EN
Adrian Chiles is the target of a Facebook campaign to get him sacked as the host of the UK’s Independent Television Network (ITV) football coverage. There’s got to be a joke in there somewhere, that a man whose face was made for radio should be slandered on Facebook….. however… I trawled through the first fifty or so online complaints, and was hard-pushed to find any coherent reasoning behind the criticism from the usual pondlife which infests the internet, beyond that Chiles is ‘boring’ and ‘knows nothing about football’.
Another of Chiles’ sins seems to be that he does not attempt to disguise his Birmingham accent, a monotone widely ridiculed throughout the rest of the United Kingdom. Since I am from that same neck of the woods, I am doubly inclined to defend Chiles, as I would with any practitioner of a regional accent.
If I do hold any animus for Chiles, it is as a fervent supporter of West Bromwich Albion FC aka the Baggies, the occasional scourge of my own, neighbouring football team, Wolverhampton Wanderers, widely known as the Wolves.
But where Chiles. ahem, scores in my estimation is that, among the myriad clowns who fulminate about football on TV, at least he has had some journalistic training, and will ask the uncomfortable question, a talent which obviously passes by those (largely) illiterate internet critics who think that celebrity, and a capacity to play ‘keepy-uppy’ is all that is required to ensure former footballers continue to smirk at us regularly from pub walls or the corner of the living room.
As an occasional broadcaster and commentator myself, I sympathise deeply with Chiles. While my own strong opinions come across well in interview situations, I wasn’t a very good commentator, being far too hesitant and rambling, and lacking that seamless delivery which is the hallmark of the practised professional.
However, there is a wider debate here. Sports commentators are on a hiding to nothing. Football is worst since it is the most widely internationalised game. Every viewer is an expert; and thus knows better than the pundits. In some cases, viewers are right. My own particular bête-noire is John Motsam. Motty is best summed up by a prime example of his commentary – ‘That’s a penalty….. maybe’. Yes, he is a man without an opinion, when that is exactly what you want, and context, and explication. None of which you get from Motty, his speciality being the half-arsed factoid from fifty years ago.
It was my misfortune once, some quarter of a century ago, to attend a Rothman’s Football Year Book launch, at which Motty was the host. It was the same week that one of the infamous Colemanballs books was launched. (For non-UK readers, this was a series of books, listing commentary faux-pas, and named after David Coleman, who was otherwise a terrific commentator, at both football and athletics).
All his Mottship did for his fee was read out entries from the book of balls-ups, thus earning second-hand laughs, and notably lacking the class to read out any of his own (numerous) faux-pas, the little weasel. I suspect he is well-liked, even cherished as some sort of national institution, because he’s so incompetent that he’s unthreatening. Which is not the case with pundits and presenters such as Chiles, who does have an opinion.
And there’s the rub. I have a theory that the TV companies actually seek out incompetent and/or bellicose and opinionated commentators and summarisers, so that we can continue to scream at the screen, berating them for their ignorance and ineptitude (not forgetting their appalling grasp of English), in order to justify our own limited knowledge of how a diamond shape or a flat-back-four operates.
Whether Chiles survives the campaign or not, and TV companies are notoriously weaselly themselves on this sort of thing, he will still walk away with either his substantial pay-package or an even better pay-off; and he has shown a startling capacity to re-invent himself in the past, fronting news, celebrity, and even financial programmes. So he’ll do OK.
And the Facebook rent-a-mob will have to select another scapegoat to make up for the fact that the England team is useless, surely the sub-text for their animus. Pity that Motty’s retired. But perhaps somebody will kidnap and burn his sheepskin coat for me.
As a gesture.
(It’s not possible to post a comment at the moment, due to an ongoing mass-spam problem on the site)
