24-07-2025
The more comical the action at women's Euros, the more woke BBC get – one pundit's pearl of wisdom was red card offence
A SIMPLE equation is at play with the BBC and ITV's coverage of the women's Euros – the funnier the football gets, the more earnest the pundits must become.
To the point, when things go really haywire, they sound more like they're dissecting Garry Kasparov versus the Deep Blue chess computer than the latter stages of a football tournament.
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A sly reference to the exquisite mayhem of the England/Sweden penalty shoot-out, in Zurich, on BBC1, which has to be a contender for the funniest ever climax to a quarter-final.
Eventual winners England seemed determined to turn it into a Gentlest Back Pass contest, while the slightly more gung-ho Swedes were playing a game familiar to every nine-year-old boy on the planet: Who can kick it the furthest?
A challenge eventually ended by Smilla Holmberg, who nearly landed her effort on base camp at the Matterhorn.
So long had this farce been going by that point, however, there was no time for the Beeb team to do anything more than agree with co- commentator Rachel Brown-Finnis's assessment that it had been a penalty shoot-out, 'worthy of any final'.
Final of what? She didn't say, but I'd like to believe Rachel was referring to the carnage of It's A Knockout's old pan-European spin-off Jeux Sans Frontieres.
It seems unlikely, though, as absolutely everyone at the BBC and ITV is in a state of denial about this tournament's wretched quality, aided and abetted by dozens of useful media idiots who've cast themselves in the Sir Galahad role and will go to any credibility-knackering lengths to protect the honour of the women.
A self-deceiving charade that reached new levels of condescension, in one broadsheet newspaper, after the Sweden game, when a journalist argued that gross incompetence wasn't so much the issue as 'goalkeepers improving'.
You treat readers like mugs, you get the response you deserve, which in this case was the comment: 'You won't get laid trying to be their ally.'
You're also missing an easy trick, though. For just as the great Jock Stein said, 'without the fans, football is nothing,' it's also nothing without laughter.
And for once, I really know what I'm talking about here.
For I have seen Scotland play in 31 countries and lose in seven different time zones, since 1986, and frankly it's only the laughter that's kept me going.
It's the very last thing you'll hear on either channel in Switzerland though, where instead of taking the light-hearted approach they've gone to the extraordinarily controlling lengths of reinventing the pundit lexicon in an attempt to disguise what's really happening here.
ITV's Karen Carney has a particularly grating habit of saying 'vertical pass' when she means forward, but the real blood-boiler is the BBC's maddening use of the T-word which made the quarter-final pre-match banter sound more like a cult meeting.
Gabby Logan kicked it off by saying: ' Fara [Williams], an area you're worried about is the transition.'
'Yes, Sweden will much prefer the transitional game,' agreed Fara before Ellen White butted in to say: 'It's frustrating when you're conceding on that transition and Sweden really do like to play in that transition.'
Which was the cue, apparently, for Jonas Eidevall to chip in with his observation that: 'If the game is played in transition, it's advantage Sweden.'
At no point, however, did anyone ask: 'Transition? What the f*** is the transition?'
A huge shame as someone would've been forced to admit it just means losing possession and the reason they were trying to blind us with science is because, in this tournament, it happens roughly every second or third pass.
Pull at the honesty thread, everyone clearly believes, and the whole of women's football unravels.
It's not the case, obviously. Viewers will watch football, no matter what the quality.
Ten million tuned into ITV's coverage of the England/Italy semi-final, on Tuesday. Most of them, like me, probably praying it would end in more penalty shootout mayhem.
It was narrowly avoided, sadly, but the night did at least benefit from the presence of Ian Wright and the absence of the terminally tedious Eni Aluko, who'd accused him of 'blocking women' from punditry jobs.
Less gracious men than Wrighty would've told ITV to shove their invite, after they left him out of their original roster.
But he was present, adding more passion, honesty and animation than the rest of them had managed in the previous 34 games combined.
Given TV is so lost to the cult of woke, though, my worry now is it'll simply cut and paste the dull, pompous, dishonest, language-mangling insincerity of the women's game over to the blokes.
Especially when Wrighty left a pregnant pause on Tuesday night.
'England can't quite find enough in . . . in . . . '
In the transition, Ian. The sacred bloody transition.
Shaz: 'A dandelion.'
Ben Shephard: 'Which letter that appears in the word for a song of praise known as a 'hymn' is silent when spoken out loud?'
Richard: 'P.'
And Impossible, Rick Edwards: 'Which settlement is situated at the southern tip of Loch Ness?'
Callum was given the choice of 'A) Fort William' or 'C) Fort Augustus,' but chose 'B) Fort Lauderdale.'
RANDOM IRRITATIONS
THE new Royal Mail advert provoking us with Judi Love, Josh Widdicombe and Micah Richards so soon after the Horizon IT scandal.
BBC2 putting a 'no longer active' disclaimer on Live Aid's 1985 phone lines.
Channel 4 newsreader Cathy Newman even sounding smug banking money on The Weakest Link.
And Good Morning Britain starting every show with half an hour of Labour Party PR from Kevin Maguire, who is the very last thing TV needs right now: A complete irrelevance disguised as a minor nuisance.
LOOSE Women, Monday, Charlene White: 'You will never guess Janet Street-Porter 's summer holiday job.'
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Pulling tourist carts round the Fez medina? Giving Princess Anne her next ride at Trooping the Colour? Mounted crowd control at the first Old Firm game?
Actually, you're right. I give up.
C4 LOST PLOT ON KNIFING
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THE title of Channel 4 's documentary One Day In Southport has to be the most grotesque misnomer of the year.
Just seven minutes and 30 seconds, plus a brief sentencing update at the end, was devoted to Axel Rudakubana 's barbaric murder of three young girls at a dance class, while the rest was consumed by the bone-brained riots that followed the outrage.
No time at all, apparently, was available to discuss the systemic failings of the state preceding Rudakubana's savagery or indeed anything that happened before July 29, 2024, other than a Tommy Robinson march, two days prior, which had zero bearing on subsequent events but seemed to vex the C4 production no end.
And if you even begin to doubt this was because the network was engaged in a political crusade, rather than the moral one the victims' families deserved, you need only question the undue prominence given to a counter-protester called Weyman Bennett.
He's billed here as 'Stand Up To Racism, Secretary', and portrayed as very much an 'honest broker' but is also a hardcore member of the Socialist Workers Party and, indeed, part of the central committee infamously accused of covering up rape allegations against a far-left ally.
All of which means there is still a huge gap in the network's schedules for a proper documentary about the Southport murders, which isn't afraid to point fingers at the Home Office and its anti-extremism Prevent scheme, which refused three times to deal with Rudakubana.
But as well as dropping its infantile political agenda, that would require Channel 4 to find its moral compass, and I'm not entirely sure it ever had one in the first place.
URGENT clarification required Re: A cosmetic surgery consultant called Cindy Jackson, who looked ITV2 's Price Of Perfection host Olivia Attwood straight in the face and said: 'I think there are a lot of ways you can lower your visual IQ and come across as someone who's not very bright.'
'Cos that's all natural, Cindy, and I'll challenge anyone else who says Olivia's stupidity isn't God given.
LOOKALIKE OF THE WEEK
THIS week's winner is Love Island's Yasmin and Morticia Addams.
Emailed in by Michele M.
ELLA TOONE: 'We kept going until the first minute.'
Ellen White: 'Winning is everything but it's not.'
Rachel Brown-Finnis: 'You have to draw a line behind what's happened before.'
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
TV (NOT QUITE) GOLD
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NOTHING really deserved the description 'TV Gold' during this terrible TV week.
But I feel I should mention BBC2's Top Gear repeats and screening of The Searchers, with John Wayne (a classic).
Plus, Martin Lewis, of all people, making a genuinely unexpected cameo on the new series of Mandy (BBC2) to deliver the line: 'Just give her a paper receipt, you dirty wet wipe.'
And ITV2's Love Island: Unseen Bits, which is the last reminder this show used to be quite funny, rather than simply soul-destroying, and made a point of flagging up Tommy's breakfast preparations, on Saturday: 'How the f*** do you squash avocado?'
Conor: 'You literally just . . . mate, that's not an avocado. That's a lime.'
