Comments

The rise and fall — 13 Comments

    • They could have followed Ireland’s example with a stuffed turkey? In fact they could have saved a bit and not bothered to enter… They still would have won.

      • What’s Ukrainie for “My Lovely Horse. With your fetlocks blowing in the wind.”

  1. I really wanted Latvia to win. It would have been a Green Anthem no radio station dare to play. If youve not heard it the first two lines are

    ‘Instead of meat I eat veggies and pussy
    I like them both fresh, like them both juicy’

    • ‘Cause my sausage is bigger, three, two, one, all the girls go eco,
      if you want your man‘s tongue longer than a gecko‘s,
      oh, when you eat your veggies, baby, think of me.

      Heh!

  2. When Graham Norton took over from Wogan, he asked when Wogan prepared his script. He was astonished to discover there was no script, Wogan ad libbed all the way through. The BBC had no idea what he would say next!

    Wogan was one of the few people to realize the whole thing was a wind up.

    • Wogan’s commentary was always right on the nail. Nothing was sacred and he made the whole show almost unmissable.

  3. I remember “Simulcasting” – it was particularly useful when HiFi VHS recorders came out. IIRC the original Live Aid was broadcast that way, and I’ve still got the tape(s) somewhere. The practice often lead to complaints from “traditional” BBC Radio Two listeners, as they didn’t see why their normal programmes should be disrupted just so some horrible “Pop” group could be watched and listened to in glorious stereo…

    • I remember that too. Wasn’t it the TV as one channel and the light programme as the other for the original tests?

      • Possibly, but I only remember when BBC Radio 2 (and later, Radio 1) was used for the stereo audio, with the TV signal carrying normal mono. The VHS HiFi recorders I had would lay down the standard video & mono audio tracks, for compatibility with older units, and encode the stereo (supplied via phono sockets from your tuner) underneath the video tracks as two (different frequency) carrier signals of low level. As I recall, this was known as “Depth Muliplexing”, and also allowed backwards compatibility, with only a suitable deck being able to read this additional information. Unfortunately, as the spinning video heads began to wear, the HiFi tracks would suffer before picture quality noticeably worsened. Some years later “Nicam” stereo audio was added to TV signals, and the ability to record from external inputs was often missing on cheaper VHS recorders…

  4. I used to watch rugby and footy on telly (duh? Where else) and listened to commentary on radio. Because the telly commentators were just shouty know nothing’s whereas the radio commentator had to explain in a normal voice what exactly was happening and why.
    I have watched footy on telly in other countries, not knowing the language, and the shouty know nothing style is everywhere. For every 10 yards (metres) that the ball gets away from the centre line the voice goes up an octave, the volume doubles and the word rate increases. As the ball crosses the goal line only dogs and cats can hear the very high volume gabble.

    • Horse racing commentaries are just the same. You can tell how far the horse has to go purely by the pitch [and speed] of the commentary.

    • When I was still able to listen to shortwave radio (before those fucking “Powerline” Internet extenders were invented), any South American footy commentary always stood out. Even though I am not the slightest bit interested in football, and don’t speak a word of Spanish or Portuguese, the incredibly animated way the announcers carried on was amazing. And when one side actually scored: “Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooal”

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