The death of Ingerlish
Michael Henderson
THE most remarkable thing happened the other day. An Aston Villa supporter rang up Radio Mate's phone-in and talked fluently for five minutes about the game he had just watched. He identified himself as Graham, and he spoke in complete sentences, without recourse to clichés, anger or snivelling. It was such an impressive, if unlikely, occurrence that it had the force of summer lightning.
There is a follow-up to this, of course, and it's obvious. Why can't the reporters on RM speak so well? Readers of this column may know by now that I regard the station — Radio Five Live — with little enthusiasm. In fact it strikes me as representing everything that is wrong with the self-admiring world of broadcasting and with the petty concerns of this increasingly infantile land, and I make no apology for returning to the subject.
Their reporting of football, with one or two honourable exceptions, is, by turns, overwrought and juvenile, and now that the footballers are at it again we are going to hear plenty of these schoolboys in the next nine months,They have abolished the verb, along with the letter T, and, as often as not, make the adjective do service for the adverb. Some of them shouldn't be working on hospital radio, never mind infecting the national airwaves with their bilge. Their self-appointed task, it often appears, is nothing less than the destruction of the English language in the name of their favoured sport.
Even the decent ones blunder into traps. Alan Green. as he likes everybody to know, is a colourful commentator but, judging by his eagerness to impose himself upon a match, he clearly thinks he is more important than the players. He is much given to asking, D'you know what I think?' and then providing observations that would clear a snug bar quicker than the ten-minute bell. So go on, Alan, tell us what you really think, only make it lively. Is Brendel a greater Schubert pianist than Schiff? Is Timothy Taylor's a finer 'session' pint than Marston's Pedigree? Do you still have the same hat size as you did, say, ten years ago?
The Ulsterman. however, is a shrinking violet compared with the risible, footballbesotted double-act, Ian 'Blubber' Payne, who sounds on the brink of tears whenever he has to ask an awkward question, and Susan 'Shouter' Bookbinder, whose reading of the news is so coarse that her bulletins have become collectors' items of grammatical errata. Also, poor deluded girl, she wears a Manchester City replica shirt at work, which is considered acceptable practice within the modern BBC. Who knows? Now that Greg 'give 'em muck' Dyke is running the show, that dress code may even be compulsory.
Stuart Hall remains from the old school of reporters, and he is usually good for a chuckle, even if the game he describes in that familiar rococo manner (Proud Preston's pretty pink panties') bears little relation to the one that actually took place. He grew up among a generation that knew there was a world beyond the touchline. The Paynes and Bookbinders seem to view everything that moves and breathes through the filter of football. It's like listening to gormless supporters rather than to reporters, who must, as a matter of course, remain disinterested.
The men who run the whole bang-shoot are Peter Salmon, the BBC head of sport, and Bob Shennan, the controller of Radio Mate. They think their boys and girls are jolly good, and should share a midnight feast of Jaffa cakes and fig rolls once a week. I think they should have a word with that Villa fan.
Previous page
