It's not exactly what you would call sticking it to the Man, but I did save myself a premium rate phone call and a few bob in subscriptions by not watching the Audley Harrison fight at the weekend. Boxing has its own channel now, BoxNation, where for a small fee you can watch pasty-faced Eastenders, or African-Americans you have never heard of, knocking seven bells out of each other any hour of the day or night, and Audley was their big attraction on Saturday night, fighting David Price for the British and Commonwealth heavyweight title.

As a consummate professional, I felt I ought to be among those present and set about accessing it, but they needed my Sky viewing card number which would have meant taking the card out of the digital box just as the rest of the family was gathered round the set for Strictly Come Dancing and those other Saturday night family bonding programmes that have replaced the sing-song round the piano we enjoyed when I was a lad – or would have had we had a piano.

Also, with a lot of these subscriptions the onus is on the subscriber to cancel, and I never get round to it. As a result there are direct debits on my bank statement that are a complete mystery to me. I really do not need my monthly copy of Philately and Philatelist, having given up stamp collecting some 50 years ago, and I could probably do without MUTV as well.

Still, if you were ever curious about what political and general world views underpinned the stylish midfield play of Scottish international and Manchester United legend Pat Crerand, the channel enlightened us this week. They're running a programme called The Football League Files, in which Jim Rosenthal looks back at the history of the world, much like Andrew Marr, but with more focus on United.

This week it was 1970, and Jim took us back to the aborted Apollo 13 space mission, on which Crerand's views were sought: "I was always interested in the space race because I'm a great believer we're not the only ones," said the elegant wing-half whose ball distribution played a big part in United's successes in the early 1960s. "I think there's people out there somewhere, and one of the reasons they don't make connection with us is because we're always killing each other."

Paddy added that 1970 was also notable for Ted Heath's election as prime minister, "which I wasn't happy about". Who knew? That was a tight election, as I recall, and if Crerand had made his views known at the time, he could maybe have swung it.

The mind was free to concentrate on such issues, with no top-flight football at the weekend. I hate those weekends: no Match Of The Day, no Ray Stubbs on ESPN with his little grey goatee beard, nothing much to laugh at at all. It is not even as if England are fun to watch, especially against teams like San Marino, where collectively they remind one of someone struggling to get into a packet marked "tear here" but with no proper perforations, eventually resorting to a pair of scissors – or Andy Carroll, in the case of England.

(Mark Lawrenson, also sporting a little grey goatee – is this some charity thing I have missed? – said on Football Focus that San Marino "should be in their own group with the Liechtensteins", who I remember as a charming couple who ran a small delicatessen round the corner from us.)

And so, in the absence of MOTD, to the boxing on Channel 5, who got lucky with their European super-middleweight title fight between James DeGale and Hadillah Mohoumadi. Mohoumadi is the French champion, which I gather is about as significant as being Albania's top crown green bowls player, but 5 promised us he would give DeGale a decent fight and, unusually for boxing, this was not just hype.

Not that the night was entirely free of the bombast fight game fans love. Profiled before the contest, DeGale asked: "What does the future hold for me? This maybe sounds big, but: Greatness." Boxers, eh, you can't help liking them.

Tyson Fury is another British boxer not greatly troubled by self-doubt, and Channel 5 was fortunate enough to catch him in the crowd for some inter-round chit-chat – or not, depending on how active m'learned friends are in the area of banter between boxers. Despite reminders he was "live on Channel 5", Fury was uninhibited in his assessment of Harrison's conqueror, David Price: "You see, you plumber from Liverpool, it's personal between me and you, and I'm going to do you some serious harm, you big stiff. They're going to need 10 plumbers to do you up, when I've finished with you."

Less controversially, he described Harrison as "the biggest bum inside boxing". The commentator Dave Farrar added that the Harrison fight had lasted just 82 seconds. Result: another lifetime commitment sidestepped.