Is there a hole in your life, now that Euro 2004 is coming to an end and there are evenings during the course of which no football whatsoever is being shown? The good news: one of the greatest of all sporting events is starting this weekend. Yes, the Tour de France! And this year is going to be even more exciting than usual, as Lance aims for that record sixth win. The bad news: where do we watch it?
Yes I should subscribe to Sky Sports – but why (oh why) can’t one of our terrestrial channels cover it decently? The sad thing is that Channel 4 got the format right back in the nineties, with those half-hour early evening programmes hosted by the wonderful Phil Liggett, and then ditched it when they got the cricket. ITV showed it last year, but late at night and never at the same time, clearly without much conviction. I mean, this is a sporting event just made for TV. Why can’t we get decent coverage? They show all kinds of boring crap: drizzly athletics meetings from some windswept field in Gateshead; endless golf; indoor bowls (indoor bowls! I wonder how many households echoed to cries of “Oh great, there’s indoor bowling on tonight!”).
Ah those long summers back in the nineties….I can remember the theme music, “da da da dum…da da da dum”….cycles swooshing past fields of sunflowers….alpine passes with the peloton snaking round the corners….chateaux from the air….those crazy names: Abdoudjaparov, Mario Cippollino, Bjarne Riis……..it all takes me back………
In the evenings we’d watch the tour, but in the mornings we used to take long walks over the fields to Little Beckhampton, Daphne and I. We’d managed to put the unfortunate misunderstanding with the reticule behind us, and I sensed our growing intimacy as I told her of my plans for a nationwide chain of falafel houses. But Rupert’s return cast a long shadow, and Daphne became increasingly cool and distant during our walks, as we struggled to manoeuvre the wheelchair over the cart-tracks. Then came the disturbing affair at Granston Manor, precipitating a chain of events which were to change our lives irrevocably, shattering my dreams for ever, and leading, for Daphne, to tragedy…..
But I digress. The Tour de France. Ah yes. I think they should devote at least an hour a night to it, and I think they should have Phil Liggett, and the same theme music.
Would Daphne, I wonder, hear it, and remember….
Do they even have TV in those places?
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