Is the BBC ready for this?

There is an apartheid system in a football press box. The newspaper reporters huddle among themselves while, confined to their own row, the radio hams hunch over their microphones. The segregation works so well that, from my days as a match reporter, I can't remember a single one of the radio blokes. Except Jonathan Pearce.

Pearce, the voice of football on Capital Gold these 15 years, would be silent for vast swathes of the match until - cued by the studio - he'd spontaneously detonate: words would cascade out of him like flying debris, spitting across the box, out among the surrounding fans and, for all I know, down onto the pitch. Then he'd hand back to the studio and peace would be restored.

Terry Venables used to play tapes of his commentaries on the match coach to gee up the England team in Euro '96. Perhaps it was Pearce's doing that England beat Spain on penalties, a victory which enabled him to say: "Salvador Dali! Pablo Picasso! Jose Carreras! El Cordobe! Don Quixote! Your boys are out and England are through! And you can stick it up your Julio Inglesiarse!"

He claims he never scripts these things; they just spill out. Whatever, Pearce is the unembarrassed quintessence of independent radio sport. Or he was. The golden larynx, the hyperventilating motormouth, the verbal volcano, the high priest of high octane has gone and joined the BBC. Just in time for the World Cup. Switch on Five Live to listen to matches involving France and others, and the man whose other job is commentating on Robot Wars will be your guide to the action.

There are many words to describe Pearce, but "Reithian" ain't one of them. The BBC will encourage him to play his natural game, but there are some audacities that you can't get away with on Radio Five that you can on Channel 5.

"The reason they say they want me is because of the picturepainting. But there will be less London patter," says Pearce. "There are certain things I know I won't be able to do. When the Argies cheated in St Etienne and tried to cheat against Holland, I said, 'The Argies are heading out of the World Cup and good bloody riddance!' I don't think I'll be able to say that on the BBC."

He won't be doing England games but, barring a diplomatic incident, he has already been assured of a semi-final - the one not being done by Five Live's A-Team of Mike Ingham and the equally voluble Alan Green. It's not yet certain who'll be doing it with him. But it is certain that noses will have been put out of joint.

"Those further down the pecking order must be concerned that they've dropped a place," a BBC Sport insider says. "Except that their argument is that there is no hierarchy after the top two."

"I was worried noses might be put out of joint and have been assured that that is not the case at all," Pearce says. "They said that they were going to give me games as befitting my experience.

"It's not about who's number one, two or three. It's about going to see football matches... sad as it may seem for someone at the age of 42." Pearce's defence of his style is that "all I ever try to do is say what the supporters are feeling". Which is why, from the start of next season, he will be replacing Richard Littlejohn as the presenter of 6-0-6.

That was one sweetener - and there are others in the pipeline. But it can't have been a hard decision. Moving from Capital Gold to Five Live is, in footballing terms, the rough equivalent of a transfer from dodgy geezers Crystal Palace (his wife's a season-ticket holder) to patrician, classy, eversoslightly-smug Arsenal.

People don't realise that the man who can scream "Ready, steady, Teddy Sheringham!" was also responsible for mind-numbing things such as departmental budgets at Capital Gold. And the bottom line was that they just didn't have the budget to compete.

Last season, London's station had rights to only three of the capital's six Premiership teams; he hadn't done any of Arsenal's Champions League games for two years and - with no rights to the World Cup - Pearce would have missed his first major championship since 1988.

"When I realised that Capital Gold weren't doing the World Cup I was absolutely gutted. I'd gone as far as I could there.

"One of the major reasons I'm looking forward to Radio Five Live is I won't have any management duties.

"I was controlling the budget, trying to organise the network.

At the BBC a department of 10 does that. At Capital Gold it was just me, basically - by which time I'd already virtually made up my mind to go to the BBC."

For the record he thinks that "if England get through the group and lose to France, that will have been a credible World Cup".

What with all Sven-Goran Eriksson's injury worries, I put it to him that England could do with former coach Glenn Hoddle's faith-healer, Eileen Drewery. "Maybe," he shot back, "they could get Ulrika over there and she could lay her magic hands on various parts."

Who said football has gone up-market?