searching for shergar

ilx's LocalGarda pointed me towards this strikingly odd BBC documentary -- currently still on iplayer -- abt the grand-national winning racehorse kidnapped by the IRA in 1983

the story itself is weirdly slight, kind of obvious, a bit grim -- the narrative tries to spice it up with a charmingly inept mysticism -- but the characters on-screen are just a procession of startling faces with tales never quite rightly told, plus this too-quickly backdrop social and political backdrop (horseracing society, horseracing society in ireland, the troubles in a very particular, short-lived and weird phase) that ends up being half adam curtis, half minor kid's drama from the early 70s

some of it's very funny, but you always can't say why -- and it doesn't seem to be meant to be? plus lester pigott is one weird dude

watch this programme! it's good* and i want to talk about it

*not quite the right word but it is immensely WATCHABLE

i watched this a couple of nights ago - it was really good but it could have benefited from being longer or split into 2 or 3 parts

such great characters throughout it though - felt bad for the guy who got swindled out of 80 grand

I saw the last 3/4 of this. It was a weird type of build-up to these lot finding Shergar's remains except you knew they were never going to.

Lester Pigott is weird but interesting - he never said the thing you thought he might've said.

i vaguely remember the Shergar controversy and the ramshackle ireland of the early 80s

hate to be a pedant but he won the Derby not the Grand National

almost no one said the thing you thought they were going to say!! i think that was one of the interesting things abt it: this was/is a self-enclosed world at quite an odd angle to routine media protocols, i think

sorry NV, as you've guessed i don't follow form

is it this one?

@cowabunga_baby: Doc about Shergar's abduction on TV3. in the recreation, the lads are pointing a gun to get him in the horsebox

no

almost no one said the thing you thought they were going to say!!

I went in on this because its very rare for someone who actually is out there doing the sport to display this very quality (although jockeys are part of a whole set-up I don't have a handle on).

btw I read a brilliant piece sometime ago on Secretariat, who is the American version of Shergar. Died of an illness, they opened him and his heart was twice as big or something? Which explains why he was so much better..

I was trying to find it earlier with no luck #nationaliseGoogle

sounds like the american version of shergar was considerably duller

large pumper vs being disappeared by the ira isn't much of a contest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM2LsKdUlx4

well we never got to open up Shergar did we now :-)

my actual stand-out favourite moment -- apart from the first encounter with the guy with the astounding whiskey-nose -- is when the IRA ring up and say "the horse has had an accident", there's so many weird layers of euphemism there!

well we didn't but i bet someone did xp

this reminded me of the documentary about malcolm lowry's "under the volcano" - i realised that was what it had me thinking of after laughing at it throughout. these strange faces just appear throughout with odd mannerisms and ways of speaking, even the narrator seemed to get accidentally dragged into the farcical tone, like when she really portentously describes one of the interviewees as someone 'who knew shergar, AS A YOUNG HORSE'

you could do a documentary on the trilby wearing country detective alone i feel

jim "spud" murphy aka "jazzer"

tbh i want a noir-ish detective series based on him dealing with criminal and political activity in the county leitrim border territory, it could be called "the lanes"

or just "jazzer"

are we fully investigating our amusement at the oirish here folks

tbh i want a noir-ish detective series

no noirs noirish

i see the irish posters itt who encouraged me to take this bold observational stand have deserted me and left me hanging haplessly on the barbed wire, a a mere giggling bigot

heh

i will watch this asap and join in as rough as any

its ime true to some extent to say that the horsey set are split btwn

not-at-all-irish
and
christ-thats-irish

and im not sure theres a big middle ground between em

There's a guy here whos interviewed at one point whos a dead ringer for Ted in the Fast Show here. Lots of old school Irishness that can't help but be funny. Go watch it ffs

i want one of the eps in the long version to explore how weird horses looked in the 18th century:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ec/Byerly_Turk.jpg/270px-Byerly_Turk.jpg

horse racing people seem like a pretty eccentric crew across nationalities tbf

Piggott for example

i was wondering if the jockey who rode shergar in the derby -- walter swinburn -- was re-interviewed for this (obviously there was early 80s footage of him looking abt 11) and it turns out he died in a weird accident in belgravia in 2016 trying to a close a window :(

was this mentioned?

he died in a weird accident in belgravia in 2016 trying to a close a window

What?!?

Is this the documentary where it turns out the horse has been living in Detroit the whole time, quit his career as an entertainer and has been supporting himself working construction jobs with no idea he has a giant fanbase in South Africa?

heh

all his fenss beck in seth effrika were all lak "ee wass kilt ba de ah ur ai"

The thing I always remember about Piggott, wasn't him looking like an iconic winner and being the lord of the bend at Tattenham Corner or whatever, but it was that mumbling voice version on Spitting Image, that cruelly inferred he was probably raped while doing time for tax evasion: "they did unspeakable things to me". How quaint, tax evasion seems these days.

There is a funny crossover between the world of dodgy jockeys and betting shop punters. I often heard Fallon described as the "working man's jockey" even though many others would call him bent as fuck, with good reason tbh. And then the day when an SIS presenter declared that Graham Bradley (bent as 9 pound note jumps jockey, renowned for pulling up horses) had signed on the dole after a scandal, there was a huge uproarious cheer in the shop from the mostly Afro-Caribbean punters!