The concept of taking the rough with the smooth comes alive every time I watch football, which, I’m ashamed to admit, is quite often.
Alas, the occasionally enjoyable visual experience comes with an invariably irritating aural one. You see, matches have commentators, usually a professional journalist in tandem with an ex-footballer, with the former trying to keep the latter on the straight and narrow.
Not all retired ball-kickers graduate to TV commentary. Judging by those who do, the selection criteria include the ability to speak with at least a marginally comprehensible accent and without obscene intensifiers.
The second criterion is met more widely than the first, but with some training one can learn to follow the general thrust of remarks made by Scousers like Jamie Carragher or Scotsmen like Ally McCoist. As a lifelong student of English, I’m even grateful to them for widening my dialectal horizons.
Also required seems to be a knack for uncovering a deep intellectual content not wholly encompassed by the phrase “he hit it first time, and there it was in the back of the net.” By such standards, Sky and BBC commentators do a good enough job.
I for one don’t mind hearing them drone on in the background, especially when they make technical observations escaping rank amateurs like me. Yet at times I wince as if two pieces of glass were rubbed together to produce a grating sound.
This happens every time they say ‘melodramatic’ to mean ‘dramatic’, ‘decorative’ to mean ‘beautiful’, ‘lacksadaisical’ to mean ‘lackadaisical’, ‘amount’ to mean ‘number’, ‘willy-nilly’ to mean ‘at will’, ‘fortuitous’ to mean ‘fortunate’ and so on, ad nauseam.
I realise that most viewers are less sensitive to solecisms than I am, with me and other such pedants languishing in a distinct minority. But minority rights being such a burning issue these days, we must insist on upholding ours.
Hence my first proposal: not just sports commentators but all public speakers in mass media should be fined every time they misuse a word, utter an ungrammatical sentence or maul English in any other way.
Fines ought to be means-tested. Thus football commentators drawing seven-digit salaries should be fined thousands for each solecism; billionaires like Donald Trump, millions.
No, come to think of it, forget that second one. We don’t want the president of a great nation to end up on the bread line after just a handful of speeches.
You’ve doubtless detected a note of levity in my first proposal, and it is indeed there, if only to protect my anguished soul of an inveterate pedantic snob. My second proposal, however, is dead serious. It has to do with political statements public figures make on- or off-camera.
I realise I’d be on a losing wicket proposing to ban politicians like Donald Trump from talking about politics. Though some things they say are unconscionable, we have to suffer in silence – talking is what those chaps do for a living (apart from launching cryptocurrencies on the side or promoting their family businesses in variously iffy countries).
So let’s limit ourselves to sports commentators, specifically those who can’t contain their logorrhoea in social media. It’s our hurricane-strength zeitgeist that forces people to believe that anyone who has achieved success in one field, no matter how trivial, is qualified to lecture the public on all others.
Even footballers whose IQ seldom creeps into three digits – and that’s before they’ve headed thousands of balls – find a ready audience for their political pronouncements. Considering such humble beginnings followed by repeated cerebral trauma, it’s hardly surprising that most of their declarations are left-wing, and all are inane.
Enter Gary Neville, right back turned pundit, property developer, club owner and Labour activist. Gary tirelessly campaigns for worthy causes, such as the human rights of putatively oppressed minorities.
To his credit, he doesn’t let his passions interfere with the business at hand, which is business. Thus, when the 2022 World Cup was held in Qatar, Neville formed a lucrative partnership with that country’s government, whose record on human rights is less than exemplary. Then again, Gary must have looked at the Qatari links of the Trump family and decided that he could be the gander to their goose.
The other day, Gary drove through Manchester, the site of a recent terrorist Muslim attack on a synagogue. He was appalled but managed to control his emotions long enough to analyse the situation the way he analyses football formations.
In a subsequent video, Gary put his finger on the real culprits in that outrage: “I just kept thinking as I was driving home last night that we’re all being turned on each other. And the division that’s being created is absolutely disgusting. Mainly created by angry, middle-aged white men, who know exactly what they’re doing.”
That statement drew much criticism, with many an irate viewer unable to get his head around the logic. A Muslim killing Jews outside a synagogue is an act that seems to exculpate angry, middle-aged white men. Unless, of course, Gary means that those Jews in the crowd who fit that description had only themselves to blame.
Come on, fellows, give Gary credit for some nous. He doesn’t mean that at all. All he is saying is that people to the right of Jeremy Corbyn are creating a climate conducive and clement to rampaging Muslims thirsting for Jewish blood.
Just listen to his own explanation, will you?
“Brexit has had a devastating impact on this country and the messaging is getting extremely dangerous.
“All these idiots out there spreading hate speech and abuse in any form, we must stop promoting them.
“We must stop elevating our voices towards them and it needs to stop now, and get back to a country of peace, love, harmony and become a team again.”
That’ll be a ten grand fine for the grammar, Gary. As to his nostalgia for the Garden of Eden that Britain used to be, does he mean during his lifetime? Now I’ve lived in England almost as long as Gary has lived, but I can’t recall any semblance of paradise.
Things were indeed more peaceful and harmonious a few decades ago, fair enough. But then, according to Gary, angry, middle-aged white men began to arrive in droves, disturbing the peace and destroying the harmony by egging Muslims on to kill Jews.
I’m not sure I’ve got it right, but that’s how it sounds. But hold on a moment, Gary doesn’t blame all white middle-aged men, only those who put up Union Jacks all over the place:
“Funnily enough on one of my development sites last week there was a Union Jack flag put up and I took it down instantly,” said Gary. Personally, I don’t find this funny, but then Gary’s sense of humour must be different from mine.
However, now he makes sense. Angry, middle-aged white men put up Union flags, which has the same effect on the oppressed Muslim community as a red rag has on a bull. Justifiably incensed, Muslims go out and kill Jews. There, I’ve finally got to the bottom of it.
I can also heave a sigh of relief because I’m not on Gary’s hit list. Though shamefully white and occasionally angry, I’m beyond middle age and neither do I have a Union Jack hanging out of my window.
By this circuitous route we’ve arrived at my second proposal.
Former football players working as TV pundits must undertake to refrain from public pronouncements on politics or any subject other than their sport. Failure to comply should be punished by summary dismissal and a fine equal to the chap’s annual salary, £1.1 million in Gary’s case.
Should my two proposals be acted on, I’ll be able to watch a football match without feeling the urge to throw a slipper at the screen. And I don’t even wear slippers.