Another Great British institution has been mercilessly destroyed with the new series of the BBC's long running sports quiz A Question Of Sport.
It's been inane drivel for some time now, but the new series has stooped to new depths. It's been moved to the later time slot of 10.35pm on a Monday night from it's former Friday slot at 7.30pm, and I'd suggest it has done so with ever more disastrous results.
Once upon a time, back in the good old days of David Coleman and the idiotic Emlyn Hughes, this used to be a sports quiz. A selection of sports personalities past and present would answer questions about sport. A very simple format, but one which worked perfectly well. Now, as I watch the annoyingly camp and ridiculous Matt Dawson take on the absurd Phil Tuffnell in games of charades and 'Stick The Tail On Gail Emms' arse' I long for the days when big but friendly beer-belly Bill Beaumont faced off with uber-mulleted cricketing legend Ian Botham. Now Sir Ian, if you don't mind. Which my mother does. Enormously.
The closest you came to forced humour in those days was the classic 'What Happened Next?' round. A tennis ball hitting some poor, unsuspecting line judge in the face or a miffed horse throwing some toff off it's back and into a stream seemed far more amusing than anything the current lot can come up with. Otherwise the comedy was much more natural. Hughes' legendary failure to identify the correct gender of Princess Anne springs immediateley to mind.
When there is a genuine sports question it is hopeleslly dumbed down so as not to embarrass any of the guests, lest they refuse to come back at a later date. You'll go a long way now to see any repeat of the staggering ineptitude of Jonathan Davies' performance on one particular occasion, while Ellery Hanley seemed equally incapable of answering simple questions on his own sport. Quite why it was always rugby league players who fluffed their lines I can't explain. Perhaps they're just the ones I remember most as I would most likely have been shouting the correct and obvious answer manically at the television set at the time. Only the team captains are denied protection now, with the old 'humiliate the skipper' gag just about the only thing to avoid the cull during the re-structure of the format. The only problem is that the contemporary captains are only too willing to play along with looking stupid and so the joke falls flat.
Fast forward to the present day and you don't even need to be a sports star to get on the show. Pointlessly, they've opened it up to any old celebrity with a spare hour who might just be trying to build or rebuild his or her career. Last night (December 6) we had the otherwise amusing Patrick McGuinness, with the real naffness provided by X-Factor warbler Olly Murs. What either knows about sport could be written on the back of one of Tuffnell's roll-up wacky-backy papers. All of which sends the whole thing into 'They Think It's All Over' or 'League Of Their Own' territory. Where once there was a sports quiz, now there is a 'knock-about' comedy show with a few party games thrown in. It's a tragic piece of television making, and doesn't even have the distinction of being original.
A Question Of Sport is one of the BBC's longest running shows, but on current form it can't be long before it is laid to rest and replaced by another God-awful reality show.
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