Comments on: I feel sorry for all of F1′s new viewers

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:49:40 +0000

My one big regret from my fantastic day as a corporate guest of Vodafone at the Silverstone qualifying last year was that I was standing by the turnstiles to the pitlane watching the drivers arrive for “work” and realised I was standing right next to James Allen.

I missed the best opportunity ever to punch the man.

By: peterg

peterg — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 04:32:12 +0000

All joking aside…why do ITV keep JA on.? He is universally despised & it’s not as if a replacement could not be found.

Were it not for Martin Brundle the races would be a farce.

By: Clive

Clive — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 03:54:07 +0000

Oh good grief – I have seen the future! The drivers will be given mics and do their own commentary during the race. I can hear it now:

Hamilton: I’m coming up to pass Kimi now and drawing alongside as we head down the straight…

Raikkonen: That’s it, here he comes, watch this folks, I’m going to squeeze him a little…

Hamilton: What? The bastard’s moving over! We’ll see about that…

Race engineer: Don’t do anything stupid, Lewis!

Hamilton: You mind your own f*****g business! Who’s driving this f****r anyway?

Hehehe, okay, I know McLaren have denied it ever happened. But it would be fun, you must admit.

By: doctorvee

doctorvee — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:34:54 +0000

By the way, I feel that I should mention something that I forgot to put in my post. I was trawling through YouTube looking for incriminating evidence, but seemingly Bernie has pulled most of them down. I don't know if it was to protect his copyright or to save the sport from further embarrassment, but anyway. I found a set of videos of the 1996 IndyCar season, with commentary from James Allen and Mark Blundell! The astonishing thing is that James Allen is not a complete prick in these videos, and actually seems quite sensible. Perhaps it is because it is not live so there is no need for that cringeworthy pseudo-excitement, and he also does not say embarrassing things like "Go on my son!" or "apples and pears" or whatever. To think, though, that just one year later he would appear as that complete tosser on ITV-F1. What really gets me about these videos, though, is the fact that Mark Blundell is commentating on races that his is competing in himself. It adds a really surreal quality to the coverage. "In a moment you are going to see me completely fucking up! Whooops!" It is really strange because they are doing live commentary over a highlights package, so the commentary is all delivered in the past tense. Really really strange viewing.

By: Rhys

Rhys — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 19:15:06 +0000

“It sounds like James Allen got so excited that he actually jizzed in his mouth and was rendered incapable of forming a proper sentence. Mind you, that is what he normally sounds like, but with ‘twat’ levels set at 10 rather than 11.”

As somebody who has little to know interest in F1, can I just say that never has truer words spoken.