BY JOE NUTT
I’ve been a sports participant and a fan all my life. So one of very few things I can hand-on-heart thank the world of television for, besides Basil Fawlty and Noggin the Nog, is its near magical ability to gift me the joy of spectating, even when I can’t be there. I’ve been known to watch an entire stage of a cycling Grand Tour, such is my appetite for watching humans defeat literally mountains of suffering, and although I’m not a football fan at all, I’m a proud Englishman, so I sat through every one of the Lionesses’ European Cup games, often struggling to find my seat and in open-mouthed disbelief. I am a rugby fan and so the Red Roses recent success was less surprising, if every bit as uplifting for any England supporter, to witness.
Those countless hours watching have also been spent listening, because of course all TV sport comes with extensive commentary. If, like me, you are old enough to remember the BBC’s David Coleman, you will also know such was his reputation for verbal faux pas that Private Eye magazine named a section dedicated to the inadvertent slips of the tongue that are an inevitable risk if you give someone watching sport a microphone, and way too much time. I was spoilt for choice but went with this one because I assumed it was cycling, “The front wheel crosses the finish line, closely followed by the back wheel.” It isn’t difficult to see how any sports commentator in a moment of excitement might slide all too easily from describing the visible scene, to blurting out the sanguinary obvious.
I have untarnished admiration for the men and women who spend three weeks commentating the Tour de France day after the day. Most of their colleagues in other sports might have to fill the looming silence for ninety minutes or so, but for them it’s often half a day. No wonder they do it in shifts.
But however knowledgeable the presenter, or intense their enthusiasm, sports commentary is never more illuminating than wallpaper or lift music. Occasionally an ex professional will deliver some genuine insight into tactics or skill, or just brighten the event with anecdote, but generally every commentator’s voice is merely ornamenting what your eyes can see for themselves.
There are a few who understand the raw power of the spoken word. I like to think in their distant youth, maybe someone taught them Beowulf or read to them from The Iliad. Other cycling fans may recognise the one commentator in particular, who has a gift for hilariously daft wordplay. In the white heat of a crazy sprint finish, and close to hysteria, I nearly choked on my mug of tea when I once heard him yell, “It’s fun! It’s mental…it’s fundamental!”
I think most of us understand this about mainstream media and sport. We tolerate the soundtrack in the same way we tolerate the background music in a hotel lobby, or at best engage with it as enthusiastically as we would engage with the Tannoy at Waterloo. What I think has yet to be properly understood, is that most mainstream media political commentary today, is absolutely no different.
I realised this recently when a series of video clips from a series of ex BBC journalists appeared on my social media feed, shortly after I’d watched an English team brandishing a World Cup on television, for only the third time in my entire life. I was immediately struck by the similarity in tone, demeanour but most significantly, content.
It is no accident at all that it was specifically ex England soccer player and pundit, Gary Lineker, who found himself the focus of a fierce debate about the politics BBC employees should, or should not give succour and voice to. I can completely see why he saw no difficulty whatsoever in crossing that line, since the two activities are essentially the same. I doubt whether he even perceived there might be a line to cross.
So if you are tempted to actually indulge the fantasies of the BBC’s ex-employee club, the Beeb’s EEC, if you like; that their personal analysis of, or insights into the all too frighteningly real world of contemporary global affairs or UK politics is worth spectating; make sure you have something else to listen to simultaneously. I mean no one in their right mind would say, ‘Alexa, play me some lift music please. I want to watch the news.’
Joe Nutt is the author of several books about the poetry of Donne, Milton and Shakespeare and a collection of essays, The Point of Poetry and he writes regularly for a number of magazines.