angels. I love you Dad.’
