23rd May 2005
Hi all,
A few notes from the past week or so:
1) While enjoying a relaxing Saturday morning catching up on recorded TV I got a phone call from Senor Neil Taylor. I stopped playing back what I had recorded and started to channel surf with the volume down. Neil wasn't switching channels at all, although at one point he started cracking up.
"What are you watching?" I asked. "Quick," he replied, "Put it on ITV."
Qualifying for the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Monaco. Not very exciting in my book. However on this day there was a twist. Given that "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith" has just been released to cinemas it turned out that the Red Bull team had their cars in full Star Wars livery. Soon enough I saw what Neil was cracking up about - they had a Stormtrooper in their pit!
Needless to say for once Formula 1 had done enough to get my interest for the first time this year (yep, I wasn't watching when ITV butchered the end of the San Marino Grand Prix), while Neil and I waited for the second Red Bull car to come out onto the track. After what seemed like an age it eventually ventured out onto the circuit, whereupon we saw someone dressed up as Chewbacca in the pits! Genius! Of course this prompted a fair bit of Chewy-talk on the phone, which won't surprise any women reading this.
If Formula 1 was worth watching I would have stuck around for the race on Sunday to see if they were going to get Ewoks to help with the pit stops. Of course if Formula 1 wanted to make itself more appealing to the public they'd open up the radios to the live broadcasts and let Darth Vader speak to the Red Bull drivers. It might go something like this:
Red Bull driver: "I'm not coming into the pits on this lap."
Darth Vader: "I want to know what happened to the plans.... hhhhhhhhh."
RBD: "Well I thought I could make up time, now I'm stuck behind a Minardi."
DV: "Don't fail me again... hhhhhhhhh."
Incidentally once the Star Wars characters had disappeared I changed the channel. NASCAR highlights were being shown on NASN. Nice to see some proper racing, cars running closely together, overtaking actually happening on a regular basis. If you only watched Formula 1 you'd have forgotten what that looked like. Furthermore NASCAR tends to allow live radio feeds from the drivers to be broadcast, as well as having electronic displays which don't take up three-quarters of the screen.
2) In the same conversation Neil told me perhaps the funniest joke I've ever heard. Pity I can't share it here.
3) Among the recorded programmes I was catching up with on Friday night was "The Contender", the reality TV show with a Boxing theme from America.
I'll be honest, since the ridiculous business started by Riddick Bowe and Lennox Lewis which means there are now about eight Heavyweight World Champions I've slowly lost interest in Boxing. However this has got me hooked (providing of course I remember when it is on, thanks ITV).
Basically they started off with sixteen middleweight boxers, half for the "West" team and half for the "East". In the first round each week a boxer from each team fought each other in a five-round contest, with the winner advancing. The losers go home. The ultimate winner goes away with a million dollars.
That is the basic concept of the show. The more important details are these:
i) Sylvester Stallone is involved in the show. Amusingly a lot of the contestants and co-host Sugar Ray Leonard are given subtitles when they speak, never Sly.
ii) When the losing boxer leaves the ring and walks through a door each week Sly meets them and patronises them. You've been beaten up, you've lost the opportunity to win a million dollars, never mind, I'm sure a compliment from Sylvester Stallone will make you feel a whole lot better.
iii) As Bill Simmons wrote a fair while ago reality TV shows need an element of conflict to make them work. "The Contender" works because in a Boxing arena this conflict can reach its natural end.
iv) Last week's defeated boxer, Joey Gilbert, left the show in an ambulance. Plenty of potential for other reality shows here. If Big Brother 6 does this in the next few months you'll know where they got the idea.
v) Some woman called Jackie (not Sylvester's Mum, unfortunately) is the "Den Mom" and takes the winning boxers out for the day after they've won. I'm not quite sure what the point of this is, seems a bit needless to me.
Overall though the show is very interesting. Perhaps something like this with an Formula 1 theme could revive interest in that? Oh, I don't mean driving, I mean drivers fighting, like Piquet and Salazar circa 1982 at Hockenheim.
Two natural spin-offs are sure to come from "The Contender":
a) "The Contender - The Heavyweights". The glory division of boxing, this must surely happen.
b) "The British Contender", co-hosted by Jim Rosenthal and Chris Eubank (who doubles as the "Den Mom" and takes the boxers shopping for jodphurs and monocles).
(Remember where you heard it first!)
Have a good week!
Tony
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