I LOVE the Tour de France and I think I’ve found out why.

For three weeks each July the greatest (cycle) race in the world turns France into one giant racetrack, up mountains across causeways and occasionally along regular roads.  The spectacle is spectacular.

When I started watching the Tour sometime during the mid-1990s, the highlights show used to be on Channel 4.  It was fronted then by Gary Imlach with commentary from Paul Sherwen and Phil Liggett.

When ITV bought the rights, the Tour was shunted onto ITV2 – and now ITV4 – but they had the good sense to retain the established triumberate. 

To my mind they are the perfect team.  Imlach cuts through the mystique of the Tour to its nuts and bolts -  just yesterday he pointed out he was on an industrial estate with the rest of the Tour entourage and that the portaloos smelled.

For their stage commentary, Sherwen and Liggett are a brilliant double act.  Liggett, the more experienced in commenatry terms, has a brilliant grasp of the history of the race. Sherwen has riden the Tour himself and offers insights into life in the bike race that even the most ardent of non-bike fans could appreciate.

The Tour is also live on Eurosport, but this year I’ve been following it exclusively on ITV through the red button - although I didn’t know this feature existed until about three days in. 

Indeed, as I was watching yesterday when the Isle of Man’s Mark Cavendish won the stage I can let you in on a secret.  On the live stream via the red button Liggett called Gerald Ciolek as the winner, not realising his mistake until some 30 seconds later when a close up of Cav appeared on the screen. 

By the 7pm highlgihts show, history had been rewritten and Liggett was calling Cavendish to his maiden Tour stage win.  But I’ll forgive them.

There is also a podcast on the ITV website but I must say this did little for me the one time I’ve listened to it so far, being made up to a fair degree of interviews from the regular television coverage.

JEFF STELLING is probably the world’s most famous Hartlepool United fan. 

Every Saturday for the past nine months, he has fronted Sky Sports’ Gillette Soccer Saturday providing a level of fanaticism and statistical depth unmatched anywhere on a British television screen… perhaps anywhere in the world. 

Until I started my elongated university career five years ago, this world was something of a loss to me. I used to go to matches on most Saturday afternoons and would therefore not be sat in front of the goggle-box.  Since moving away from home, however, I have discovered the joy of watching men watching football.

Pundits

Granted, he’s always joined by a punditry team that has in the past included the likes of Rodney Marsh and the late George Best – he must now put up with Phil Thompson and Paul Merson – but Stelling is the real star of the show.

When the programme returns from an ad break (mercifully there aren’t too many), Stelling is always anxious to furnish the viewer with what they have missed.  In the final section of the programme, covering around the 70-minute point onwards, Jeff becomes almost apoplectic with excitement.

And yet he still manages to get out all the statistics and scorers and relay the league positions of Arbroath and Arsenal with a matter-of-fact style that is refreshing to fans of lower-league teams.  He knows football exists beyond the Premier League and – more importantly – he knows a lot about the football that exists beyond the Premier League.

Summer

The next three months will be tricky for all football fans – not least this year when a major championships will be taking place without any British representation. But the absence of Stelling from our screens will leave a big gap. Roll on  the first week of August!

See Stelling trying to becalm Chris Kamara: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYfCG4laEt4.

 

ON SUNDAY, allegations against Max Mosley were printed in the News of the World.  Four days later, they are still being discussed across the media spectrum – so what does this prove?

Firstly, it is important to recognise that this story has many elements that make it stand out from the crowd:

• Mr. Mosley’s position, as head of the International Automobile Assocation (more commonly known by its French acronym, FIA), is at the very top of the tree.  In other words, it gives him a long way to fall. 
• The story has allowed for different angles since it first broke.  Mosley’s reaction, comments from Bernie Ecclestone (F1’s top dog)  as well as the general public eye / prviacy debate.
• Perhaps most telling, though, is the shock factor of the allegations.  The involvement of Nazism, sex orgies and a 67-year-old man is a heady mix for any journalist to pick through.

That the story is now in its fifth day, with little let-up, is still remarkable in the era of 24-hour news.  That the story was broken by a newspaper is heartening for those in the industry, and must be a put-down to the newspaper neigh-sayers.

 If national newspapers are dying out – being rendered obselete by 24-hour rolling TV news and the internet – then surely this would not happen?

The News Of The World is the biggest-selling Sunday newspaper by some distance, and it has a history of such exposés going back decades.

This sort of scoop can only help their reputation, and show the public that even in the digital age, newspapers can still break big stories and set the agenda for the following week. 

THIS WEEK, the Daily Express and Daily Star both published front page apologies to Kate and Gerry McCann. 

They paid a combined £550,000 to the Find Madeleine campaign, and their Sunday stablemates are also expected to go down the same route in a couple of days time. 

The BBC, whilst not directly involved in the newspaper game, pointed out the scarcely-precedented action of both the Star and Express. 

 Apologies, if printed at all, are normally to be found tucked away well inside a newspaper as to minimise the attention drawn to them.  The Express, in particular, has done this with an “Amplifications and Clarifications” box in the past.

Why, on this occasion, was the offence felt to be so heinous that only a splash would do? 

• Unlike most recipients of apologies, the McCanns aren’t politicians.  In fact, they attract a lot more public sympathy (even if this has been questioned at times) than the average MP.   Therefore, the force of the apology had to be stronger. 
• Both papers have avoided a potentially damaging case against them by settling out of court.  A long-running action would have been lapped up by the other dailies, and eroded their credibility with the public.
• The sheer scale.  The Daily Express alone has apologised for over 100 stories published since the disappearance of Madeleine. 

IN THE MediaGuardian last week, Andrew Neil - who used to edit the Scotsman and now pontificates about politics on the BBC - said that Scottish newspapers were about to die.

Not all Scottish newspapers, you understand, just those produced in Scotland.

 This week, some hacks had a go back.  One broadly agreed, one vehemently disagreed and one said he wasn’t really sure while suggesting that Neil was something of a hypocrite.

 Neil’s basic argument was that the Scottish Sun (now 25p rather than 20p) is the best selling paper in the country, having overtaken the Scotland-produced Record (35p).  Sales of The Herald and the Scotsman are also declining. 

Neil stated his belief that the Scotland-based titles are akin to (English) regionals in terms of their news coverage.  On this point, I don’t think he’s far wrong.  I said similar things here about the content of the Record some weeks ago.

He also pointed to the inherent mystery of the issue.  Rarely (if ever) in the recent past has Scotland agitated for independence as much as it is doing right now, but more Scots are turning to English-based newspapers. 

 However, I do think that reports of the death Scottish newspapers might be somewhat exaggerated.

It is inconceivable that a country of Scotland’s size and standing would not have its own, national daily newspaper.

There is ample room for at least one daily tabloid and broadsheet, and probably a greater number of Sundays.  There will always be a mass swathe of Scots wanting news from outside their local area, but not wanting that of a foreign land.

Sales may be falling, but that is true across the board, and the drop-off in Scotland is only slightly more than that south of the border.

 Future independence or no, the death nell sounded by Neil is still incredibly distant, if it is even perceivable at all. 

The BBC News website:  (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news)

Colours – Dark crimson with blues writing making it obvious that all of the headlines are hyperlinks.  Any explanation of a story which is not the headline is then in black to differentiate it. 

Font – Sans-serif with no fancy squiggly bits. 

Navigation – There is a toolbar on the left for different types of news story.  There are also a number of links to individual stories down the right hand-side of the page, which have relevance to the main story.  The BBC News crimson banner remains constant at the very top of the page, with the date and time. 

Interactivity – There is the opportunity to bookmark an article with a number of different applications, including Facebook.  many pages also link to comments pages or blogs where users (so long as they are registered) can leave their own opinions.   

Guardian Unlimited: (http://www.guardian.co.uk/)

Colours – Each seperate section of the website (sport, arts, finance, etc.) is differentiated with its own colour in the form of a line above the raft of stories on that topic.  There is  quite a large prominence given to pictures – which are all in colour.

Fonts – Headlines are written in a serif font, whilst everything else is sans.  Again, headlines functioning as hyperlinks are blue while explanations are in black.

Navigation – There are a number (well, three) colnus on the right hand side of the front page, each giving a different range of links.  This looks a little busy and confused to me.  There is quite a mind-boggling myriad of pages that can be jumped to with just a single strike of the mouse.   There are five pages worth of stuff on the front page before getting to the bottom, this seems a few too many.

Interactivity – There are blogs wheere comments can be left but no polls.

Stockport Express: (http://www.stockportexpress.co.uk)

Colours – A rather dull grey masthead which is dominated by an advert rather than the name of the paper.  The predominant colour is then red, which appears for the headlines and links to other news stories. 

Fonts – It may be the monitor I’m using, but the font looks a little small and there seems to be quite a lot of space left between lines of text.  The font is serif with the g’s having funny squiggly bits. 

Navigation – Below the masthead there are links to different areas of the site, and this appears to then be duplicated on the left of the page.  Stories are given down the right-hand side (as with the previous two sites) but the lack of a different background colour or any sort of box around them means that they fail to really stand out from the rest of the page.

Interactivity – The two listed options are “Audio and video” and “Your pictures”.  The latter of these links to an external Manchester website where pictures can be uploaded and pictures posted by other people can be viewed.

TRUTH BE told, I’m not really sure what to make of the SNP.

 I’ll back Scotland’s fight in almost any international debate - but independence has long been one that I’ve struggled to take a firm stance on.

 In principle it sounds great.  Currently the status of Scotland floats somewhere between a principality (which Wales is) and an out-and-out country.  There may be a more precise technical definition, but I don’t care enough to look for it.  And it was probably written by an Englishman.

The ongoing process of devolution has granted more and more independence, but in international circles (particularly in continental Europe) Scotland is not recognised.  Worse still, the entirety of Britain is referred to as “England”. 

Some say that it can happen on a practical level.  North Sea oil and tourism are mooted as goldmines which would keep a newly-independent Scotland clear of bankruptcy.   But the former commodity is only short-lived, and replacement forms of power are being developed at a fast rate.

 I am not so sure.  I think that I like things the way they are.  But I’m not really sure about that either.

 One thing that I am pretty sure about is that the one issue politics of the Scottish National Party - and its leader Alex Salmond – are unlikely to be beneficial for Scotland – whether it is independent or not. 

FOR REASONS a little too obscure to go into here – I’ve been buying the Daily Record this week. 

This is not usual practice – and I was pretty unsure of what to expect.  What I found was in some measure disappointing, heartening and downright wrong.

To start at the start: Disappointing.  At times it had the feel of a regional paper (which maybe it is) reporting pretty random stories that would carry little interest beyond the small hamlet in which they took place.

Then there was the England-bashing.  It was there – though only in small measure.  Play was made of the fact that ENGLISH police will need a guide to spot a drunk over Christmas, while our good boys won’t.  Presumably because everyone in Scotland will be slozzled.

Downright wrong: A frankly incomprehnisible piece on Monday attempted to make a case for Kevin Keegan to be the new manager of the Scotland football team.  Aside from the fact that he was once manager of England (a not-at-all-trodden-path) and he’s been out of the game for longer than that canoe bloke, his cavalier attitute of “we’ll score more than them” is the total opposite of what Scotland’s recent success has been founded on. No 1-0’s over France  with him in charge.

I’d almost rather have Graeme Souness.  Almost.

Today is St. Andrew’s day.  A day celebrated by anyone with any sort of Scottish leanings – myself included. 

To be honest Burns’ Night (January 25 for non-knowers) is the big one.  That’s when the haggis, neeps, tatties and deep fried mars bars are unleashed. 

St. Andrew’s Day tends to be unfortunately overlooked.  It comes just a day before the start of Advent – and most people have long since been talking about Christmas. The Coca-Cola truck advert has even been on already.

However, what really surprises me is the lack of knowledge of St. Georges Day.  It’s April 23, though ask an English person and they probably won’t be able to tell you that.

Oh, by the way.  St. George is also the patron saint of syphillis.  English people probably won’t tell you that either.