For almost a decade, as Murray Walker indulged his dangerous liaisons with English idiom, Martin Brundle was the forgotten man of the ITV formula one commentary box. The eternal butler to the devilish seducer of mixed metaphors, the former racer swept up the split infinitives and polished the spoonerisms as Walker plunged ever deeper into linguistic notoriety and the hearts of his audience.
There were those who resented Brundle’s move behind a microphone that for years had been the undisputed domain of the honey-voiced James Hunt, one of those rare Englishmen who, like Roger Moore, possess diction so perfect and inflection so assured that it seems a shame they don’t spend their days disarming nuclear bombs while reciting the St Crispins Day speech from Henry V, before taking 22-year-old physicists called Inge into uncharted realms of carnal bliss.
That was an appallingly long sentence, blistered with ostentation and hyperbole, and frankly the sort of thing Hunt would never allow. With such large velvet slippers to fill, Brundle was always up against it. And it didn’t help that he brought to the job the plaintive, receding inflection of a misfiring biplane wobbling across a cornfield before subsiding into a distant copse of trees.
But our Martin knows his stuff. By 2004 standards the Benettons and Renaults he drove in the 1990s look like Russian knock-offs of Chinese copies of Klingon battle cruisers on bricks, but the difference between hitting a wall in 1992 at 250kph and hitting a wall in 2004 at 300kph is academic. More than that, he’s one of the only people in the world who almost beat Michael Schumacher in a grand prix once.
The retirement of Walker saw the superfluous James Allen paroled from the pits and installed in the number two seat, with a mandate to froth. Suddenly Brundle’s contribution has gone from interesting to invaluable: his understated techno-lingo, his gently cavalier attitude to sudden, public death on the race-track, the whole package now seems the only thing between formula one for the aficionado and the great nodding, gushing, gasping, speculating mass of fans who populate the stands and press boxes of the world.
It was worrying, therefore, to witness at last weekend’s German Grand Prix, a disturbing hint of transparency creeping into his commentary, an unpleasant eagerness to explain the sport to newcomers.
According to Supersport, ‘the more you know, the better it gets”. I assume this excludes elucidating photographs taken by a private investigator of one’s wife and her masseuse. Or the knowledge of what seagull bones and feathers do to a Boeing 747’s engines, as you settle into your final approach into Honolulu International.
Televised coaching has its merits, certainly. It takes extraordinary restraint to watch Ian Botham demonstrate the correct grip for an inswinger on Channel Four and not send down an over of short-of-a-length naartjies at the water-cooler. But formula one?
‘For those watching, that’s the perfect way to take the inside line,” said Brundle on Sunday. ‘He stays aggressive and gets on the gas early. Brilliant.” Brilliant indeed, but for whom? A hitherto unknown legion of amateur grand prix drivers, taking notes off their televisions? Did retired matrons hiss ‘I told you that was the perfect way to take the inside line!” and slap their spouses with a rolled-up Michelin catalogue?
Has formula one gone cricket? Has ITV started down the donnish path that ends in Test Match Special, with monologues on the merits of Windsor knots? When will Brundle start reading out letters on air?
‘Mildred from Romford has sent us a lovely cake — it’s a hit with the Ferrari pit crew, there’s marzipan all over the fuel hose down there — and she writes as follows: ‘My husband Wilfred turned 70 this year, and we all chipped in to buy him the 2001 Arrows car, with a rebuilt Mugen engine. Every afternoon after his nap he takes it out onto R34. Unfortunately he has found that on 200mph inside-outside bends he tends to black out. What can we do? Is it the nap? He is also a little overweight.’
‘Well, Wilfred’s problem is a common one, and nothing that hasn’t happened to all of us at one time or another. Mildred, tell Wilfred to pick earlier braking points. That should clear it right up.
‘Now here’s one from Klaus of Stuttgart. ‘Hello Martin, how are you being? Alles kla?’ Thanks, Klaus, yes, alles is kla and thanks for writing —”