FOOTY’S TV PUNDITS AND COMMENTATORS
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

Be honest now: How many times have you wanted to do mortal harm to a footy TV pundit or commentator? How many times have you heard one of them say something so coruscatingly stupid, so opposite to common sense, so THICK, that you immediately willed him into a pair of concrete shorts, swimming with the fishes? Or, failing that, loosed a volley of invective that had your good lady slack-jawed with horror, your nippers giggling with uncontrolled glee and your granny clutching her chest in cultural panic?

Friends, let me ease your guilty conscience. We have all felt and acted thus. Had we acted out our more illegal chauvinist instincts the bottom of our beloved river would be clogged with skeletal cadavers with heavy duty mics wedged sideways in their sagging mandibles.

But it doesn’t do to take the potential victims seriously. After all, most of them do that themselves and hardly need help from us fans. Best treat them as fair game for free-style amusement, a sort of schlock theatre rep. formed by Archie Rice. It is a safe bet William Hogarth would have relished the opportunity to engrave these fabulist, rouge-cheeked pierrots in search of inflated salaries, freebies to big matches and gratis alcohol. Hence this highly subjective amble through ranks so ham they could dangle as a window display in your corner deli.

Irritatingly, they manage to infiltrate our living rooms though some of them are absolutely the last people you want there. Me, I’d rather have some pinky friends in before I’d let most “TV personalities” even try the door entry ‘phone. As it is I imagine there are many TV sets splattered with takeaway remnants and an outraged beer-can or two hurled in a spasm of high dudgeon. Quite right too. Allow them nothing but your uncontained scorn. This is as it should be for those who queue around the block for easy money and then jockey for position as this month’s media flavour-of-the-month. Most non-ugly and non-obese fans suspect, and they are quite right, that given a few weeks basic training and access to modern video technology and a reliable make-up functionary and hairdresser they could do the job just as well, and probably better. If you have watched the game for a long time and absorbed some wordly lessons, and avoided the many chauvinist and narcissistic snares, then you don’t need some media free-loader stating the obvious about the game you love.

But there are so many pundits these days you have to be selective when you make your observations. You can’t include them all or you’d be here for a week. So if I have missed your favourite target man it is only because I had to stop somewhere. Worry not. The turnover is as high as your average internet message forum. There are bound to be new “stars” along any day, and for roughly the same reason: Nincompoops are tedious drones. One drone replaces another. Long term drones are by definition the most tedious.

On the grounds of good taste I automatically exclude the nazi Rupert Murdoch and his lackeys on faecal Sky TV from my target list. Like many citizens of our beloved city I have not bought into any media outlet owned by the self-proclaimed “born again christian” Australian/American (probably one of the prices he was asked to pay for his American “citizenship”) and his untalented brats. It has been that way since the Hillsborough disaster and will remain so till the day I expire. I know that sounds melodramatic but it’s the way I feel. I mean nothing impersonal or indirect when I say drop dead, Rupert. I hope you, your brats and your type burn in hell. Slowly, very slowly, and in great pain.

(And to make sure there’s no misunderstanding, I repeat for the umpteenth time: Our game doesn’t need him. He needs us. Desperately. Without football audiences and the ensuing advertisement money Sky TV would go bankrupt. His demise can’t come soon enough for this citizen. The truth is, with the advent of the internet we don’t really need mainstream media at all in football. Of course that applies too in a much broader context. But let’s stick to footy. Social evolution will take care of the rest.)

The subject is complicated a little by the ongoing ratings war between the BBC and ITV. Where footy is concerned the Beeb are winning it hands down. Apart from one or two blips this has been the case since the days of flickering black and white screens when Kenneth Wolstenholme was pitched against hapless Gerry Loftus. Wolstenholme was no great shakes, a bag of wind in fact, which tells you all you need to know about poor Gerry. Then the advent of appalling David Coleman pushed Kenneth to one side too and Wolstenholme ended up commentating somewhere in the wastes of Tyne Tees TV. Sooner or later they all get too big for their britches.

Accordingly I have divided the roll call between BBC and ITV. In my view the Beeb is much better and in no immediate danger of displacement. This is because of, not in spite of, the famous BBC school that tries to erase all traces of human personality. It fails of course and therein lies the charm. Idiosyncracies burst out at weird and unexpected moments, whereas commercial TV is usually so intent on its We’re All Mates Together phoney populism it has the substance of gossamer. For instance, when BBC’s John Motson loses it on air he has the sound of an unfrocked cockney priest after a first snort of charlie. When someone like ITV’s Clive Tyldesley lapses he gets merely more nasally absurd, which isn’t surprising given the diameter of his nostrils and passé manc bias. Then again, ITV have never been much good at anything to do with sport, probably because there would be a ratings haemorrhage if they tried the sort of ad breaks which have ruined American sports broadcasts. They’re just plain commercially scared and it shows. You get the impression ITV would like to do away with programmes altogether and only broadcast advertising. Which would be fine by me because then I would ignore them completely.

BBC 1’s main footy anchor man and talking head is Gary Lineker, a one-season ex-player of ours who fronts “Match of the Day” on Saturday nights and important midweek games. I have been wary of Gary ever since I first heard him say “Everton” in three careful syllables, as though the word had occult overtones. Howard Kendall must have hurt him badly when he got shut so quickly in the 80s. Furthermore, he has the chintzy cheerfulness of an Ikea three-piece suite or a set of Laura Ashley curtains with tie-backs in some arid suburban hellhole like Croydon, Solihull, Heswall or Crosby. It’s an odd combination. His voice has an unassuming single tone pitched somewhere between East Midlands lenitive and a “home” counties mug of Horlicks. It isn’t that he has a stiff upper lip, more of a floppy lower lip. Both of them herald a sound so dull you wonder why he gets out of bed each morning. But having managed it, you couldn’t imagine Gary going unshaven for a change or getting so emotional he shouts something more exotic than, say, “Gosh!” He looks and sounds as though he got to play professional football accidentally, almost apologetically, via the local accountants or bankers leagues. Worse, he wears a permanent smirk. In short, like Des Lynam (now a not unexpected failure at ITV), a perfect BBC-type.

Which is probably why the Beeb pitch him opposite talkative ex-pinkies Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson so they can manufacture “controversial” issues and easy retrospective match analyses. Hansen was one of the first media-ambitious ex-players of the modern era and it shows every time he shouts at the furniture and the camera. Whenever he goes off on one he reminds me of a retired Jock ex-sergeant major everyone in the regiment avoided like the plague. His hair has undergone some intriguing coloured topiary morphs since it began to go grey, particularly his David Ferrie-ish eyebrows. As time passed he got lazy and started to slide further down the studio sofa, trousers hitching further and further up until they got as taut as pantomime tights with a badly stitched cod-piece. It’s a sure sign of over-confidence. In fact Hansen’s genitalia and attitude must have upset the Suits mightily because the whole set got changed: out went the coffee table and sofa, in came upright conference chairs and an incredibly awful high level table that looks like wood grain laminate bonded to a cheap MDF carcass. Lawrenson, a cod “Irish” player from north Lancashire, performs in a lower key. But once started it almost takes an AK45 to shut him up. Every now and then he can’t resist a sudden mutinous attempt to run the show instead of Lineker. Add in a girly voice and an occasional unsettling female-like sofa squirm and you wonder if he wouldn’t be better off doubling with that loquacious horror balloon, Vanessa Feltz. His repose is entirely different to Hansen’s – never sits up straight, lolls to his right and usually rests his head against the palm of his bent right arm, or his right shoulder, a caricature of a bloodhound just bitten into a lemon. He too has started dyeing his hair, with spectacular comic results around his ears and sideburns.

Manish Bhasin is the BBC 1 Saturday midday Preview equivalent of Gary Lineker but much younger, handsomer, wide-eyed and, impossibly, even more squeaky clean. But you can’t hold the Beeb down in this media personality business – they’ve allowed him occasionally to keep a greased-up spikey hair-do, typically at a time when it is almost out of style even among the slobs of Generation X. Faced with some grizzled ex-pros on the pundit sofa he looks and sounds like a sixth former meeting his idols for the first time. These days ex-pros are almost elbowing each other to get on the upholstery and prove they have what it takes to become A TV Footy Personality. Alan Shearer is the latest determined addition, closely followed by Ian Wright, Lee Dixon, Gavin Peacock and a few others.

Wrighty was even given some non-footy programmes to host but his incomprehensible cockney finally convinced the Beeb Suits that either, (a) he listened to the voice coaches, or (b) made himself understandable, or (c) he was fucked off. For the time being the jury’s out on loveable Wrighty, although you have to say he has at least stopped mumbling and saying “Awesome, man!” at two minute intervals. He also rid himself of the bling jewellry that had him mistaken for a Highbury pimp. He could do worse than watch how Les Ferdinand deals with everything. Which is with the kind of level-headedness Wrighty finds so hard. Moreover Les has kept his cockney accent without losing coherence. Meanwhile, Shearer got himself into pole position by offering observations so anodyne he transforms Lineker into Jean-Paul Sartre; he’s bound to be a success at the Beeb. Not that dishevelled-hair, long-faced Manc Lee Dixon is out of the running, not with those flat manc vowels and attenuated ultimate consonants and Arsenal previous. Harmless, baldy Gavin Peacock only comes off the subs bench when someone can’t get a taxi to the studio.

Tranmere Rovers fan Ray Stubbs alternates with Mark Pougash in running the Saturday afternoon score update programme. I used to like Stubbsy until he suddenly developed the image of a slab of class C travertino, his eyes hardened into unblinking glass marbles and his mouth moved as though shifting dentures. Then his shape began to swell alarmingly and his neck expand exponentially between his ear lobes and the tips of his shoulders. Such an outline is not appropriate for a three-button suit but that doesn’t bother Stubbsy. I don’t know why this transformation happened, perhaps because he fell down the Beeb’s pecking order (he stands in when others are off on holiday or sick) and got disillusioned. If so, it’s a pity. Resentment gets you nowhere. And he reacts far too easily to Lawro’s giggly piss-taking when a bad Tranmere result comes through. But he’s still a long way ahead of Pougash and his half horn-rimmed 60s specs. Gawd knows where the Beeb found this understudy for Michael Douglas in “Falling Down”……………perhaps in a Surbiton bank branch or a shipping office somewhere in Hull or behind the till of a convenience store in Leatherhead. When things get awkward you can’t miss the service-counter stress in his voice, especially if someone neatly dodges his questions and smiles while doing it. No, Mark’s best place is taking minutes at a meeting of the local Council Tax Payers Association.

My current favourite talking head is unquestionably formerly-rotund, now-health-club-trim, smiling, Cheesehead lookalike, coxcomb Adrian Chiles on BBC 2’s “Match of the Day 2” on Sunday nights. West Brom to his finger tips and proud of it, he has the kind of gentle self depreciation the game lacks at all levels. This compensates nicely for the Brummy accent. I just wish he would dispense with waving his arms when he gets edgy. He doesn’t need it, not with those carefully crafted comedy video vignettes of the weekend’s playing howlers. I’ll take his enthusiastic and humorous style any day over the phony punditry of messrs. Lineker, Hansen and Lawrenson, or the self important seedy-looking journos who occasionally snake their way on to the box and add nothing to the occasion.

Commentary-wise, you have to say John Motson and (off screen) Mark Lawrenson are unbeatable. In fact it’s worth waiting through some catatonic playing phases for Motty to crack up. When he unglues the results would qualify him for a role in a Spike Milligan radio script, especially if the Brazilians are playing. During a pre-match warm up at the last Weltmeister – I repeat, A WARM UP – Goofy knocked a couple of quite ordinary passes to team mates and Motty was GONE. “Just LOOK at Ronaldinho,” he squeaked in the tone of a doting grandfather waiting to give a birthday present. Lawro-as-cocommentator is an exact opposite to his girly, squirming sofa personna. Everything he says is sound, unsensational common sense, well phrased and immaculately delivered. There’s an aesthetic lesson in there somewhere for him but I doubt he’ll pick it up. He’s far too busy talking.

Occasional commentator Jonathan Pearce swaps channels so regularly it is virtually impossible to pin him down. He was on the Beeb last time I looked. When I first heard him commentating some years ago I had to do a double-take to ensure it wasn’t some camp 90s comedian trying to take the piss. Since then he’s calmed down on the octaves and the delivery rate but gawd help you if someone buries a long distance whopper while he’s on air. It gives him the microseconds needed to wind up and do an impression of veteran pop diva Diana Ross singing through a whoopee cushion in Central Park while operating an air raid siren.

But if it is forensic commentary you seek, look no further than the BBC’s incredible Mark Bright. This is a man who long ago forgot he’s on television and observes play accordingly. I shit you not, some of his descriptions would do credit to a CSI team on heat: “Look…… see…… the ‘keeper rolls the ball gently along the ground, then picks it up, tosses it into the air and kicks it, hard, right-footed, um, forty, forty-five, fifty metres downfield to a waiting, marauding striker, who slips slightly on an area still wet from pre-match watering – look, you can still see the hoses around the running track – then turns and……………” And so on, all of it in the kind of exalted radio voice you hear after South American revolutionaries have ousted a capitalist-imperialist US-sponsored puppet government. Television for the blind. Whenever Mark’s name is announced on my TV it immediately gives off a Will To Live Alert and switches to mute.

The Beeb’s general factotum is woodentop Garth Crooks. He’s likely to pop up anywhere – on the sofa, interviewing pitchside or in a club’s media section plastered with crude microads, or sometimes even as second man in a downmarket commentary. You can see why the Beeb keep him around, though. He’s one of those characters who speaks with great certainty even when he’s talking undiluted shite. Moreover, he’s the only TV media footy man I know who verbals everyone with the caps key locked, as in “WHAT’S YOUR OPINION, MARTIN?” During interviews he fixes the victim with the kind of stare employed by MI5, the Gestapo or Jeremy Paxman. In the closed world of media bullshit this kind of behaviour is termed “charisma.” Which really means nothing more than a predictable and reliable performance trait – a shtick even – that keeps untalented TV producers in a job while kidding themselves all those blinking lights and control screens are anything more than a chimera. Hilariously, Pougash caught Garth out recently when he made a wildly inaccurate statement about some player or other and, disconcerted, woodentop immediately riffled through notes on a clipboard while he was on camera. Nothing if not scripted is our Garth, even when he’s wrong.

Commercial TV can’t possibly compete with this cast of characters. So by and large they don’t even try. Example, they gave up on dear old Des Lynam after he transferred there “for the challenge” (sic), not the money of course, failed to inject himself with ITV ladishness and gradually got ushered out of the picture and into an afternoon wordgame show. Instead, they give us a mixture of Steve Rider, Clive Tyldesley, David Pleat, Peter Drury, Andy Townsend, John Helm, Joe Royle, Pat Nevin, Jim Rosenthal, Matt White, Jon Champion, Robbie Earl and John Barnes. At one time their main talking head was a woman, Gabby Logan, daughter of Terry Yorath. Thankfully she disappeared after too many bad-hair days and an increasing likeness to the witch in “Snow White.” I’ve never trusted anyone who has excess black eye make-up and a downward curved nose trying to fuse with an equally upward curved chin. There may be other names but I can’t say they’ve left any worthwhile impression. Then again, the established ones don’t exactly fill you with quivering anticipation.

Of these, Pleat is the oddest, really weird in an old macintosh sort of way. You wouldn’t want him standing next to you in a bar in case he tried to talk to you. There aren’t many football administrators who acquire the curious outdated ambience of an old style retired housemaster but Pleat managed it with ease. It’s the voice, see, all clipped sentences and quasi-confident epigrams, some of which turn out to be entirely erroneous. Curiously, he has no accent whatever. There’s something else about him that makes you take a couple of uneasy sidesteps away, but I can’t tell quite what it is. Well, nobody’s perfect.

The main anchor man on footy nights is Steve Rider, the ITV exception who proves the rule. Grey/blond blow-dried hair stiff with lacquer, suit, shirt and tie immaculate to the point of blandness, Rider is so self-effacing you sometimes forget about him as soon as he finishes his last sentence. The voice is utterly ITV-wrong and has the hue of a commentator on crown green bowling or Songs of Praise. He always looks like he wants to be elsewhere. I wish I could help him there. He reminds me of Richard Pryor’s glorious line on sex, “Don’t know ‘bout you white folks, but after three minutes fuckin’, ah need eight hours SLEEP.” Steve, you feel, would smile thinly at that one before changing the subject to the price of baguettes in Tesco.

The pundits opposite (typically, the Beeb usually have their footy anchor man on the left of your screen, ITV have him on the right) are ex-players Andy Townsend (another cod “Irish” player, this one cockney and a shouter) and Robbie Earl. Pat Nevin gets a look-in every now and then since he’s the only one who has a university degree. Where the Beeb don’t mind open necked shirts ITV mostly have their lads in suits, shirts and ties. The result is often as sartorially comic as Laurel and Hardy. Andy’s tailor must be Arfur Daley. Last time I saw him he had a dark chalk-stripe suit, a pin-stripe shirt and what looked like a club tie for the Chalk Farm Barrow Boys Association. Robbie’s much more tidy, a quietly uncomfortable Mister Nice Guy who doesn’t want to say someone’s just had a really bad game and really they’d be better off taking up bar billiards.

Tyldesley used to be a local commentator on Radio City until he gouged a niche with Granada TV in Manchester and then formed a duo with Ron Atkinson. When Fat Ron rightly got sacked for open racism this left Tyldesley in a bind he has never quite resolved. Mostly he gets paired with David Pleat. Nobody can sound relaxed when Pleat’s about, especially someone exuding unctuous manc-worshipping tones. This naturally magnifies the prejudice and leaves you with the distinct impression Clive would rather be off in the safety of a Didsbury pub than in the company of someone who doesn’t share his bias. We don’t see much of Clive on screen anyway. If you HAVE seen him you will understand right readily. He looks like someone’s just punched him square on the nose. Which might be true, and, if it is, the assailant would doubtless find himself the recipient of countless rounds of free drinks from a grateful nation. Every now and then the Suits try him with Jim Beglin but that doesn’t work either.

I am pleased to report a great improvement in commentator Peter Drury’s speech pattern. By and large he has eliminated the unnerving sound of spraying saliva during exciting phases of play. He has also dropped a slightly patronising libretto. Once upon a time these deplorable traits threatened to overtake his media personality and morph him into a droid of Roy Hattersley, Foghorn Leghorn and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Fortunately he paid attention to the after-match state of his microphone and drew the right conclusion; either he changed his ways or ran an increasing risk of electrocution. These days he is one of the easiest to listen to of all the ITV crew, though he too has bonding problems with David Pleat. Don’t we all.

No such problems for Jon Champion, my second favourite commentator of all. Who, like all good pros, doesn’t need a second man to help with an hour and a half’s leisure. Champion has exactly the right combination of enthusiasm, knowledge and sharp observation. All of which, of course, keeps him well down the priority list when the producers are handing out commentary commissions. We don’t hear nearly enough of him. The same applies to Jim Rosenthal.

ITV’s best commentary pair are John Helm and Joe Royle, who have developed an interesting duet in country-pub avuncular. You can almost smell pipe tobacco and see kindly, indulgent smiles when a player makes a massive cock-up on the edge of the penalty area. Both of them use the word “young” an awful lot while managing – just – to avoid the tones of rural patronage. Where Joe’s concerned it is understandable because he’s spent far too long in the wilds of East Anglia. I’m not sure what John’s excuse is. Still, they are easy on the ear and show a sound affection for the game without getting too precious.

The most hapless of all the ITV spacemen is an alien from Planet Zog named Matt White. Unfortunately for our chauvinism he landed somewhere in the Wirral. Thankfully for the sensibilities of Earthmen he is currently restricted to reporting on the lower divisions and has been banned from interviewing at length or indulging the pundit sofa genre. Basically, Whitey is pretty useless at TV footy whatever the format, but you have to hand it to the ITV Suits – they persevered and tried everything with the boy before throwing their hands in the air and giving him the Beautiful Game’s version of “Emmerdale.” You can’t be fairer than that. After all, Whitey really does have the kind of visual presentation problems that has you actually admiring historian Simon Schama’s choreographed twitches in “A History of Britain.” I don’t know why, but Matt seems completely incapable of ridding himself of the eerie look of a whipped springer spaniel in season, the mouth and lips of Julia Roberts, the unsettled resentful eyes of a sulky adolescent and an interview technique (now banned) that has him cocking his head slightly to one side with a pleading look every time he asks a question. It might help him too if he read Lynn Truss’s admirable punctuation tome, “Eats, Shoots & Leaves.” It might help him avoid the trap of full stop anarchy during a wrap, such as, “He had. A good game. Today. Better than. Last week.” Not only does he look entirely out of his depth, he looks weary of physical existence. At this rate I expect him to be removed from the scene, weeping gently. After which expect the sound of a pistol shot.

At one time I worried greatly for John Barnes out there on the edge of the media solar system at Channel 5, the equivalent of ex-planet Pluto. For a short while John was a neighbour of mine until he got a TV contract and the media boys got to work on him. At first the on-air results were a disaster. He sounded truly awful, similar to a parrot on crack cocaine after inhaling dentist gas, which is not at all the way he is in the real world. Away from TV the man is warm, friendly and completely at ease. You wanted to plead with him, “For fuck’s sake, John, get out while the going’s good.” Then he disappeared for a time, presumably while the Suits tried to retrain him to rescue their investment. To my relief when he came back he was a lot better and much more relaxed.

All in all, honourable exceptions apart, the TV boys and girls are a motley crew of overpaid information clerks with no real talent. Like journalists, you couldn’t imagine them actually working for a living, not if it involved something as exacting as concentration, ability, skill and effort for longer than an hour and a half. Most of them wouldn’t have a clue what to say or do if they weren’t plugged into an ear piece wired to the control freak in the producer’s glass box. There’s no reason why anybody should have any more regard for them than the passing glance you spare a traffic bollard. Often you hear much more common sense and better humour in footy chat with your family and friends. Most TV media people give me the impression they’ve never recovered from their first sight of a studio control room and all those coloured lights and screens. Easily seduced by the novelty, they come to believe they are more important than mere video apparatchiks. Many of them are as vacuous and empty-headed as a loose-hipped, doped-up catwalk model or airline stewardess.

As time and the internet wear on the whole footy video and streaming medium will change. We are already well down the road to video broadcast technology that will enable you to choose for yourself which camera angle you view, to stop, freeze frame, slomo and resume in real time. That being the case, what do you need commentators and pundits for? You can do your own analysis and apply your own common sense and experience. What more do you need for a live match than a few open microphones to broadcast crowd sounds? Selective video graphics can enable you not only to identify players but also get a full biog and playing statistics if you want them. Which means Motty especially would be queuing at the dole office.

But until that happens the best thing you can do is make fun of them all. They have no other real purpose. In the meantime you can just turn the sound off.

Still, it could be worse: Ally bleeding McCoist could still be around trying to do your head in with that permanent inane fixed grin and fractious professional Jock set, the one that has you suspect he might be knobhead enough to indulge powdery substances or a bladder full of lousy beer to underpin his media position as nominal court jester. Then again, why shouldn’t he? If you believe in junky lala land, footy’s TV pundits and commentators help you confirm your fantasies. In the end that’s all they are there for, antidotes to the corporeal world.

Me, I prefer reality. It might be occasionally uncomfortable but it stops the blood from congealing to the dreary backbeat bullshit of Gary Mahesh Yogi Lineker. (27/10/06)

Mickey Blue Eyes Index