First I promise this won’t turn into a Formula 1 blog – I’m not a big motor racing fan, in fact I’m not a particularly big sports fan to be honest.
Secondly – given the news that the BBC have won the rights to air F1 from 2009 I thought it worth including The Chain (the BBC F1 theme tune from 1996) as my video of the day.
It seems to be the one a lot of F1 fans on the internet want to see returned and I have to say, although I didn’t watch F1 in the 1990s (and really still don’t today) it is an impressive theme.
Out of interest – is James Allen really as bad as people seem to say he is? Some of the comments I’ve read portray him as a sort of satan of formula 1 – surely nobody is THAT bad?
James Allen is pretty hard to bear. I am sure there is nothing particularly wrong with him as a person or indeed as a journalist. But in the commentary booth it is just one non-stop cringe. I can reel off several examples of moments where he has misjudged the tone of a situation. A nadir was reached when Kimi Raikkonen’s suspension failed after he flat-spotted a tyre a couple of years back. When he flew off the circuit, all James Allen could say was, “See! I told ya! I told ya he should have pitted!” Only James Allen could turn Raikkonen’s crash into something about James Allen.
The only decent video on YouTube that demonstrates the full extent of James Allen’s awfulness is this delightful example of unbiased commentary. His co-commentator Anthony Davidson could be excused for being excited as he was Button’s team mate. But there’s little excuse for Allen’s emissions.
There are a lot of F1 fans in this country who really are at a loss as to why ITV never replaced James Allen given his massive unpopularity.
Whoops, obviously I can’t embed YouTube videos! Here is what I meant: http://youtube.com/watch?v=wif3Kr0y5js
Thanks for clearing that up – I get the vitriol now
I’m going to have a go at getting into F1 – I’ve got a lot of friends into it and would like to be able to talk about it over the desks.
Maybe you should write a bluffers guide to Formula 1
Heh! I might give that a shot.
[...] ‘The Chain’ – Up Your Ego Ryan Morrison – a non-F1 fan – asks, is James Allen really *that* bad? (The answer, incidentally, is ‘yes’.) [...]
[...] Morrison suggested that I should write a ‘bluffer’s guide’ to Formula 1. It fits in with the guide [...]