Trailblazing Alex is taking the focus from my jumpers
IHAVE a real problem with Alex Scott. I’ve kept my powder dry for a long time now, but I’m just going to come right out and say it because there’s only so much a man can take.
Put simply, it’s her jumpers. Up until Alex switched from pitch to studio, I only led the way in one department when it came to football presenters, and that was my jumper game.
Others may have more football knowledge, a smoother delivery and can say the word ‘shower’ properly but I’ve always been out in front when it came to the pullover.
Then, along came Scott and ruined everything. I even stooped as low as to message her a while back to enquire over a particular brand she was rocking. She’s living rent free in my head.
My wardrobe looks set to become even more dated with the news she is most likely going to replace Dan Walker as host of Football Focus, a BBC magazine programme that started in 1974 and has somehow managed to survive every seismic shift in sports broadcasting.
She will be the programme’s first full-time female host, and it’s never easy being a trailblazer. I should know.
Not wanting to big myself up or come across as arrogant, but I was the first idiot to present Match Of The Day 2.
Let me make myself clear. This is not a column giving my seal of approval to Alex Scott. She doesn’t need it, nor do I have the right to give it.
Starting conversations with phrases like ‘she deserves’ is an archaic framing.
In these very same spaces, we don’t discuss a man ‘deserving’ of being in it, whether he has played for England or not.
I’m mindful that, even in writing this column, I maybe skirting close to mild hypocrisy, but what overrides that is the importance of men in my industry actively speaking up and doing work that helps to drag it into the 21st century.
And on that note, to all the perennially outraged guys who fill message boards with their concerns about the employability of white men in my industry, I’m here to tell you that we’re fine. For the first half of my career I could have counted the amount of female sports presenters on one hand, and I benefitted from that. Now, I just have better competition. Thanks for the concern, though. Things are modernising but to be a woman in sports media and, especially, to be a woman of colour, the bar is still set disproportionately higher than it is for people like me.
Any mistake from a female presenter is used by keyboard warriors to validate their sexist ‘I told you so’ gibberish.
Over my career, I identified Bolton’s goalscorer Kevin Nolan as radio presenter Stephen Nolan, I once asked jockey Mick Fitzgerald how much money Kauto Star would fetch at stud, despite the fact that said horse had no testicles, and recently I called Plymouth Argyle a Cornish club, which nearly cost me my testicles.
There are many more cringeworthy moments I could recall, but not once did it open up the floodgates of abhorrent abuse women in the industry regularly get.
Above all else, to Alex Scott, Seema Jaswal, Michelle Owen, the amazing Caroline Barker and several others who are currently sharpening and shaking up the world of sports broadcasting, bring it on.
For the record, I think Alex is really talented. Not because she’s female but because, well, I have eyes, ears and over two decades’ experience in this business, and she’s got the work ethic to match the expertise.
She has also got proper personality, which is something you can’t teach. As a presenter, she’s good and will only get better as she racks up the air miles, just like us all, but that’s besides the point.
The correct conversation is not ‘why?’ but ‘why the f*** did it take so long?’.
By the way, the jumper was Bella Freud. Damn you, Scott.