Wheels come off Hamilton’s chat show career
Driver’s stalled performance among the stars suggests sportsmen should stick to day job, writes Alan Tyers
Lewis issued the ominous warning that he is trying out hobbies to give himself stuff to do
Together at last! Finally a concerted letter-writing and lobbying campaign pays off as Lewis Hamilton and Mel Brooks are paired together on a TV show.
The 91-year-old comic great must have seen it all in a showbiz career that began in the 1940s; even the imagination that gave the world “Springtime For Hitler” might have struggled to conceive of a co-star as stuck in second gear as the F1 driver, with whom he shared the sofa on Jonathan Ross’s Saturday night talk show.
In a weekend where the debate about whether “sports stars should stick to sports” has been aired again, there is definitely a case for them to opt out of chat shows. Somebody, somewhere keeps encouraging Lewis to do these programmes: it is neither wise nor kind.
While one can appreciate why Lewis would want to do something other than driving around in loops in a car, he is not shown to his best advantage in the arena of badinage. His telly presence is the light entertainment equivalent of giving currency to Prince Charles’s views on architecture: misplaced, if kindly meant, deference to irrelevant status.
Still only 32, Lewis might well be a very famous person for another 50 years, and issued the ominous warning that he is trying out various hobbies to give himself stuff to do once he hangs up his driving gloves. There is a real danger that we might be watching him on chat shows for the rest of our natural lives. One would not expect Brooks, Ross, or fellow guests Paloma Faith and Russell Brand to drive at incredible speed around the Nürburgring. Why must we hope that sports people will be fun company on the telly?
Yet the lure, clearly, of being on the television is great for the sportsperson. Is it the need for attention, once the roars of the arena have faded to memory? The case of Wayne Bridge would suggest so. Hamilton’s appearance was a walk in the park compared with Bridge going on Lorraine a couple of days previously to discuss his sex life. There was no mention of John Terry, at least, so we must be grateful for those small mercies.
Wayne is married to Frankie – not Lampard, but rather a woman who is in a pop group called The Saturdays – and the pair of them seem to have made second careers of talking about the goings-on in the Bridge bedroom. Between them they have been on I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here, Loose Women and now this Lorraine show to discuss their conjugal relations, and we learn that Wayne is “very persistent” when in amorous mood.
Anyone who recalls his energetic, terrier-like doggedness up the left flank for Chelsea and England can only sympathise with Mrs Bridge. “You’ve got to get it while you can, really,” noted her husband, that incurable romantic.
As I am writing this, a press release arrives informing me that Wayne is going to be in Dublin this week to sprinkle some stardust, or at least sprinkle something, on a celebrity poker tournament. One imagines that Mrs Bridge will be glad to get him out of the house. Perhaps he might learn from the poker professionals the art of giving away as little as possible.
Wouldn’t we all be better served by our sporting heroes and heroines telling us a bit less about themselves?