Ok fine, we admit it, Jonathan Legard really is rubbish. So to try and ease the pain of his bumbling incoherence, Patronise F1 selects six commentary soundbites that really stuck in the memory. Though perhaps not in a particularly good way.
1) "That didn't work Michael. You've hit the wrong part of him, my friend."
The man benefiting the most from the Legard backlash has to be his partner in crime in the booth, Martin Brundle, whose own form when it comes to commentary has slipped horribly over the last couple of years. In the past, he was engaging, witty, and could diagnose a suspension failure on a Ferrari merely from nothing more than a blurry helicopter-mounted camera shot of Michael Schumacher going quite slowly, but now he misses painfully obvious things with alarming regularity, his gridwalk has become a sad parody of itself (inviting Eddie Jordan to join him on his grid ramble earlier this year could well have been the gridwalk's "jumping the shark" moment), and he wastes entire races going off on angry rants about how a double world champion must surely have brake-tested Lewis Hamilton and caused them to collide, despite that theory holding slightly less water than a porous thimble.
But perhaps Brundle has escaped the majority of the criticism because, like Murray Walker, Brundle has done enough to win us over already. The fact that he now phones-in large parts of his commentary and misses obvious things passes us by, because we're already convinced that he is a fantastic commentator. And to be fair, not so long ago, he was. This particular comment, delivered after the decisive, controversial and so oftdebated as to be tedious Schumacher/Villeneuve clash at Jerez 1997 was delivered with impeccable timing and without fear of perhaps putting his foot in it and overstating the incident. While Murray alongside him euphemistically referred to the clash as a "coming-together", Brundle took the first available opportunity to call a spade a spade, or more precisely call a failed dirty trick a failed dirty trick. His tone was not one of self-righteous outrage over the mere idea that a title decider could come to this, more one that accepted what had happened immediately for the desperate act that it was, and also called correctly that Schumie's swipe had (this time) not fatally crippled his opponent's car. All in all a line packed full of subtle information and understated wit, all topped off with the most dubious usage of 'my friend' in the history of time, which had the same level of warmth as when you call the new partner of a long-time crush 'mate'. And that is why we have come to love him.
Listen to Martin's comment at 0:19 in this video here.
2) "And I've got to stop, because I've got a lump in my throat."
Walking the tightrope between fantastic commentary and outright garbage is a hugely tricky one, especially when it comes to patriotism and bias. The situation isn't helped by the fact that it's very often who says it, rather than how you say it, that decides whether we allow blatant moments of the mask of impartiality that all good commentators need to slip. It shouldn't happen all the time, like ITV's endless Hamilton-ing, or, erm, ITV's endless bigging up of the English football team, or indeed, erm, ITV's fluffing of whichever English club happens to be playing in their Champions League game for the week. But in certain moments, the crossing of the Rubicon into subjective bias can sum up a moment brilliantly (for further proof, recall BBC football commentator Barry Davies's reaction to Gareth Southgate missing the decisive penalty for England in Euro '96. A simple, bellowed "OOOOOOH NO!" followed by a moment of silence to allow the horror of the moment to sink in).
It is safe to say that had any other human being on the planet other than Murray Walker delivered this particular line, it would have gone down as one of the most hackneyed pieces of jingoistic drivel in the history of televised sport. But because it was Murray, because he so clearly did have a lump in his throat, we could forgive the sentimentality, we could forgive the mask slipping, we could even forgive the fact that the mask had slipped for Damon sodding Hill. Because at the end of the day, Murray was clearly overjoyed for the guy, after the rollercoaster few seasons up to that point where Hill had found new and ingenious ways of failing to deliver on the family name. A truly lovely moment that was all down to the man who said it, which leads you to wonder whether Murray could even have got away with delivering James Allen's infamous line at Hungary 2006 and got away with it. Actually, perhaps some things would have been beyond even Muzza.
Catch the famous line at 1:52 in this video here.
3) "NO! Lewis Hamilton's up to fifth! Lewis Hamilton has made it up to fifth by the end of the line!"
Nobody wants to be "the other guy" when it comes to defining moments in history. Think of poor Michael Collins, scratching his arse in the Command Module while Aldrin and Armstrong were down on the Moon larking about with a starched-up flag and a camcorder. In sporting commentary, when there is more than one channel covering the event, one commentator is destined to be remembered, and the other to simply become "the other guy". Think of the rarely-remembered Hugh Johns, whose rather banal "Here's Hurst, he might make it three. He has! He has... so that's it. That is it!" speech to describe England's fourth and final goal in the 1966 World Cup final for ITV got somewhat airbrushed out of the pages of history in the irrepressible face of Kenneth Wolstenhome's seminal "Some people are on the pitch..." line for the Beeb.
And for Lewis Hamilton's incredible triumph in the face of screwing-the-whole-ruddy-thing-up-again that was the last lap of his title-winning season in 2008, it's likely that the most memorable line from that moment will be Martin Brundle's scream of "Is that Glock??? YES IT IS!" (around 5.50 into this clip) as Hamilton barrelled past the hapless slick-shod Toyota on the damp track. Which is good, in that Brundle was the first person to twig that the car behind Hamilton was the Toyota, but a shame, because on BBC radio at the time, David Croft was having an absolute fit.
Unlike Brundle, Croft completely missed the pass on the Toyota, focusing instead on Hamilton's unsuccessful efforts to pass the Toro Rosso of Sebastian Vettel, which meant that as the cars drove for the chequered flag, he, like most of the Ferrari pit, genuinely believed that Massa was the champion and Hamilton had chucked it all away at the last. When the live timing in his booth suddenly flashed up "Hamilton P5", then, he had the most excited reaction to an electronic timing system that there has perhaps ever been and ever will be. It was all incredibly amateur, and doubtless had Allen and Brundle made a similar cock-up they'd have been lambasted forevermore, but Croft, benefiting from the fact that whoever was listening to him clearly didn't have the footage to enable them to have clocked the pass for themselves some 30 seconds before he did, summed up the chaos of the whole mess that was the 2008 season in a perfect way, by getting it all messed up in spectacular style.
Sadly, you'll have to take my word for this one, because there doesn't seem to be any audio footage of Crofty's description of the final lap anywhere on the internet.
4) "And all I can say to that is: Bullshit"
For just about anyone over the age of 25, or anyone who keeps loading their dusty copy of bits of old races from 1990 into the VHS player every time they get a bit drunk and bored, the commentary pairing of Murray Walker and James Hunt will never be topped. Which is odd, given that for most of their time together, their partnership was a strange, stilted and generally uncomfortable one. It didn't help that the sort of budget meted out to F1 by the BBC back in "those days" meant they had to share a microphone, which each was constantly having to steal off the other (the famous pass by Nigel Mansell on Nelson Piquet at Silverstone in 1987 saw Hunt redoutably and calmly holding onto the mike, leaving viewers to hear the echoes of Murray's screams of excitement in the background, almost as if Hunt had locked him in a cupboard), and it certainly didn't help that neither man particularly liked the other. One elderly, excitable optimist, coupled with one youthful, languid playboy did not a happy marriage make.
But nevertheless, the tension between the two added something to the combination. Murray as the happy-go-lucky but straight-laced seniority figure and James as the cheeky, foppish and out-of-control youngster. If a film were to be made about their pairing, Hollywood would have to somehow resurrect Matthau and Lemmon to play them. As an example, this quote saw Hunt doing what he did best, i.e. winding up Murray a treat. Without even really being asked to give his opinion, Hunt simply reached over, took the microphone, swore casually at the watching audience of middle Englaners sitting down for their post-Sunday dinner sporting treat, and left Murray to hastily grab back the mike and quickly talk about something else, with the air of a man whose mind was now completely full of worry about the number of complaints the BBC were receiving from irate parents. For the foppish misanthrope in all of us, this was all very fun indeed.
5) "Are you ready? Are you ready? Traction control ready...everything ready...DROP THE CLUTCHES LET'S GOOOOOOOOOO"
Another man who is enjoying an Indian summer on the back of Legard's awfulness is the maligned James Allen, formerly ITV's head commentator, now enjoying a mixed career as a professional press conference question master cum blogger/journalist/Tweeter/tinker/tailor/soldier/sailor. As the more pressing ire against Legard grows, so some mistakenly pine for the return of Allen. But simply going back to the dross we had before the dross we had now isn't the answer. Unless the question is: How can we make the current coverage even more depressing by reminding us that seemingly the only alternative is a crazed, hooting fanboy.
But before the Hamilton-love and the Button-love, back when all the jingoistic British commentary team had at their disposal was a modicum of slightly embarrassed Coulthard-love from his manager Martin Brundle, Allen was still an odd, odd man in the commentary box. Take this moment from the 2002 Monaco Grand Prix start, where he utters one of the most garbled and bizarre lines in the history of commentating. In attempting to ape the style of Murray Walker at the start of the race, all Allen managed to do was sound a bit like a naff impressionist trying to make a few pennies by entertaining tourists in Covent Garden. What we have with Legard may be awful, but let's not pretend life with Allen was any better. The strange thing is that since losing his role as a commentator, he has come across as a charming, knowledgable chap, which may well be what is spurring on the "Bring back Allen" campaigns. But hopefully they'll fail, because he seems far more suited to his role now than when he was behind a microphone.
6) "And LOOK AT THAT...out...that...and colossal...it...that's Mansell...that is NIGEL MANSELL!"
The reason that Murray Walker fitted F1 so well (as opposed to, say, snooker) is because of the way that his tone of voice could leap from "at rest" to "hyperactive" in less time than it took David Coulthard to crash into something. Which is exactly how F1 works. It's almost as if the powers that be had designed the sport to fit around the commentator, rather than the other way around. By and large, grands prix throughout history are long, seemingly endless periods of very little happening (even the rose-tinters can admit that), punctuated by sudden action that is often over before you have chance to fully realise what has actually happened. Be it sickening accidents, overtaking maneuvers, spins or, in this case, tyre blowouts, the suddenness of the action requires someone with Murray's seamless shift from quietly describing pit stops to all-out screaming over the actually interesting bit.
Which is exactly what he did time and again. Even when he was already in hyperactive mode, he always seemed to find an extra gear when the need arose (already in full-on Murray mode when describing the start of the title-deciding 1990 Japanese Grand Prix that when Prost and Senna collided, he ended up talking so high that he bellowed "And it's happened immediately!" at a level that only canines could really appreciate). Perhaps his most famous moment of chaotic squawking was his description of the end of Nigel Mansell's title hopes in the 1986 Australian GP. In the clip there you can hear him perform a perfect switch from dry, measured talking to sudden excitement as soon as the, erm, sudden excitement happened. So much so that for the moments while Mansell's car snaked wildly down the straight into a heartbreaking retirement, it seemed to take a while for his brain to make his mouth actually convey what had just happened, as if renowned Mansellphile Murray didn't actually believe what he was seeing, to the point that he had to reiterate, almost to himself, that yes, that IS Nigel Mansell. And that, more than anything else, IS Murray Walker.
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