Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Follow Him Home by P.W. Davies Bayern Munich confirm signing of Omar Richards from Reading. Bayern Munich have confirmed the arrival of left-back Omar Richards from Reading on a free transfer. The 23-year-old, who enjoyed an impressive campaign in the Championship this year, had rejected the offer of a new contract at the Madejski Stadium and struck a deal to join up with Bayern a few months ago. #FCBayern have signed Omar Richards. The 23-year old arrives from Championship side Reading on a free transfer and has signed a contract until 2025.#ServusOmar — ?CHAMPIONS? (@FCBayernEN) May 27, 2021. With a spectacular end-of-season collapse seeing Reading tumble out of the playoff picture, their season is over and Richards has now left the club to complete his move to Bayern. “My move to FC Bayern is a great honour for me," Richards told Bayern's official website. "A dream has come true. "I’m proud to be wearing the shirt of one of the world's biggest clubs. I hope I can help the team continue to be successful in the future. My thanks to the management at FC Bayern for their trust. Our conversations were very convincing. I can't wait to be on the pitch for Bayern. Mia san mia!” © Warren Little/Getty Images Richards will compete for minutes with Alphonso Davies | Warren Little/Getty Images. Richards, who will wear the number three shirt at the Allianz Arena, has penned a four-year contract to tie himself to Bayern until 2025. Director Hasan Salihamidzic added: “We’re delighted Omar is coming to FC Bayern. Omar is a technically gifted player on the left side of defence. He finds good solutions going forward, he’s very alert and we trust him to play a good role in our team.” Richards has been drafted in as cover for first-choice left-back Alphonso Davies, and his arrival means Lucas Hernandez can focus on his duties at centre-back next season instead of sharing time on the left with Davies. © Boris Streubel/Getty Images Richards will join Dayot Upamecano at the club | Boris Streubel/Getty Images. Bayern have been working hard to get a head-start in the transfer market this season. On top of striking a deal to bring in Julian Nagelsmann to replace manager Hansi Flick, they have also already confirmed an agreement to sign RB Leipzig centre-back Dayot Upamecano. 2020/21 was another successful season for Bayern, who won the Bundesliga, Super Cup, DfL Supercup and the Club World Cup, but the club hope to address failures in both the DfB-Pokal and Champions League. Alan Davies interview: 'I'm like a fine wine. I'm maturing' S top blaming the comedians and start blaming the people that make the TV programmes. That seems to be Alan Davies's stance on the recent controversy over the men behaving boorishly on The Big Fat Quiz of The Year. Jack Whitehall and James Corden were accused of making tasteless jokes about the Queen and Susan Boyle, but Davies jumps to their defence, getting into a froth as thick as the one on the coffee he is drinking in a north London cafe. "That thing with James Corden, it was just vulgarity which the editor should have cut. In the middle of all that banter it was just an exchange, it's not for [newspapers] to be the arbiter of taste." Comedians, he suggests, are society's current fall guys and he wonders why sections of the press appear to have a vendetta against them – "there are bigger criminals in the world". The Chingford-born gagsmith, who is returning to standup after a decade away, including two dates at the Hammersmith Apollo next month, does not agree with suggestions that panel shows are all past their sell-by date, which is not surprising as he makes a tidy living as a regular on QI. But he does have issues with them. "I get asked to do others and I usually give it a thought and then on balance decide I'd rather stay at home. I do 16 QIs a year, I think that's enough. I did a lot of panel shows 20 years ago. You can't do them all your life or you go a bit mad." QI is enjoyable for him because it is less aggressive than the other male-dominated formats. "There's not so much testosterone. That's deliberate and that's how I like it. Mock the Week is not for me at all. Those are the extremes. I'm good mates with [its host] Dara O'Briain, but don't like having to elbow my way in for space." He is particularly troubled by one Mock The Week alumnus. "Frankie Boyle is a really good comedian, he can fire a gag like a gunshot, but I'm very uncomfortable about jokes about kids with Down's syndrome. I know a parent who has a Down's syndrome child and I know how upsetting that would be for them to hear." Anything about children really touches this father of two: "I'm a Labour person but it was really heartbreaking for David Cameron and his wife when they lost their son. It must have been unimaginable." Jimmy Carr manages outrage better than Boyle, reckons Davies. "He is so calculated he is like a hand grenade, so shocking and near the knuckle: 'I gave my girlfriend an orgasm, she spat it back in my face' – I had to follow him saying that at the Royal Albert Hall." Davies believes comedians should be able to talk about anything as long as they are funny enough. "There are no taboo areas, it depends how talented you are. If you are really great, like Richard Pryor, you can go anywhere, but at the moment there are people who are not that great and all they are doing is causing offence." Davies, by contrast, tends to cause offence offstage, usually via Twitter. Last year the obsessive Arsenal supporter got into hot water with Liverpool fans when he criticised their team for not playing on the anniversary of the Hillsborough tragedy. He also became embroiled in the Lord McAlpine brouhaha by retweeting the peer's name, and later told his 450,000-plus followers he had apologised to McAlpine. "It's best I don't talk about it," he says. Shock is not his schtick. Davies's non-confrontational QI style is similar to his humour onstage, where he often portrays himself as the victim. In his stage show, Life Is Pain, he sends up his bemusement at modern technology, bemoans the strains of parenthood, and recalls how the death of his mother when he was six had a traumatic effect on him. He confesses to soiling his pants and burying them in the garden. One cannot imagine Boyle saying that. He insists that choosing comedy as a career was not about getting the love of an audience to compensate for his mother's absence. "I was always an attention-seeker. My mother made me what I am before she died. I remember her laugh and I wanted to make her laugh. People were buying me joke books, I always loved sitcoms." There are other programmes besides panel shows that he does not think he will be appearing on in the immediate future, though not out of choice. Davies feels that the chatshow circuit is virtually sewn up by acts handled by the "super-agent" Addison Cresswell's Off The Kerb, pointing to examples of interviews where host and guest are both Off The Kerb clients. "When you see Alan Carr interviewing Jack Dee or Jonathan Ross interviewing Lee Evans, you think 'thank God for The Graham Norton Show'." Despite occasional eruptions Davies is noticeably mellower than he was when I interviewed him at the start of the millennium. He married the children's author Katie Maskell in 2007. "Marriage is immediately stabilising," he says. Therapy helped too. "Jo Brand suggested I should go." He is clearly more at ease with himself. "I guess it's having a bit of distance. When I was in my 20s I was very ambitious to get on, even if I didn't know where to. I was so ambitious I got business cards with my phone number on them. I showed one to Jo Brand and she took it and tore it up." During his career he has seen plenty of clowns who could also benefit from time on an analyst's couch: "There are two types of comedians, self- harmers and golfers. The second lot are out on the golf course, they love being famous, playing golf, having their Rolls-Royce and house in Barbados, with no guilt. For others there is a sense that you had to pay your dues – 'my life is shit'. Why not just play golf and enjoy it?" He is filming a new Jonathan Creek story to be broadcast at Easter and has just got back from a day's filming near Watford, a location which reflects BBC belt-tightening. "We can't go more than 56 miles from TV Centre or they have to put everyone up overnight." Davies did not get a big pay cheque for dusting off Creek's duffel coat, something he indirectly blames on the Off The Kerb boss too. Sachsgate, suggests Davies, was the tipping point, after which contracts were more closely scrutinised: "It was Jonathan Ross's contract that made it a big story.