And the gold for vacuous coverage goes to ...
Babble, babble, babble. It’s only day seven of the Olympics, but already the BBC’s presenters and commentators are setting world records in the long-distance chatathon heats.
Say what you like — and they do, they really do — they would win bronze in the twaddle, silver in the jabbering and golds all round for the pacing and relentlessness of their gabba-gabba-gabbling.
Chief culprit so far has to be Rebecca adlington, the former swimmer who has been recast as a guest commentator on swimming events. Oh, Rebecca darling! This is not going well for you.
The proud possessor of four Olympic medals, becky is a glorious woman and a high achiever, but someone needs to explain to her that commentating means more than merely emoting.
It means more than just empathising with any swimmer who pulls a muscle or grimaces at the watery task ahead. ‘I feel their pain!’ she will shriek. OK, we get that. You did it, too. Understood. but what else have you got tucked inside your latex cap of telly skills?
Not much, it seems, except an explosion of girlish passions.
Having had to leave her baby daughter behind in the UK, perhaps it is understandable that Rebecca cried when U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps — he’s half-man, half-halibut — kissed his baby son after winning a race, but it was still rather self-indulgent. She also swore on screen and flirts rather too much with her handsome copresenter Mark Foster.
What is going on with these two? TV cameras caught Rebecca stroking Mark’s thigh on air — I’m no expert, but it didn’t look accidental. When he talks, she gazes at him with the rapt concentration of a One Direction fan who has just found herself sitting next to Harry Styles at her birthday dinner.
becky’s eyes rove all over Mark’s face with an alarming intensity, as if she is trying hard to memorise every dimple and microscopic laughter line. Her face bears an expression of unbridled joy every time he opens his mouth. When she opens her own, it’s not quite so fantastic.
‘It will be nice for them both to be next to each other,’ she said, when two american swimmers raced in neighbouring lanes.
For insights like these, plus her frequent requests for ‘another cappuccino’, the BBC flew Rebecca and more than 60 other commentators to Rio for our delectation. I hate to think of the cost.
back at home, things are even worse. The brazil time difference means that most finals take place through the night in UK time, leaving the dopes on BBC breakfast to bring us all up to date.
No one seems to have a clue what to do or how to frame this sprawling, sporting morass into watchable TV. So when in doubt, dumb down.
This week, there was a cringing interview with the family of a female weightlifter, later cameras went to a children’s gym club to talk about the real gymnastics events.
There is also a hide-behind-the-sofa slot where viewers are invited to try hula-hooping.
Instead of this rubbish, what viewers really want to see are sporting highlights, but the breakfast show finds this impossible to do without garlanding the event in human interest claptrap.
Not so long ago, programmes such as this would talk and present sport in a measured and mature way, forcing audiences actually to learn something about it.
NOW they talk down to everyone, as if we are all idiots. back at the pool in Rio, there were moments when I felt like screaming, especially when the mighty Olympic Games were dragged down to the level of a teenage magazine.
‘Have you seen your boyfriend, what’s he been saying?’ poolside interviewer Sharron Davies asked britain’s Molly Renshaw after she qualified for today’s 200m breaststroke final. Honestly. Sexist and insulting, it was the kind of thing a half-demented auntie in a mob cap would ask her favourite niece.
Meanwhile, over at the gymnastics, Matt baker has been wrangled by the PC police and told to cheer on other nations, too. He got so excited the other night I thought britain had swept the medals board — only to discover he was going berserk about some Ukrainian winning silver for doing something super in the Tumble Tots event.
Former blue Peter presenter Helen Skelton posts pictures of her outrageous frock choices every day on Instagram and has clearly been drafted in to make swimming accessible to ‘da kidz’.
‘Two girls in the final. Gotta be good, right?’ she said, sounding as if she was on an episode of Tiswas. It’s all so bloody babyish.
When are the BBC going to realise the sport itself is the entertainment — we don’t need more on top. So far much of their Olympic coverage has been hidebound by this desperation to be super inclusive in a weird broadcasting space that fears intelligence and expertise.
‘I think all three of us need a rewind button,’ said Helen Skelton, following another giggling chimp’s tea party interlude at the swimming pool.
and so say all of us. Otherwise, how on earth are we going to get through to the finals on august 21?