The Rally with no Human Voice

Photo credit: Jan Starzak

As I no longer live in the UK, I missed the Queen and her husband travelling on the Duck in Liverpool the other day. I assume it was covered on British telly but here I had to make do with presenters speaking unintelligible nonsense about people I am not remotely interested in, which isn’t really all that different when I think about it.

Actually, this got me thinking about how difficult it is to love the local telly when it isn’t what you grew up with. The only place apart from Scotland where I have enjoyed the local telly is Northern Ireland, and to be fair it wasn’t all that different from what I was used to.

There was no coverage of the Duck here but there is a weekly motoring programme which features rally events. I used to quite enjoy watching these on World of Sport (does that still exist?)  so I tuned in the first time rather eagerly.

Where’s Dickie?

Sadly there was no Dickie Davies, no unforgettable music and, rather bizarrely, no commentary. Maybe the locals knew something I didn’t but to me it was just a never ending sequence of anonymous looking cars speeding along anonymous looking dirt tracks. As exciting as this was at the outset it lost something of its shine after 5 minutes or so.

I wanted to know who was in the lead, who had blown a tyre and who that rather attractive woman at the side of the track was. Instead, my room was filled with the sound of revving motors and no human voices.

I thought this was probably a technical fault so I tuned in the next week as well. Same again. No commentary at all. You might think that I am being a bit picky here but I would ask you to take a test the next time you care to do so. Stick on a bit of motorsports and turn the sound off. It is an oddly empty experience which will probably leave you feeling a bit melancholy to be honest.

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