I've had a call from the Football Association. Someone at its office in Soho Square wants to know if I'll serve on the Dubious Fouls Committee. I have explained that I won't be back in London till next week, but they say that's no problem. They need someone with my football knowledge, expertise and wisdom, so they're prepared to wait till I return from Lakeland. They are also setting up a Dubious Throw-ins Committee and a Dubious Corners Committee. I can serve on one of those as well, if I like, but I think Dubious Fouls - or DFC, as they call it - sounds the more demanding and intellectual. I do like to help.

The DFC meets once a month in a safe room in Soho and watches videos of dubious fouls. There's a sifting process beforehand, so you don't have to sit through all the Premier League fouls from each month, as that would take for ever. You just watch the three-star, X-rated dubious fouls. The meetings last for no longer than an hour, so they say, for which you get £1,000, plus coffee and choccy bickies.

Yes, £1,000 sounds a lot for an hour's work. But don't forget that if you are an official in football these days - whether you work for the PFA, as Gordon Taylor does, or are the chairman of a Premiership club, even a failed one such as Coventry - you get at least £250,000 a year, plus perks. They have to pay the part-time advisers and consultants, such as moi, a commensurate amount, or it makes a nonsense of the big wads.

I'm a bit worried about the biscuits. The last time I helped out the FA, when it was still based at Lancaster Gate, we were served leftover World Cup Willy ginger nuts, which were, not to put too fine a point on it, decidedly mouldy.

We will operate much like the FA's Dubious Goals Committee, with our own secretariat, ties and blazers. As you have probably read, it has just adjudicated on Newcastle United's exciting 4-3 victory over Manchester United. At the time, the vital goal was awarded to Alan Shearer, but the Dubious Goals Committee, after a great deal of deliberation and a large quantity of biscuits, decided that the ball hit Wes Brown on its way into the net. Therefore, the official record now reads: "Brown, OG." That's how it will remain, till the last syllable of recorded time.

The reason for all these committees is the increased importance of football statistics, which, in the past five years, have become an industry, with around 3,000 people working full-time, totting up every incident and every move that takes place in every league game, plus details of everyone taking part, including the birth signs of strikers, the weights of referees, the heights of managers, the IQs of goalkeepers, the sexual preferences of supporters and the favourite angle of corner flags.

Everything is then put on a computer and analysed upside down, back to front, and poured into the sports pages of our national papers or shoved at the top of our TV screens. The media have so much space to fill each day that when they can't compete on the words or pictures, they battle it out graph to graph, fact to fact, stat to stat.

The Times has its Optrex list, which tells you how many players have been bathing their eyes each morning before training. The Telegraph has its Grecian list, which records the number of grey-haired, midfield players making decisive tackles. A lot of these stats are now sponsored, or bought in, part of fantasy football games that people bet on. The poor old Independent can't afford to pay out money for stats, but it has now begun something called the Premiership Index. It looks official and awfully scientific, but in fact consists of the paper's football hacks sucking their pencils after a game and giving points out of ten to each player. Old technology, it's called, but bloody cheap.

At the other end of the market, those expensive and noisy TV commercials for the Daily Star and the Express, which I rely on to keep me awake when I'm watching Sky, now make a point of shouting out that their sports pages include stunning statistics. Who would have thought that boring old football facts would ever replace topless stunners?

The chairman of Bolton Wanderers was interviewed on Football Focus last week and was boasting that among the army of psychologists and dieticians Sam Allardyce has hired is a statistician. I should think so. No club, like no paper, can do without one. (Incidentally, close your eyes when next listening to Allardyce - which is hard, as his physiognomy is riveting - and he sounds just like David Blunkett.)

This obsession with stats has always been big in the United States, mainly because baseball, like cricket, is such a boring, slow game that they have to devise batting or bowling averages to keep the crowds awake. With the use of modern computers and action-replay machines, any old rubbishy facts can be analysed quickly. Because the technology is available, a use is found for it. That can be the only reason for shoving irrelevant and stupid stats at the top of the TV screen.

The FA, as lord of the universe, upholder of infinite justice, has to appoint these committees to arbitrate on any dubious football facts, such as who really scored. The chairman of the Dubious Fouls Committee will be Michael Knighton, much respected in football for his distinguished chairmanship of Carlisle United. The female member was going to be Mariella Frostrup, but she's still too exhausted after judging the Booker. The token woman is now Julie Burchill, biographer of Beckham. The lay member is A N Wilson. Should be fun. I'll report back.

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