[quote=âPiles Hussain, post: 876830, member: 363â]Ah yes, the halcyon days of QoS.
Bill and Crazy Horse, who was then replaced by Beefy.
And dear David presiding regally over the mayhem.
Itâs not even a shadow of what it was nowadays.[/quote]
Beefy was great on it. Ultra competitive.
[quote=âmyboyblue, post: 876831, member: 180â]Its a fucking abomination now, who is it, Matt Dawson and some other equally cuntish cunt?
EDIT Tufnell, thats the cunt.[/quote]
Itâs getting more like They Think Itâs All Over.
I fucking despised that show.
[SIZE=6]A legend to the bitter end[/SIZE]
David Coleman should be making his final commentary for the BBC today. Instead he will be holed up in his house in Devon, unwanted and unhappy. Frank Keating on the passing of a television icon
Saturday 30 December 2000
The Guardian
It is a mocking irony that Britainâs surviving patriarch of sports broadcasting - uniquely identifiable for the gurglingly intense cadence with which his voice urgently engaged the generations for nearly half a century - has been allowed to fade into retirement without even a whimper of official farewell, approbation or gratitude.
Sovereign of spout and monarch of the mike, David Coleman, 75 in April, has spent Christmas with his family in north Devon, mouse-quiet, unlauded and with the telephone off the hook. His last two-year contract with the BBC expires at midnight tomorrow.
The old boy may not necessarily have wanted it renewed, of course, but still the cold, curt statement issued by the BBC a few days ago - accompanied by no remote eulogy, all-hail or hosanna - was as witheringly cruel as it was significant.
The pointed lack of generosity by the suits in the Corpâs corridors is shoddy and shameful. What is more, their gormless passing over of the chance of a damned good story - Colemanâs going could be used to put out some bunting and celebrate the depth of the BBCâs broadcasting heritage - is simply unprofessionally barmy.
At the very least, top-dog Greg Dyke should have organised a knighthood for Coleman in todayâs New Yearâs honours. He had only to pick up the telephone. That is the sort of thing bosses of big corporations are actually for, isnât it? And just think of some of the phoney twerps who have been dubbed Sir of late. In his field, Coleman was a - the - genuine giant.
With a final defiant croak, the Lord of the Larynx wrapped up his 16th Olympic Games - summer and winter - in Sydney in October. Two weeks ago, at a solemn ceremony at the International Olympic Committeeâs base in Lausanne, president Samaranch pinned to Colemanâs lapel the rare Olympic Order medal. He was the first broadcaster or journalist ever to be so honoured, joining such lustrous Olympians on the plinth as Jesse Owens, Fanny Blankers-Koen and Emil Zatopek. But not one BBC news bulletin of sight or sound - not even Radio 5 Live at three in the morning - thought to mention the fact, even as a throwaway filler.
Yet in that very same week every single BBC news bulletin, it seemed, was going to town on the announcement - with a yearâs notice, for heavenâs sake - of ITVâs motormouth Murray Walker stepping down. And as he was being lap-of-honour chauffeured that week around the chat-show sofas, Murray would have been the first to admit that as a one-off single-sport specialist, he was but a speck and a pygmy in the wide historical scope of sports broadcasting compared with Colemanâs pioneering and sustained accomplishments.
His own present masters are obviously boneheadedly unaware of the unremitting, trail-blazing resplendence of Colemanâs sportscasting youth and his prolonged prime. His colouring-in of the nationâs first fuzzy monochrome pictures with his knowingly passionate prattle - twigging to engaging, precise perfection both the performersâ and the viewersâ aspirations - uniquely yanked sports comment and commentary away from the aloof, semi-patronising patrician-plummy moustache-strained forerunners such as Leslie Mitchell of Movietone News or the BBCâs Peter Dimmock.
It was the latter, in fact, who as head of sport gave the young BBC Midlands newsroom cub from his hometown Stockport Express his first national broadcast - on May 6 1954, the night Roger Bannister âbrokeâ the four-minute mile. While they were scouring London for the shy hero, who was lying low in Clement Freudâs Royal Court restaurant in Sloane Square, they filled in time with an interview by the fresh-faced Coleman of the golfer Roberto de Vicenzo. Coleman was up and running and when, in 1958, Dimmock launched Saturday Grandstand he introduced the first one himself and then handed over to Coleman âwhoâs 20 times better at it than meâ. Once upon a time, BBC top brass were more generous.
Like all professional perfectionists, Coleman working at his last was a hard man. He never suffered fools. He could reduce insecure minions to tears. He liked cold-eyed serious journalists around him, not televisionâs camp vaudevilleans. He always had - and with good reason -the utmost conceit of his own value.
His unflappability at taking producerâs direction in spite of babels of din from his earpiece talkback was legendary, as was his awesome and never-bettered command (heâd swot diligently through the week) of the live teatime scores teleprinter. âQueen of the South 1, Airdrie 1, means Airdrie move up three places on goal difference, but Queen of the South slip a place because Brechin won today,â heâd comment as the results came in.
Off screen, though, there was an appealing privacy, even shyness, about him. I worked as a (totally insignificant) rival for ITV through the 1960s. We tried to match Grandstand, fronted by nice, good Eamonn Andrews. âIâll blow you out of the water,â David told Eamonn. To all intents, and mercilessly, he did too.
Coleman did 60 Grandstands a year for 10 years, then almost as many Matches of the Day - invariably intoning âWonn-Nilâ for the opening score. His race-reading of successive Olympic 100 metres finals - identifying eight men tearing straight at him in a 10-second blur - was a genius party-piece of splendour. His most epic journalistic hour, or rather hours, came with his prolonged and sombre vigil, working off just one distant fixed camera, after the 1972 Munich Olympics murders.
âColemanballsâ in Private Eye irritated him to the point of anger, and he denied totally just about all entries attributed to him. But the national treasure had mellowed by the time Spitting Image came along and he would engagingly chortle at his crazed, check-capped puppet, finger in earpiece, squealing: âEr, reallyquiteremarkable, and er, I think itâs impossible tokeepupthislevelofexcitementwithoutmyheadexploding . . .â
At super Sydney last summer, it must be said, the famed and bouncily keen effervescent gurgle had become an ancientâs gargle, the once compelling machine-gun yodel now an indecisive splutter. It was The End. He knew and we knew it. But it is the manner of The Ending that has been such an appallingly mismanaged botch. The old boy deserved better. So did we.
Why he was the bestâŚ
Frank Bough (Colemanâs successor on Grandstand)
âHe made his considerable reputation from being able not only to take talkback in his ear, change his mind in a trice, get his facts right and, most of all, sight-read the football results on the teleprinter, but also to interpret them and amplify them in the most amazing way. Coleman was the only one who could tell you that that win had put Arsenal on top of division one on goal average, or that was East Fifeâs first score draw in 19 consecutive games. He still is.â
Brian Moore (rival commentator on ITV)
âI think he was a great journalist. Even in his athletics and football commentaries, you realised what a formidable opponent he was because he had a hard-nosed attitude about sport and news, which few us had in television. He didnât flap and I imagine he was a pretty uncomfortable guy to work with, because his standards were high and his temper was pretty short. We had a fairly spiky relationship, to be honest. Recently I have formed a good relationship with John Motson and Barry Davies, but I think with David he set an agenda where there was no great friendship. I did find it very uncomfortable but I still respected him greatly.â
Bill Beaumont (team captain on A Question of Sport)
âHe set the standards. His enthusiasm and love of knowledge always came through. David could tell you how many games Cowdenbeath had won and all sorts of things. And over the 12 or 13 years on the programme the only thing that changed was that his parting got wider and his sweaters got worse.â
Stuart Storey (former Olympic hurdler and athletics co-commentator since 1974)
âDavid always said he would give up everything to be an Olympian like the rest of us in the commentary box; well, he was. He was an Olympian of television. When I entered the BBC I was fortunate because I learned the profession from him. He was an A to Z of television. He had everything: a great ability to read a situation really well. He would always know when to put in the big hit-line, which when you heard it later you always wished you had said because it usually summed up everything perfectly. As an all-round broadcaster I think he was the greatest.â
Iwan Thomas (1998 European and Commonwealth 400m champion)
âWhen I switch on the video to watch my runs in Budapest and Kuala Lumpur, itâs great to hear David commentating because his has been the voice for so many great moments in British athletics. I still love it when I hear him on the video saying, âIwan the powerhouse is coming throughâ and âIwanâs strength is his strengthâ. The man is simply a legend.â
Ron Atkinson (football manager, TV pundit and Guardian columnist)
âI never worked with David on Match of the Day but Iâve always had the greatest admiration for him. I remember the very early days when he was working for something called Sports Special. All of a sudden the picture disappeared and David blurted: âI thought someone had made a balls-up of that.â What he didnât realise was his voice was still coming over the air.â
Ron Atkinson (football manager, TV pundit and Guardian columnist)
âI never worked with David on Match of the Day but Iâve always had the greatest admiration for him. I remember the very early days when he was working for something called Sports Special. All of a sudden the picture disappeared and David blurted: âI thought someone had made a balls-up of that.â What he didnât realise was his voice was still coming over the air.â
Little did Big Ron know that comments made when he thought he was off the air would come back to haunt him a few years later.
Coleman comes across as a bit of a cunt from that article actually.
Mikhail Kalashnikov.
Ho Ho Ho!
I didnât know he had 18 kids, I thought he was one of 18 kids. His oul man certainly knew how to use his rifle properly.
This should be in the dead significant persons thread btw.
[quote=âSandymount Red, post: 877571, member: 1074â]I didnât know he had 18 kids, I thought he was one of 18 kids. His oul man certainly knew how to use his rifle properly.
This should be in the dead significant persons thread btw.[/quote]
Indirectly responsible for more violent deaths than oppenheimer. Most definitely a celeb as everyone knows his name.
He also had a line of kalashnikov vodka in a rifle shaped bottle, itd blow the head off you
Ron Noades.
A man who played no small part in bringing the Zenith Data Systems Cup to Selhurst Park.
Maybe not the right thread but whatever.
Michael Schumacher hit his head today off a rock while skiing. His condition has been described as serious.
[quote=âfarmerinthecity, post: 879508, member: 24â]Maybe not the right thread but whatever.
Michael Schumacher hit his head today off a rock while skiing. His condition has been described as serious.[/quote]
oooohh no 
Just checked there itâs a head injury but but not that serious.
RIP
undergoing major surgery now and in a coma
Not that serious then
I hope you are not taking the piste.
Itâs been reported that a neurosurgeon has been flown in to perform an emergency brain operation.
Thereâs also a specialist team in the ward changing the wheels on his bed every now and again.
His condition is said to have gone rapidly downhill.
[quote=âBandage, post: 879640, member: 9â]Itâs been reported that a neurosurgeon has been flown in to perform an emergency brain operation.
Thereâs also a specialist team in the ward changing the wheels on his bed every now and again.[/quote]
Thatâs terribly lame.