Richard Keys opened the huge, overwhelming chasm of the show he presents with Andy Gray by issuing a plea for callers to debate the great footballing matters of the day – including MK Dons’ (of the third tier in English football) splendid victory over Peterborough the previous evening.
From the hosannas of the Champions League to the Denbigh Stadium in Milton Keynes in five weeks.
After the supplication for listeners to call in, there was a queue of football people waiting to feel a metaphorical arm round the shoulder and a 19th hole style of chit chat. It would be over stating it to call them interviews.
Craig Bellamy; Karl Robinson, youthful manager of the previously mentioned MK Dons; and Ugo Ehiogu. The drums were beating to a rhythm of favours called in.
Bellamy and Ehiogu said nothing; Robinson bounded along like a puppy off the leash in the spring sunshine, but also said nothing.
As pretenders for the crown held by Five Live, talkSPORT are caught between the longing for credibility and the struggle for the legal tender. Keys(ey) and Gray, there for the former ambition, adopt their Sky Sports personas with the comfort it brings them in this not so brave, not so new, world of downsizing. They chase and reach for testosterone like bulldozers chasing butterflies. Bulldozers that are low on fuel and lost in dreams of the past.
Riffing, or flying by the seats of their respective pants, whichever you prefer, through the first forty five minutes, there were in fact, no callers.
Keys continues his matey, sit down lawn mower, Sunday roast, man of the people role. Gray makes no contribution for several minutes at a stretch, to the point of a jolting reminder he’s still there when he generously supplies an over-hearty “Ha, Ha, Ha” to a weak anecdote or dreary pun.
I went away, got on with life, drove across London, pushed the preset a couple of hours later, and they were still there; talking about Leyton Orient.
There had been no breaking news. Nothing had happened. They were talking about Barry Hearn as if their lives had always intended to be this way. They sound like broken men.
This is the herd of elephants in the talkSPORT studio and they aren’t only trampling Keys(ey) and Gray. The reality is, in sporting circles in the vast, gaping expanse of any given week, nothing happens. Transfers are embargoed. Players train in security heavy compounds from which they drive out furiously, hammering the gas, behind their tinted shades, in their Hummers with tinted windows.
Presenters are left hanging around like mice outside the lions’ cage, hoping that a shard of discarded flesh will tumble their way.
A UK radio station dedicated to sport can only talk about the last game and preview the next one. To string out that premise over a twenty four rolling format is like trying to fill a hall of mirrors with smoke.
Keys(ey) and Gray try and fill fifteen hours of this enormous hole of limited possibilities each week.
They fill it with desperation and abandoned hope.
Terence Dackombe, March 2011
From the hosannas of the Champions League to the Denbigh Stadium in Milton Keynes in five weeks.
After the supplication for listeners to call in, there was a queue of football people waiting to feel a metaphorical arm round the shoulder and a 19th hole style of chit chat. It would be over stating it to call them interviews.
Craig Bellamy; Karl Robinson, youthful manager of the previously mentioned MK Dons; and Ugo Ehiogu. The drums were beating to a rhythm of favours called in.
Bellamy and Ehiogu said nothing; Robinson bounded along like a puppy off the leash in the spring sunshine, but also said nothing.
As pretenders for the crown held by Five Live, talkSPORT are caught between the longing for credibility and the struggle for the legal tender. Keys(ey) and Gray, there for the former ambition, adopt their Sky Sports personas with the comfort it brings them in this not so brave, not so new, world of downsizing. They chase and reach for testosterone like bulldozers chasing butterflies. Bulldozers that are low on fuel and lost in dreams of the past.
Riffing, or flying by the seats of their respective pants, whichever you prefer, through the first forty five minutes, there were in fact, no callers.
Keys continues his matey, sit down lawn mower, Sunday roast, man of the people role. Gray makes no contribution for several minutes at a stretch, to the point of a jolting reminder he’s still there when he generously supplies an over-hearty “Ha, Ha, Ha” to a weak anecdote or dreary pun.
I went away, got on with life, drove across London, pushed the preset a couple of hours later, and they were still there; talking about Leyton Orient.
There had been no breaking news. Nothing had happened. They were talking about Barry Hearn as if their lives had always intended to be this way. They sound like broken men.
This is the herd of elephants in the talkSPORT studio and they aren’t only trampling Keys(ey) and Gray. The reality is, in sporting circles in the vast, gaping expanse of any given week, nothing happens. Transfers are embargoed. Players train in security heavy compounds from which they drive out furiously, hammering the gas, behind their tinted shades, in their Hummers with tinted windows.
Presenters are left hanging around like mice outside the lions’ cage, hoping that a shard of discarded flesh will tumble their way.
A UK radio station dedicated to sport can only talk about the last game and preview the next one. To string out that premise over a twenty four rolling format is like trying to fill a hall of mirrors with smoke.
Keys(ey) and Gray try and fill fifteen hours of this enormous hole of limited possibilities each week.
They fill it with desperation and abandoned hope.
Terence Dackombe, March 2011
