Skip to main content

Dreams come true as Legard is Leggo. (Sorry)

It's tough out there in the dog-eat-dog, Ferrari-tries-to-eat-everyone world of Formula 1. Seems its also tough in the covering-the-world-of-F1 world, as Jonathan Legard has been dropped by the BBC as lead commentator.

Martin Brundle will take over as lead, with David Coulthard joining him in the commentary box. Significantly, DC will still do pit-lane shenanigans with the insanely-dressed, hard-pressed to get to the point Irish nutter Jordan, and Jake the rake Humphrey. He'll then have to leg it up to the box before the race, leaving us with the worrying prospect of allowing EJ even more time to get hopelessly lost in the complicated language strangulation that is the point he's trying to make.

Legard was brought in by Aunty Beeb when they took back F1 coverage from ITV. Initially, I thought he was OK, but as time has gone on, his constant use of a bunch of stock phrases (pushing on, anyone?), and lack of attention to what was going on, as well as regular errors, started to grate.

Fair enough... these are the reasons we all loved Murray Walker though, right? Yeee-es, but where Murray was so ferociously enthusiastic, Jonathan... just isn't that interesting. A bit like that irritating Uncle that shows up at Christmas and tells all the same jokes whilst incorrectly identifying people on the TV (and then scoffing all the mince pies), JL has seemingly worn out the patience of too many people.

The venom on twitter was pretty spectacular, that's for sure! I guess what finally did it for me was seeing a Lotus on-screen suddenly lose it's rear wing, and as the bits disintegrated on the track behind it, JL said that it looked like the Lotus had "lost a bit of it's front wing". Right. Get off. I've had enough now.

So Marty B and his sharp wit, and DC and his, er, sharp cheekbones, are the latest commentary combo. Should be interesting.

On the bright side, they could have got James Allen back instead.... Don't get me started. Nurse! The straps!

(Ooh, get me with my la-te-dah poshness! I'm listening to classical music tonight  - Beethoven's Egmont Overture. I didn't buy it; it came free with the Telegraph at the weekend.)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Faking it for real

As Donald “I’m really great, everybody says so” Trump is so fond of pointing out, there is a lot of fake news around nowadays. Honest. Your friends at Facebook think so too, and have recently been publishing their top tips for spotting false news – by placing them as ads in newspapers. Considering they came in for considerable criticism themselves, that’s like shouting “Squirrel!” and pointing at a tree whilst you hastily kick away the prize begonias you just trampled. To help you make sense of this (and because I’m a caring person), I thought I’d run you through their suggestions and help to explain them for you. I know. I’m lovely. 1. Be sceptical of headlines READING THIS ARTICLE WILL IMPROVE YOUR SEX LIFE!!! And explain that catchy headlines, or stuff all in capitals might be a bit iffy. 2. Look closely at the URL You can find out more about this at www.wowyouregullible.com if you want to understand how phony web addresses are a sure sign of dodgyness. 3. Investigate...

Going Underground

The US presidential election and Brexit must have made me more nervous than I’d realised. It seems I’ve created an underground bunker without realising I was doing it. Still – we’ve all done that at some point, right? No? Ah... In that case, the fact that I have inadvertently turned my cellar into a rudimentary survival shelter, just in case it all kicks off, demonstrates a severe case of bunker mentality. Fretting about Donald and his wall, and Hillary and her emails, clearly made me more paranoid that I thought about the possibility of WW3 kicking off. Whilst attempting to find a specific size of imperial washer the other day (turns out I’d mis-filed it in the nut cabinet – Tsk!) I was struck by what a lot of jam and chutney we have in the cellar. And I do mean a LOT. There are boxes of boiled-up sugar and fruit and more boxes of boiled up vinegar and fruit. We’re still only part way through 2015’s output too. Then there’s the plastic containers holding pasta in various for...

"It's all gone quiet..." said Roobarb

If, like me, you grew up (and I’m aware of the irony in that) in the ‘70s, February was a tough month, with the sad news that Richard Briers and Bob Godfrey had died. Briers had a distinguished acting career and is, quite rightly, fondly remembered most for his character in ‘The Good Life’. Amongst his many roles, both serious and comedic, he also lent his voice to a startling bit of animation that burst it’s wobbly way on to our wooden-box-surrounded screens in 1974. The 1970s seemed to be largely hued in varying shades of beige, with hints of mustard yellow and burnt orange, and colour TV was a relatively new experience still, so the animated adventures of a daft dog and caustic cat who were the shades of dayglo green and pink normally reserved for highlighter pens, must have been a bit of a shock to the eyes at the time. It caused mine to open very wide indeed. Roobarb was written by Grange Calveley, and brought vividly into life by Godfrey, whose strange, shaky-looking sty...