Bring back 'the c*ck'

I want James Allen back, and I never thought i'd say that. I've heard 'he knows the time to beat... is this gonna be good enough?!' too many times.

me too mate, i know he was annoying for some at times but it was that combination of him and brundle that made ITV commentary great. I personally had no issue with him! Legard has a boring voice for f1

Definitely need someone, anyone! Save us BBC and GET RID OF UP THE HILL, OVER THE HILL, ROUND THE BEND, IS THIS TIME GONNA BE GOOD ENOUGH?

He's actually making me go insane.

You are so spoilt. Last year you had Allen and you wanted to get rid of him. The BBC got rid of him, now they've someone else and that's not good enough either. On top of that you have a rainbow of coloured buttons on which you have 583 different commentaries and it's STILL not good enough!

Too many people looking back with rose tints as usual then. Legard > Allen.

Oh and we are spoilt. We have a choice. Turn on the other commentary track.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
theRacingLine.net
SportsCarArchives.com

yeah just press listen to the 5live commentary. Crofty and Davidson are actually very good.

_______________________________________________________________________

Listening to Allen on the Aus feed I must say I miss him too. Maybe he was a cock but in terms of enthusiasm he bought so much more. Legard tries to be the lead and tries to be what Martin is, Allen was happy to settle for being the dumb guy. It worked well. But it is what it is. The Beeb coverage is nothing short of fantastic and tbf even without Brundle, and with Legard (or some other tw*t) the coverage is by far the best there is. Not by a little, but by a very long way. F1 has never been covered so thoughtfully, and so full!

Legard has the type of voice which you tend to drown out anyway! I hardly notice him now! But as mentioned we have the option to switch to the well flowing lineup of Ant and Crofty and all we have to put up with is football scores every now and again.

---

"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL

DaveEllis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Too many people looking back with rose tints as
> usual then. Legard > Allen.
>
> Oh and we are spoilt. We have a choice. Turn on
> the other commentary track.


Yup, just use that. I do that during Qualy and Race. Sadly I have to turn back to the main one since I miss Brundle's input.

No, in a word. It's still only 18 months or so since we got rid of him.
It's like Dave says. People are quick to forget what an irritating prat Allen was. Whatever Legard's limitations, he's the lesser of the two evils IMO - by a mile.

---

I don't cringe so much looking back than I do listening to Legard. No rose-tinted glasses here. The real shame was how Allen couldn't be himself though. He wouldn't have been half as bad if he could just chat away with Brundle rather than having to dumb everything down - they could still have discussed the little things, but Allen was basically told never to utter anything even remotely technical. That and the fake excitement (which again is a simple fix).

The really annoying thing is that the Beeb have the perfect replacement already, yet apparently due to Brundle refusing to work with him, they can't use him (or they'd have to get rid of Brundle). Such a shame, especially as the rest of the coverage is so good.

Actually, the coverage has 1 massive flaw that everyone seems to forget, but notices at the time. Every single one of the microphones is broken. Every damn weekend they have to replace 3 or 4 microphones because DCs or EJs, or the guests have broken, and they all end up sharing microphones. And if the microphone does make it through an interview, don't worry, the sound man spills his beer on the equipment and that'll break and we'll end up with no sound, double sound, or sound where it isn't meant to be. We had all 3 within a minute this weekend, and during practice and qualifying it broke several times before and after the show.

You'd think the BBC would actually have managed to fix it given how long they have had the coverage for. This is not teething problems, this is just terrible equipment. Shut down one of these generic Asian channels that us Brits don't get despite funding with our license fee and use that cash to fix the damn sound!

As for Legard and Allen - Allen was a f**king moron. And he was a moron on purpose. He went out of his way to act like a 5 year old. He was being tabloid about it because that is what ITV did. That is why we were treated to Mark Blundell being babysat by Rider as he wiped the drool from his chin and spoon fed him questions. Legard at least puts in effort to be professional and grown up about it all, even if he is terrible according to some and just plain meh for others (I don't think you'll find anyone who is 100% positive about him). But given the choice between James blowing his load over the prospect of Jenson and Lewis sharing a bed, and Legard at least trying to commentate on something other than tyres, I know what my choice will be every single time.

And as the non-brits have said, some people need to stop acting spoilt. We have the best F1 coverage (and possibly the best motorsport coverage of any series) in the world by a considerable distance. We have all of the practice sessions available live, we have live qualifying, live race, 2 commentary tracks, extended coverage after the event for analysis and several repeats afterwards on TV, on demand repeats online and every single session is streamed live over the internet in 2 different qualities, and, providing a 3rd channel, for the onboard only stuff. Oh, and not a single advert break in sight. We should be happier than pigs in sh*t, but all we do is whine.

Reality check for some of you who don't remember ITV. Advert breaks which often missed important parts of the action. Dumbed down commentary with dumbed down post-race shows. Race coverage cut short constantly to make way for other shows. Qualifying coverage often delayed. No practice shown at all. No live streams. And during post-race coverage they were more interested in advertising the coming weeks football broadcasts.

Be happy with what we have. It is currently the best anyone in the world has ever had, especially for this price.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
theRacingLine.net
SportsCarArchives.com

F1-ITV's finest hour was probably the 1998 Japanese GP. MS retires while an ad break is on, the race comes back on with a shot of Mika having a pit-stop and Martin saying "You're looking at the 1998 World Champion".

Oh.

---

I'm with Dave, those sound problems are getting annoying :\

I also dont mind Legard. He's not Murray Walker, but who is? The only thing that annoys me is when he randomly starts shouting, like at the end of teh race today as he shouted each drivers name as they crossed teh finish line.

Sim

---

All Hail The New York Giants - Winners of Superbowl XXI, XXV and XLII!

"I'd love to know what goes on in that crazy head of yours sometimes, Sim..." - Locke Cole

tbh, F1 hasn't been the same for me since I stopped being told that Coronation Street would follow the end of the race



RedSam
Winner: Not the Nickv Comment of the Year 2009
Due to the voting system in Germany, Governments are always made up of coalitions of different parties. At the last election, an almost unprecidented result saw the CDU/CSU (rough equivilant of the Conservatives) go into Government with the SPD (rough equivilant of Labour)

Dave's comment summed it right up. Take the funding off of Radio 1Xtra and the BBC Asian network since no one listens to it. I'm an Asian and I hate and despise listening to that station. It's atrocious. The technical problems today were just irritating, one minute we're listening to Jake and then it goes on to Lee interviewing Jenson. However, tbf, BBC has always had technical problems. I remember I think it was Euro 08 or something where it suddenly went kaput and the Red Screen came up.

The spoon feeding of Blundell was just utter hilarity.

@ Dave, as I've said before... I'd rather have an over-enthusiastic moron commentating on my races than a dull and lifeless cliche-bank.

This thread, when started, was nothing to do with BBC's coverage, which I agree is absolutely excellent. However, in terms of the commentary team, I preferred Allen to Legard and that is said without rose-tinted glasses. Allen irritated me at times, but Legard plain bores me half to tears. I know which I prefer.

---

K*bots UK, specialist providers of 'fun science' Curriculum Enhancement days for Primary and Secondary schools in Britain.
Please find us on [en.wikipedia.org] for more information.

Locke Cole Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'd rather have an
> over-enthusiastic moron commentating on my races
> than a dull and lifeless cliche-bank.

I wouldn't describe Legard as "lifeless" at all TBH. He can be dull, yes, but he does try his best to sound enthusiastic, and noticeably so IMO. But describing him as lifeless implies that he sounds like a sleepy snooker commentator or something, and he doesn't. Particularly in qualifying, he does his best to sound fired up, even if it's not his strong point.

Regarding the sound issues, I hadn't even paid them any real attention till you guys brought them up, which is strange, as niggling things like live sound issues usually annoy the hell out of me. But thinking back to today, yeah, there were some quite bad problems with the microphones playing up which sounded like interference IIRC. And yeah, the BBC's decision to shut down some of these generic stations/channels without many listeners is a good idea if it'll help them to prioritise and spend more of their budget on basic things like quality sound equipment.

---

To be honest, I don't notice Legard, so I have no problem with him.

RE: Allen - he's much better in print, and that's because he can actually show analysis in print. He's actually very interesting then. He'd be more suited to Brundle's job than Legard's, although then you would miss having a driver in the commentary box, and I quite like having a driver there.

And let's be honest, in Martin Brundle, we quite possibly have the finest, and quite often wittiest, analyst in F1. What/who he doesn't know, isn't worth knowing. And no-one is better at pushing in front of attractive German/Italian women in the queue for the drivers' interviews and getting away with it...

[Website]

Locke Cole Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> @ Dave, as I've said before... I'd rather have an
> over-enthusiastic moron commentating on my races
> than a dull and lifeless cliche-bank.

Great. Fortunately most of us disagree and the general pecking order of preference for the primary seat would be Murray > Croft > Legard > gui > monkeys > AIDS > James Allen. What really bugs me about this bitching is when we were on ITV we had no choice. The only option was to mute the TV, turn on Radio 5 Live and hope the audio kinda synced, which it never did, thus leading to a frustrating experience. Now on the BBC you do have a choice. Stop bitching about Legard and chose the second option! It is there for a reason!


> This thread, when started, was nothing to do with
> BBC's coverage, which I agree is absolutely
> excellent. However, in terms of the commentary
> team, I preferred Allen to Legard and that is said
> without rose-tinted glasses. Allen irritated me at
> times, but Legard plain bores me half to tears. I
> know which I prefer.

Um. This thread is about who is commentating for the BBC. How much more can it be about the coverage?

RE: Allen - he's much better in print, and that's because he can actually show analysis in print.

It's also because of who he works for. When he's doing stuff for the FT, it is high quality analysis. When he was on ITV he was like a 15 year old moron who spent his nights wanking over Jenson posters. He was nothing but The Daily Sport newspaper in audio form. Quite frankly, I didn't just find James annoying, I found him down right insulting to listen to. Really he wasn't that much better than Mark Blundell was.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
theRacingLine.net
SportsCarArchives.com

I don't have the red button. I'm stuck with Legard. A monotonous drone for most of the race, and then when drivers start crossing the line he starts shouting for no good reason. It's like he thinks, "This is the end of the race... I'm supposed to sound excited. I know, I'll raise my voice."

Dave, I'm surprised that you of all people are trying to push your own opinion as fact. When someone else offers their opinion, it's not like you to dismiss it offhand. I prefer Allen to Legard... that's not a statement for you to try and disprove, that's a point of view that is (can you believe it?) different to yours.

---

K*bots UK, specialist providers of 'fun science' Curriculum Enhancement days for Primary and Secondary schools in Britain.
Please find us on [en.wikipedia.org] for more information.