Saturday, February 23, 2008

FIRST IMPRESSIONS




Who on earth needs Frank Gorshin, Mike Yarwood or Alistair McGowan when you can tune in to BBC Sport?
"Super Saturday" kicked off with Football Focus and the great Garth Crooks, who does a Burt Lancaster (as Elmer Gantry) which has to be seen, and heard, to be believed. Elmer was succeeded by Sir Matthew Pinsent, impersonating an investigative reporter, and on the loose in Beijing at licence payers' expense.
Backed up by Gabby Yorath dolled up in her winter finery a la Julie Christie in Dr Zhivago, Matty gave us the lowdown on Human Growth Hormone, how to get it, and where, along with the startling revelation that it can't be detected.
Quite apart from the fact that I can get this insider's info (and a month's supply) with a couple of clicks of a mouse and without leaving my seat, if Matty really wanted to give us a new slant on a doper's Olympics all he had to do was have a word with Jurgen Grobler, his former GB rowing coach who knows a thing or two about this subject. On then to the rugger with Sonia (Hyacinth) McLoughlin. Sonia's interviewing technique consists of shouting, at around 115 decibels, one of two questions: How disappointed are you, Nick/Frank/Brian? Or, how delighted are you, Warren/Eddie?
The girl will go far, but probably not as far as Jill Douglas, unsurpassable exponent of the How? question.
Finally, from Paris came the curtain act, Laurel and Hardy, aka Eddie Butler and Brian Moore. One thing has always puzzled me about Eddie. How can he spend 80 minutes commentating on an international rugby match while at the same time producing 1,000 words or so for the following morning's Observer? Or does he simply, as I suspect, concentrate on his newspaper work and get Alistair McGowan in to call the match?



1 comment:

Huw said...

I think you'll find the smirking sultaness of smarm Hazel Irvine will out-How Jill Douglas. But it's close.
huw, www.runflux.com