Monday Moan 11

Special Olympic Souvenir Edition – Part 2

The Greatest Show on Earth is over but for one more week the Monday Moan feels obliged to concentrate on the London 2012 Olympics.  Hopefully, there will be more things to talk about next week!

  

BBC – We want the action!

The BBC continued to frustrate and irritate with its coverage of the athletics and its apparent determination to get those ‘artistic’ or ‘atmospheric’ shots that they had decided upon at their editorial meetings before the live action.  So, during the nerve-stretching drama that was the 5,000 metres final and Mo Farah’s attempt to win a second gold medal, the BBC managed to miss some of the key moments by cutting away to what must have been pre-planned shots.

At 11.57, with just under two laps to go, Mo was near the front and poised to make his move. 


Mo makes his move - just under two laps to go

   

BBC cuts away to excited crowd

    


Oops - missed the action

 

OK, one lap to go and let’s give them another chance. 

Mo is now in the lead coming to the bell

 

Cut to cliche shot

Someone now on Mo's shoulder - missed it again

Whilst I’m on the subject of this race, I’m sure we were all thrilled to see glimpses of Mo’s family after the 10,000 metres race the previous week, and I imagine that some focus-group work for the BBC had revealed that this was a general feeling. But in typical fashion they reacted by going over the top with ‘family’ shots in the 5,000 metres race.  I can’t have been the only one to have been fed-up with the constant cutting away to shots of his wife and daughter rather than following Mo himself.

Dear BBC – please just show us the action!

Phil Jones – ever sensitive

In last week’s Moan I mentioned Phil’s contribution to the Games and his dubious interviewing techniques.  Someone said he seemed a bit like that dodgy uncle who makes you squirm with his insistence on a cuddle or a squeeze even if you don’t want it.  That’s as may be, but for me he continued to demonstrate a complete inability to show any kind of sensitivity for the moment. 

His interview with Stephen Kiprotich, winner of the marathon, was just embarrassing. Not for Phil the simple question to someone who has just exhausted himself after running over 26 miles in just over 2 hours.  No, he opened up with “what will this mean to your country?”  What?  That was exactly Kiprotich’s response.  For his next question Phil was into a statement – “You made a lot of sacrifices, tell me about that decision and how it’s worked out for you” Kiprotich appeared not to understand, so Paul repeated it, adding that those sacrifices had included leaving his family – “tell me about that”.  Kiprotich appeared both bemused and upset, but Phil saved the day with a laugh and a comment along the lines of “it’s obviously hard to put into words and we seem to be having a bit of a language barrier, but he’s smiling so he must be happy”. 

Perhaps Phil’s finest hour was his interview with Usain Bolt, Johan Blake and Warren Weir, the three medal winning Jamaicans after their triumph in the 200 metres.  Phil had been told to interview them, so that was what he was going to do.  No matter that they wanted to show some respect to David Rudisha, winner of the 800 metres whose medal ceremony was taking place at the same time, and to the national anthem of Kenya that was being played.  Phil was having none of that – “I know the national anthem is being played but I’m gonna grab you for a quick word”.  Johan Blake’s look seems to be saying ‘plonker’.  Spot on.



Phil moves in

He makes a grab for Warren

You plonker

The world’s biggest broken pencil?

London 2012 has been a fabulous celebration of sport. It has been joyous, uplifting, entertaining and exciting.  It has, mercifully, been free of the awful things that some commentators, not all of them entirely objectively, had been given endless amounts of airtime to drone on about prior to the Games starting. There were no security, transport or drugs issues of any real note.  Even the weather relented and gave us only a few moments of trouble.

So what was it with the closing ceremony?  The guidance from the IOC says “the Closing Ceremony is a celebration for the participants in the Olympic Games, a chance to celebrate the drama of the Games and the successes of the athletes. It is a time to revel in friendships made, and of borders and boundaries crossed.”  It acknowledges that the ceremony will include things relevant to the host nation’s culture.  I have searched it very carefully and cannot find anything that suggests it should be an occasion for ignoring sports and instead providing a platform for massaging the already over-inflated egos of ‘stars’ from the world of music.

I admit I feared the worst even before it had started but I was astonished to discover how even my nightmares had not come up with anything as awful as the actual event.  A succession of people whose importance in the scheme of things is akin to that of a flower that blooms briefly, then disappears and is replaced by another and then another and then another. Interesting whilst it lasts but hardly memorable or important.  No sense in me listing them all here, but perhaps special mention should be made of a few whose presence seemed particularly irrelevant.  A moving video of John Lennon singing ‘Imagine’ was replaced by George Michael.  From the top to the bottom in one move.  Fat Boy Slim appeared, pretending to play some records.  Russell Brand came on to general disbelief – what on earth was he doing there?  The Spice Girls – for goodness sake.   Notions of ‘girl power’ have moved on and been given a new meaning by the performances of so many female athletes during these Games.

Full marks to Ray Davies’s agent, by the way, for securing a two-page spread for his man in Friday’s Evening Standard which not only gave the impression that Davies has been the most important and influential figure in British popular music over the last 40 years, but that his role in the closing ceremony would be pivotal, with him filling the end of the show spot traditionally reserved for Paul McCartney.  No matter that hardly anybody would have known the words and been able to sing along with ‘Waterloo Sunset’.  Slightly over-hyped his importance to the event, since he was on quite early and for a couple of minutes only, but the publicity will have done him no harm at all.

Congratulations also to those who decided that they were going to sing live – didn’t always work out well, but at least they tried.  Shame on those who mimed.  Double shame on those who mimed badly.

To me it was just like the biggest broken pencil in the world – completely pointless.  It was a bloated and rather embarrassing spectacle, but I realise this will be a minority view in the media as we’re all supposed to tow the line that we have done all of this better than they did in Beijing.  It’s also not good form to wield a pin anywhere near the egos of our pop stars.   

I really feel I ought to end on a positive note, so here goes. The one good thing to come out of the closing ceremony was that it made me realise that perhaps the opening ceremony had not been quite as dire as I first thought. 

Olympic Broadcasting Awards

After two weeks of wall-to-wall coverage has given huge exposure to the BBC’s team of presenters, the Monday Moan felt it right to hand out awards in recognition of the most deserving.

Most impressive across a range of events – Clare Balding

Most authoritative and interesting expert – Michael Johnson

Best ‘lad’ presenter – Gabby Logan

Most improved commentator – Steve Cram

Most insufferably smug presenter – John Inverdale

Most boring expert – Denise Lewis

Most out of depth presenter – Gary Lineker

Most irritating and insensitive interviewer – Phil Jones (of course), but with a mention for Sharon Davies who tried her best in this category

  

Let’s finish with a non-Olympic moan

Mitt Romney continues to dazzle as potentially the next President of the USA.  Fresh from his error-strewn trip around Europe and the Middle East (see Moan 9) he introduced Paul Ryan, his choice to be the Vice-Presidential running mate in the forthcoming election, as “the next President of the United States”.  This may seem particularly dumb for someone who will, like it or not, be entrusted with the nuclear button amongst other things, but perhaps we should not be too hard on him and we should just put it down to the excitement of the moment.  After all, it seems that President Obama made the same mistake when he announced Joe Biden as his running mate in the last election.

Maybe more worrying is the fact that he has chosen Paul Ryan.  It’s not just his political attitudes (no doubt we’ll discuss these at some time but for the moment suffice to say that in some ways he makes Sarah Palin seem like a good choice last time round) it’s also his inability to utter a coherent sentence when presented to the world by Romney.  If you were interviewing someone for the post of Vice-President, would you be impressed by someone whose first words were “Hey! And right in front of the USS Wisconsin, huh? Oh, man!"? 

Didn’t think so.