Sunday, January 21, 2007

Barry Davies


My word, I miss Barry Davies. I heard his gentle tones on a Radio 4 trailer yesterday and immediately came over all funny. His marvellous association football commentaries were everything those of irksome John Motson are not; while the tiresome ‘Motty’* continues to pay too much homage and respect to the undeserving, unintelligent and drab celebrities of the sport, Davies will ever be remembered for his laconic world-weariness, his impatience with hype and the over-hyped and, essentially, his intellectual assertion that football was ‘only a game’ (albeit, it times, a beautiful one) and much splendour lay beyond it. For Davies-philes (and I know S remains one) there are a couple of places worth visiting. His wikipedia page contains brief biographical details along with a list of memorable quotes that will bring a lump to the collective throat of the Davies cognoscenti. And the BBC allows one to relive the famous ‘Frannie Lee commentary’ (‘Lee. Interesting. Very interesting…’) again and again. Gorgeous.

* I can cope with Motson’s schoolboy-like love of statistics and history. That’s me, that is.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, you can say that again. I've got nothing against Motty, but there's something about Barry that makes you think that all is well with the world. I remember him at the start of a UEFA cup tie about 10 years ago saying "the referee's from Spain, and his names's Manuel". he paused just long enough for the viewers to think of "Fawlty Towers" before saying "...NO, NOT THAT ONE!!" Classic. Oh, I miss him. He was treated disgracefully by the Beeb. I'd love to wake up one morning and read/hear "Sky/ITV/Setanta/Channel 5 have tempted commentating legend Davies back for one final fling"

Anonymous said...

"Interesting, very interesting" is brilliant commentary. Davies then goes into a higher register and goes "Look at his face, just look at his face".