Worth the risk
- Sports Call (Radio One)
- Drug Runners (BBC1)
- Jailbirds (BBC1)
- Shot (Channel 4)
- Questions and Answers (RTE1)
The old `Sports Bar' on the Falls Road was always a good place to be
during Cheltenham, whether you were there to watch the races, watch
the punters watching the races or filling up with 75p a pint cider.
While the commentators were busy getting their knickers in a knot
over the Queen Mother's hat, punters debated whether to return home
for dinner or gamble the last tenner on a sure winner.
As the race neared conclusion necks craned and purple blood vessels
burst with the most likely result being a mass cursing of the screen
and a dispersal of yellow tickets on the floor. Those who did win
usually spent all their winnings by teatime and inevitably ended up
in ``the doghouse''.
The affable Des Cahill was busy pestering callers for tips on Radio
One's ``Sportscall'' during the week as ``thousands of Irish flock to
Cheltenham'' (I don't know any, apart from free state ministerial
luminaries; and they can stay there) to blow their lolly on the three
day festival.
More intriguing was the featured commentary of Mícheál
O'Muircheartaigh as David Beggy, the lightning Meath footballer-cum
rugger bugger, took on greyhound ``Black Mirage'' in the inaugral man
versus dog race.
Darling of the radio, Mícheál is currently celebrating fifty years of
GAA commentary - surely the only man to say ``hello to the folks in
San Francisco and best wishes to Timmy Murphy in hospital in
Newcastlewest as Peter Canavan, who has fried eggs and wears yellow
underwear bears down on the Dublin goal.
Sportscall is comprised of passionated sports callers, some irate and
some entertaining and many more on the balderdash wave length, but
its a refreshing antidote to the commercial exploitation worldwide
that has rendered many sports farcical, including the Lennox Lewis
fight that never was.
High also on the list of farce is the Olympics as featured on BBC1's
``Panorama'' particularly the behaviour of the International Olympic
Committee, headed up by dictator and Francophile Juan Antonio
Samaranch.
One fifth of it's one hundred and ten strong committee are currently
under investigation for recent revelations of bribery, involving over
$1 million, which led to Salt Lake City and Sydney being awarded
Winter and Summer Olympics respectively. Ex Olympian and committee
member Mark Tewksbury accurately points the finger at the IOC who ``at
all costs will protect the Olympic brand'' leading to unethical
behaviour in pursuit of cash i.e. TV rights which have been sold for
$4 billion and the Olympic ideals have been prostituted to private
sponsors who use it as a global billboard, in turn ensuring that most
drug scandals are covered up, including most recent Olympics.
We all remember Ben Johnson, ``I guessed if these other guys are
cheating I may as well join them'' and the Soviet female shot-putters
who used to ``throw haystacks'' and joyride combine harvesters as
hobbies, but contrary to Samaranch's annual claims - ``I think we are
winning this battle now'', most people are ``way ahead of testing
procedures and anyone caught hasn't done their homework''.
The Olympics have fallen prey to the global farce that has enveloped
many sports including athletics, swimming, cycling, boxing and soccer
encompassing corruption, exploitation of fans, widescale cheating and
hype, all in the interests of Murdoch and his rotten ilk.
Stick to your under-14 parsh leagues and the merrymen from
Crossmaglen (or not so merry bohemians!)
Toni, featured in BBC1's zillionith fly-on-the-wall docu-soap
``Jailbirds'', wouldn't be up to much running after eleven or so years
of herion addiction, which have landed her in New Hall Prison in
Yorkshire. Another digit ``in the inexorable rise'' of prisoners
clogging British jails, products of twenty years of Thatcherite
society.
Republicans are well used to the confines of prisons, ignorant screws
and Victorian slabs of concrete, but there wasn't a beer belly to be
seen among these jolly wardens, obviously powdered up and on their
best behaviour, ``are you all right there, now don't be crying'' for
the cameras.
This doesn't prevent Antoinette from refusing to don prison knickers,
``I'm very particular about my underwear'' (aren't we all!) and puts
her finger on the pulse, stating - ``jail don't work, I need rehab and
counseling, instead I'll emerge in nine months a better thief and
junkie than before''. The emotions of her first visit rekindle
memories of dreary journeys to the middle of nowhere English jails to
visit loved ones, a fate fortunately no longer with us, as we await
the long overdue releases of many after nearly five years of the
peace process.
Guns, very much a feature of the last thirty years are the topic in
C4's ``Shot'', which included the shooting of a republican by a British
soldier during a riot - ``he had a gun'' (that's what they always say),
and an RUC man ``lifted off my feet'' by an IRA sniper attack ``all they
cared about was the name, they'd no idea I had a bullet in my neck''.
Conveniently there are no testimonies from nationalist victims of
state guns, or where they come from, although we are subjected to the
utterings of a ``salesman'' - ``guns have a beauty, they're almost a
work of art, the object is to deposit 2,000lbs of energy from a
bullet in one's body and cause as much devastation as possible''.
A more worthwhile exercise might have been the huge international
arms sales of British state backed companies and the worldwide
devastation they cause.
Over on Questions and Answers, free staters were busy missing the
point on the killing of Rosemary Nelson, ``It's an attack on the peace
process''.
No mention was made of suspected collusion or the continued attacks
on Catholics in the Armagh/Portadown region and their implications.
It would be interesting to see the perpetrators justify this killing
as ``defending our country from the IRA'' or ``preventing a united
Ireland'' (Loyalists BBC2) or would it have been a case of ``any taig
will do'', particularly one who didn't ``know her place''.
The panel and audience spent a total of five minutes discussing this
killing and it's effects - tells a tale doesn't it?
By Sean O Donaile
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