YOU’VE got to remember that referees are human beings like all the rest of us, we were told once more after the worst Arsenal fans in the world abused Michael Oliver over the internet this week.

Given the vast, vast majority of us hadn’t been mean to him online, it felt like we were all in detention because somebody else had gotten drunk.

Needless to say, there needs to be worldwide attention on tackling trolling and online abuse, and this, by the way, should not be restricted to English football referees; an eye-opening starting point might instead be to check the abuse from fuming gamblers that female tennis players get in their mentions whenever they lose a match.

But it is also possible to think Michael Oliver and the PGMOL reffing empire are not human beings in the same way others are.

We are all wired in different ways, but not everybody wants to be the lead, not everybody wants to be the centre of attention at all times, the alpha male, the top cat, the de Niro.

Some do crave the spotlight and we’ve noted before that the recently retired referees have found that gaining a bit of notoriety on the pitch can lead to lucrative opportunities once it becomes too tiring to run.

Switch on the TV on Saturday night and you’ll find the cheesy sight of former Premie League ref Mark Clattenburg in a humbug uniform umpiring Gladiators – using all his top division experience and skillset to judge a theatrical duel of giant cotton buds.

We also can’t escape Mike Dean – a referee who loved dramatic interventions and picture perfect frowns. Now we are invited to laugh at his pomposity and enjoy him all over again as he messes about in Paddy Power ads and playing the expert grump on Sky’s Soccer Saturday.

It’s impossible to know what gets Michael Oliver through his day or how he sees his future panning out.

Maybe he’d love a box on Blankety Blank or a turn in “the jungle”; there’s a celebrity version of The Traitors coming up.

Either way, bizarre and endlessly-talked about red cards like the one he dished out to Myles Lewis-Skelly on Saturday, will do him no harm for the future. When the hair goes grey, it’ll be another story to tell on a Lineker podcast, a line in an after dinner speech – a reason to be hired.