According to The Guardian Football, Mike Dean revealed to his hosts that in the pre-VAR era he and his assistants used to keep themselves amused by playing little games within games of top-flight football. "We used to say: 'Right, we'll kick off now, right? See how long we can go without blowing a whistle'," Dean said. He claimed that they went 20-25 minutes without blowing a whistle a few times. Graham Scott, a former whistle-blower, has questioned the validity of Dean's claims, stating that they "smack of a desperation for validation from an insecure man eager to impress the bigger boys." Scott also suggested that Dean may have been using a persona as a coping mechanism.