Kelnerwatch

I was fascinated by the details of David and Victoria's second date, during which they were sitting in a car park somewhere, when Victoria "reached across to the glove compartment and pulled out a sprig of aloe vera." (Copyright News of the World, 2003. Will that do, boys?) David apparently had a cut finger, on which his new girlfriend rubbed the aloe vera.

Clearly, this aloe vera is powerful stuff, because the very next day Becks sent some roses and a Prada handbag round to Victoria's place. This, more than anything for me, demonstrates what a sweet new man His Beckness is.

Thinking back to my own days as a single man, I also went on one or two dates that culminated in a parked car, and I have to say - and I do not consider myself to be too much of a sexist pig - that if some young hotsy had climbed all over me to get to the glove compartment, and all I ended up with was a finger rub, she would not have been opening the door to the man from Interflora first thing.

For me, the presence of the aloe vera alone would have set alarm bells ringing. What kind of woman, I should have asked myself, carries around supplies of exotic plants that can neither be eaten nor smoked? The answer, I fear, would not have been in her favour.

http://football.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,4284,1033253,00.html

Yes Kelner's a menace.

The best thing about the story of the roses and the Prada handbag was how DB worked out what to buy Posh: he bought a copy of Smash Hits and read her likes / dislikes! That seems very great to me.

I agree, if that's true.

I'm glad you think he's a menace.

Since I initiated Kelnerwatch he has continued to be a menace; in fact his menacing aspect has grown.

One week he was going on semi-approvingly about a woman being groped by passer-by.

This week he is on about something else dodgy. I can't remember what.

The point is, his menacing aspect seems to be bidding to confirm this thread's raison d'etre.

Another fun bit of Gdn Monday sport: John Rawling's attack on I. Wright's claim that only racialism has stopped him from becoming England manager!!

Here is evidence of Kelner's menace. But I cannot find TODAY'S Kelner column on the Guardian site.

Bottoms up to those groping petrol-heads

Martin Kelner
Monday September 15, 2003
The Guardian

N ot since Anneka Rice has one TV presenter's bottom been the focus of as much attention as that of Louise Goodman, ITV's trackside totty (sorry, Guardian women, but this is motor racing, and motor racing in Italy at that). Twice, in the build-up to yesterday's Italian grand prix, the Goodman backside was manhandled by passing petrol-heads.
Michael Schumacher, at least, had an excuse. He featured in a pre-recorded item, coaching a team of international freeloaders, er journalists, in a moped race around the Monza circuit to plug something or other (commercialism is so rampant in formula one it is sometimes hard to know what exactly is being hawked), and he was merely helping Ms Goodman on to her bike. That is certainly what I should have told the court.

The second instance was far more blatant and random. La Goodman was doing one of those walking, talking interviews with Jenson Button on the way down to the start of the morning drivers' parade, when some chap in overalls, clearly oblivious to the cameraman walking backwards in front of him, grabbed her behind and shouted out a cheery greeting.

Barely breaking stride, Louise chuckled, said something on the lines of "Not now, I'm working" and continued to keep us up to date with the very important details of what young Jenson had for breakfast.

Reprehensible though it is that women should have to put up with this kind of boorish behaviour (he writes, suddenly remembering that this is the Guardian), Goodman's reaction showed professionalism of the highest order.

After all, other female presenters do not have to put up with those kind of distractions. Kirsty Wark never finds herself subjecting Vikram Seth to close textual analysis while trying to avoid being touched up by some beast with Castrol GTX all over his hands. Although it is one for Granada Men and Motors to think about.

It was comforting to find the Italian grand prix conforming so completely to national stereotype. To demonstrate what a macho event this was, the obligatory vox pop with Hollywood stars in the crowd featured Dennis Hopper, Laurence Fishburne and Jeremy Irons, who had ridden powerful motorbikes together through several countries, in an Easy Rider-style male bonding exercise, leaving Irons "full of adrenalin". I am no expert, but I should not have said it was adrenalin he was full of.

Irons also referred to Ralf Schumacher as "Rafe", which must be something of a first. Fishburne, meanwhile, answered the one question he was asked with "What? No. Yeah. No" as if in tribute to Frankie Howerd.

"Laurence is clearly better with a script," commented Jim Rosenthal, as always an oasis of calm in the testosterone- fuelled madness of formula one. You could not imagine Jim's smile slipping, were his posterior subject to assault from the entire front row of the Edwin Hawkins Singers.

ITV's coverage, Jim told us, benefited from "great access" to Jenson Button's BAR team. For those of us who are a little bit sketchy on things like overhead camshafts, and indeed which hole the oil goes in and which one is for the water, this was mercifully light on such details, concentrating on the minutiae of Button's personal life.

Louise was entertained to dinner by Jenson where she focused on that area of the body so uniquely and inextricably connected with motor racing. "You've been modelling underpants, Jenson. How did that come about?" she asked.

Well, let me help you here, Louise, with a wild guess. Jenson's manager telephoned him, I suspect, and told him that for slipping on a pair of designer trolleys he would receive a fee not unadjacent to the Gross Domestic Product of a medium-sized South American country. Call it intuition.

Jenson, as some of you will know, is romantically attached to another Louise, who recently featured in a TV show called Fame Academy. I am indebted to my 13-year-old daughter for this information. A lot is written about the prohibitive cost of rearing children, but my brood of teenagers has proved invaluable this week, in identifying for me to what the "celebrity" participants in The Games owe their celebrity (chiefly soap operas and what passes for pop music now).

The only one I recognised was the posh one who used to nip round to the Princess of Wales's place when the Prince was out, although presenter Jamie Theakston did help me by referring to Bobby Davro as "funnyman Bobby Davro," thus clearing up a long-standing mystery.

http://sport.guardian.co.uk/columnists/story/0,,1042206,00.html

Today's offering stirred the watcher's eye again:

Only five days to go, then. Less than a week left for the BBC to run its annoying "Beautiful Game presented by the Past Masters" advertisement. Is it my imagination or is it on before and after every single programme with the merest whiff of male viewer appeal?
I must say it seems a dangerous strategy: implying a level of fine artistry not only among the participants in Euro 2004 but also within your own team covering the tournament. I wonder if anybody in the BBC's promotions department is familiar with the concept of hubris.

This whole "great artists, past masters" thing is an invitation to our more waspish critics to judge whose coverage of the football is as valuable as a load of Pollocks and whose is simply . . . well, you know the rest.

I, by the way, am not in the waspish camp. Having backed the winner of the Derby and wallowed in England's six against Iceland, I am feeling in too benign a humour even to sharpen my pencil. Steve Wilson summed up my mood - and that of many others, I suspect - perfectly in his commentary on the Iceland game for Match Of The Day. "The beers are in the fridge," he announced. "The flag's on the car, the wall chart's on the wall, so we're ready for Euro 2004. Are they?"

They surely are - if all the games are against the best 11 players in Europe called Gudjonsson. But Euro 2004 is likely to be more testing. So, however warm and fuzzy the weekend may have left us feeling - and I write as someone who backed the winner of the Oaks as well; surely that knighthood for Kieren Fallon cannot be long coming - there are serious issues to be addressed.

Who, for instance, is going to be the first pundit to point out the inadvisability of writing off the Germans? No contest. Peter Reid, the past master (© BBC promotions) of stating the obvious, got in there before the competition even starts, snapping away as he used to as a combative midfielder, insisting, above the stifled laughter of his mates in the Match Of The Day studio: "Well, you never do write them off."

Recognising that my Epsom winnings, though welcome, were unlikely to be sufficient to enable me to retire from my role as the liberal press's arbiter on football commentary matters, I buckled down to my duty and put a "quite exceptional" counter on Ray Wilkins, Sky's summariser for England-Iceland, and reached four before kick-off.

In the first half-hour against Japan, we had been "exceptional", he said, our crossing was "quite exceptional", Frank Lampard was an "exceptional player", and somebody else played "exceptionally well". I turned the counter off at this point, not just because of my new-found benevolence but also because I rather enjoy Wilkins as a summariser. I would not say he is exceptional - he might - but he clearly knows what he is talking about.

It must be a joy for people such as Wilkins and Reid to get a few quid and the best seats in the house at football matches for discussing a subject in which they have an abiding interest, and some specialist knowledge. Spare a thought for Rishi Persad, who has to work really hard for his free tickets. Rishi has the worst job in sports broadcasting, being responsible for providing the "colour" on big race days. He is dispatched into the crowd to find "characters", and Sue and Clare throw to him at regular intervals for what I suppose is fondly imagined to be "light relief".

The problem is that what you mostly find at the races are - forgive me - pissed-up posh birds, and chaps bursting to tell you how they would be backing a horse called Percussionist because they went to a concert once, and there was a very good percussionist (this really was someone's Derby day story). Poor Rishi has to point his microphone at these desperate souls while wearing a rictus grin and pretending to listen to their babble.

The lad gives it his best shot, though I cannot help feeling he is a little too young and good looking for the "man of the people" gig, best done by a Monty Modlyn, Harold Williamson or even an Esther Rantzen (younger readers should consult their history of broadcasting).

To finish on the promised note of goodwill, though, I should like to say what a hugely enjoyable show England's Dream Team was on Channel 4. The idea was to pick the best England team of all time - that old thing - from which concept was fashioned one of the best clips shows I have seen.

Vernon Kay was spot-on as presenter, delivering with conviction a script that was bright, breezy and occasionally rather filthy ("Over the next few hours, we'll see 1,133 footballers come and go - impressive but just short of Jordan's personal best."), and the bewildering array of talking heads struck a nice balance between the sensible - journalists like Danny Kelly, Will Buckley and Pat Collins - and the madcap - John McCririck and Stuart Hall.

The soundtrack was good, too. Any show including Harlem Shuffle by Bob and Earl and Rubber Biscuit by The Chips gets my vote. I was also delighted to discover from the programme that fine chaps like Terry Christian, Bob Mills and Dominik Diamond, who one feared might now be in the minicab business, are still gainfully employed in broadcasting. Past masters, all three.

I mean - the Reidy bit was OK; but this!

Vernon Kay was spot-on as presenter, delivering with conviction a script that was bright, breezy and occasionally rather filthy ("Over the next few hours, we'll see 1,133 footballers come and go - impressive but just short of Jordan's personal best.")