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Archive: Murray Walker

Murray Walker reminds us why he’s missed

24 July 2007 03:48

Categories: Entertainment, Formula 1, Nostalgia, Radio, Television

There was another reason why the European Grand Prix was great. It brought the one-off return of Murray Walker, commentating on an F1 race for a UK broadcaster for the first time since 2001.

Radio Five Live’s regular Formula 1 commentator, David Croft, was off to watch his baby being born. Murray Walker was invited to fill his chair for one race only.

This presented a dilemma to F1 fans: do you stick with the ITV coverage, or do you switch on the radio to listen to Murray Walker?

I was a little bit worried that Murray Walker’s commentary would not be up to much. He did, after all, retire for a reason. His later years on ITV were sometimes frustrating to listen to. His mind was not quite as sharp as it once was, and he regularly had to stop mid-sentence to have a coughing fit.

On the one hand, we knew what we were going to get by sticking to the ITV commentary. James Allen is disliked by many, but at least he does not make as many mistakes as Murray Walker was known to in the latter part of his career. ITV also has the excellent Martin Brundle.

But this was a one-off. A chance to listen to the greatest commentator in the world say, “And it’s go go go!” just one last time.

I opted to listen to Murray Walker, but in retrospect I should have recorded his commentary and listened to it after the race. But that wasn’t anything to do with Murray Walker. He was, in fact, much better than I expected!

But the nature of Radio Five Live meant that three sporting events were being covered at once. And while the Grand Prix took the bulk of the airtime, there were long periods where the focus was on golf or cricket instead. So it was not a full race commentary.

But apart from that, it was a joy to listen to. The producers obviously knew the sort of people who would be tuning in to listen to Murray Walker, and the broadcast began with a familiar tune — but one that hasn’t introduced a Grand Prix for over ten years.

“Aah, they’re playing my tune!”, said a delighted Murray Walker. And immediately he was into the swing of things. He didn’t bumble along as I feared. He might be 83, but you would not be able to guess it. He still knows how to broadcast.

It was classic Murray. He used plenty of catchphrases without descending into self-parody. No one else can start a Grand Prix like Murray Walker.

One light. Two lights. Three lights. Four lights! Five lights! …AND IT’S GO! GO! GO!

It was not perfect throughout. At times he was commentating for the radio, but a couple of times he slipped into saying things like, “and you are looking at…” He also often got tangled up, forgetting people’s positions from time to time.

There was also a classic “Murrayism”.

And Winkelhock goes through in the orange Spyker, well down the field… Well, he’s not well down the field, he’s actually in tenth position because he’s yet to come in.

That was when Winkelhock led the race! Although Murray Walker can be forgiven because I found that fact difficult to believe myself…

I do not agree with everything that Murray Walker says. He supports the British drivers a bit too much for my liking. He was also far too sympathetic to Michael Schumacher. He is seemingly the only person in the world who does not believe that Schumacher deliberately caused crashes at Adelaide in 1994 and Jerez in 1997.

But it is impossible not to love him as a broadcaster. As a describer of action, no one can rival him. Clive James said, “In his quieter moments, it sounds like his trousers are on fire.”

If I live to be 83, I hope that I can have just a fraction of the energy and enthusiasm that Murray Walker has. When something interesting his happening on the circuit, Murray Walker is the first to get excited, and soon enough everyone knows about it.

A particularly colourful and vivid description of Alonso overtaking Massa towards the end of the race showed exactly why Murray Walker is so highly regarded.

Alonso is practically sawing the Ferrari in half with his nose cone!

Utter genius.

(Thanks to Tom for giving me the opportunity to hear Murray Walker’s commentary even though I was at work when the race was on!)

3 comments

Welcome to the world of the thwarted F1 fan

16 June 2007 15:49

Categories: Entertainment, Formula 1, Television

Last week, ITV did something absolutely extraordinary. They offered an explanation for their appalling coverage of Formula 1, although it seems to stop short of an apology. No doubt this has been caused by an influx of complaints following an upsurge in viewers in the light of the success of a British driver.

A bunch of fairweather F1 fans who probably haven’t watched a Grand Prix since Murray Walker got a lump in his throat have tuned in to see the shower that long time F1 fans — the sort that do not watch merely for narrow nationalistic reasons — have to put up with on a race-by-race basis. Admittedly, ITV’s coverage of the races in the Americas is always worse because they are prime time viewing in the UK, which means that ITV would rather be showing Coronation Street than the Grand Prix.

You have to laugh though. Lewis Hamilton’s first race win would happen at one of these North American races where ITV are short for time. As such, the programme was rushed finished. When it finally came, there was no chance to reflect on the victory which the media has been hyping up for the past few months. We got no post-race interviews with the drivers — not even the press conference which follows immediately after the podium ceremony.

As I recall, ITV were also caught out the first time Jenson Button achieved a modicum of success. As I recall, ITV viewers did not see Jenson Button get pole position because they did not show the qualifying session live at all. Thankfully, ITV have learned from that incident and have since shown every qualifying session live, even if it is sometimes on ITV4 rather than ITV1.

I am actually on ITV’s side when it comes to qualifying. The BBC did not always show qualifying, so in that sense we are rather lucky with ITV’s coverage. But apart from that, there is little for F1 fans to be happy about the coverage.

But while they have, to an extent, sorted out their coverage of qualifying, I am not so confident that they will learn the lessons after this latest snafu. Their excuses for the rushed coverage are extremely weak.

With the Safety Car running four times, the Canadian race was well behind time, so I had to negotiate a lengthy over-run which delayed Coronation Street by several minutes.

As F1 Fanatic points out, the Canadian Grand Prix did not run behind time. In fact, if anything, the race ran over fifteen minutes ahead of time.

While most races last around 90 minutes, they may last for anything up to two hours. While the two hour time limit is very rarely reached, every F1 broadcaster must prepare for that eventuality, just the same as football broadcasters must account for the possibility of extra time and penalties.

In reality, ITV should not be scheduling important programmes at all until about 2 hours and 20 minutes after the scheduled race start. This is to take into account the parade lap, the drive to parc fermé and the podium ceremony — not to mention the possibility of a red flag and a race re-start.

They should leave longer if they want to be sure of covering the post-race press conference. Any programmes scheduled before this threshold should be easily dropped fillers, not Coronation Street! They already do this for football, so it is not rocket science.

This two hour time limit was brought in by the FIA specifically with broadcasters in mind. If ITV have not got their heads around this basic rule after over ten years of covering F1, then you have to conclude that hoping for an improvement in the situation is an absolute lost cause because ITV is clearly run by clueless dolts.

Another reason to reach this conclusion about ITV’s bigwigs is their really odd scheduling last Saturday. In late Saturday afternoon they screened a special programme about Lewis Hamilton on ITV1. This could have been used as a perfect opportunity to lift ratings of the qualifying programme (presuming that this is what ITV are worried about with their reluctance to show it on ITV1).

Yet, despite dedicating a chunk of their ITV1 schedule to a Lewis Hamilton wank-fest, they still opted to show qualifying on ITV4. What was the important programme they had to broadcast on ITV1? Grease. A film that everybody who wants to see it already has done. Pitpass has a feasible explanation here.

With ITV constantly messing around with dedicated F1 fans, I think it is high time that Bernie Ecclestone and FOM re-launched their dedicated F1 Digital + (“Bernievision”) service. Yes, it is pay-per-view. But I think I would be willing to shell out just to avoid the nationalistic bias, the commercial breaks, the idiotic scheduling, the dumb pre-race features and of course James Allen (who has, shockingly, just notched up his 100^th race commentary).

A common counter-argument against complaints about James Allen is that there is nobody to replace him. But there is an obvious choice: Ben Edwards. He already commentates on other forms of motor racing for ITV. He knows his stuff, and he doesn’t get excited like a seven-year-old boy à la James Allen.

There are even people like Peter Windsor or Steve Matchett, who currently commentate in America and used to commentate on F1 Digital +. Peter Windsor also conducts the post-race press conference. These people know their stuff and are much more level-headed than the likes of James Allen and Steve Rider.

Maybe they could bring on board the surely soon-to-retire David Coulthard to take Martin Brundle’s role, while the rather excellent (in comparison to his colleagues) Brundle takes the role of lead commentator. After all, with the hopeless James Allen taking the lead commentator role at the moment, Brundle often finds himself having to do the job of both.

There is hardly a shortage of potential alternatives to James Allen.

But maybe a more radical solution is required. Let us face it. F1 Digital + only failed because it was a bit too far ahead of its time. Nowadays, unlike in 1997, digital television is an everyday reality. I am sure many more people would be willing to pay for the service, especially since ITV’s coverage only ever seems to go downhill.

8 comments

Formula One 06 (PS2)

15 August 2006 02:34

Categories: Entertainment, Formula 1, Games

Here, finally, is my review of this year’s Formula One video game for the PlayStation 2. I’ve had a few weeks to let the game sink in, so it’s time to let rip!

Diving straight into a ‘quick race’ and the game feels quite similar to last year’s edition — on the surface at least. It can be difficult to find your feet when you play a racing game for the first time. Different racing games all feel quite different, so you will often find yourself running wide or spinning off on your first lap. But within another two or three laps you will find your feet and you’ll be right up to speed.

Not so in Formula One 06. A brilliant new feature in the game is that each kerb is individually modelled — they are all different. So you can’t just attack every kerb like you would in most racing games.

Martin Brundle’s excellent book, Working the Wheel, which I read earlier this year, really illustrates the fact that tackling a corner and finding the racing line is not merely a matter minimising the angle of the corner. You must also watch out for bumps, crowns, dodgy drain covers, slippery paint and whatever else might increase or decrease your grip.

Formula One 06 gives a sense of that. You actually have to learn which kerbs you can ride, and which way you can ride them. You won’t always get away with it. Some evil kerbs — such as Variante Alta at Imola and the final chicane at Magny Cours — can throw you up into the air, into a spin or straight into a wall. A lot of trial and error is involved. This is a great feeling though. It feels like you really have to learn the tracks as opposed to just pointing your car towards the apex and flooring the throttle.

One of the other things I quickly noticed was how easy it was to spin the car. It can get quite frustrating. But it would just be boring if it was too easy, right? And that brings me on to another great thing about this game. My biggest problem with last year’s edition was that it was simply too easy. Even on the hardest difficulty level with all driver aids turned off, the AI cars would just tour around at a snail’s pace. The game simply was not enjoyable, and as such I didn’t play much of what was otherwise a pretty solid game.

The good news is that the difficulty has been ramped right up for Formula One 06. At first it is actually quite intimidating. All of your opponents seem almost impossibly quick. When you combine this with the fact that it can be quite easy to spin and that you now have to tiptoe your way around the kerbs, you end up with the opposite problem to what we had in last year’s game.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that F1 06 is too difficult. Besides, it would be better for it to be too difficult than too easy. But let’s just say than in Career mode I’ve been sacked from Scuderia Toro Rosso, and now I’ve found myself doing donkey work for Super Aguri, unable to get a race drive. I guess that’s realistic.

While we’re on Career mode, I must mention how much of a step up this has taken yet again. In particular, the role of test driver has been well thought-out. The qualities needed of a test driver are quite different to those of a race driver. A racer needs to drive fast, spend all day looking cool and spray champagne like nobody else can. Meanwhile, a test driver has to trundle around doing hundreds of laps at a time — not quickly, but consistently, so that the team can collect data.

So in F1 06, a test driver’s role is not merely to go quickly, although that’s obviously part of it. But as a test driver you must go consistently quickly. It’s all very well to beat your target time by two seconds — but can you do that for three laps in a row? Because this is what you have to do in F1 06. And I can’t do it! I am a complete failure at driving consistent laps. The amount of times I have set two stunning lap times only to lose my concentration on the third lap — I am going insane with this game. And I love it!

On a similar note, the developers have also devised a clever way to make Friday practice mean something. It is called Race Car Evolution. Your team will send you out with a variety of different set ups, and from there you can judge how each change affects the handling of your car and ultimately your lap time. At first the process looks laborious. But if you can get clean laps in consistently it can be over quite quickly. Whatever, Race Car Evolution is optional anyway, so you can skip the whole thing and set up your car normally if you wish.

Once you’re happy with the set up, it’s time to qualify. And this is another area where this game excells. You can tell that quite a bit of thought has gone into the presentation of the qualifying sessions, which can be great fun. The on-screen graphics mimick those used by FOM for television, but not just for the sake of it. Pole time is shown, as well as the time you have to beat in order to avoid knocking out. Towards the end of the session, a list of people in the ‘drop zone’ slids out. Watching the times fall while you’re stuck in the drop zone really piles the pressure on. Perfect for a video game.

Come race day and yet another nifty new feature is unveiled — the formation lap. This is one of those things that spoddy F1 gamers have asked to be included in a game for a long time, along with the safety car, pit lane speed limiters and all the rest of it. Now that the formation lap has made it to the game, I realise why perhaps it has never been included in a game before. It is horrendously dull.

Or it would be, if you could ever manage to complete the formation lap. This feature is extremely buggy. Sometimes it will all go wrong. A car might go away slowly or something, and then all of a sudden the game skips straight to the start. Not good. The formation lap is just badly executed in general. It was billed as an opportunity to get your tyres warmed up, but it is actually impossible to do that. Your speed is limited and besides, the AI controls your car to a large extent.

The formation lap is a nice idea, but it needs some real work if it’s going to be included in next year’s game. As it stands, it is far too rough around the edges to be included in the game.

So we find ourselves at the start of the race. A smile was brought to my face when I noticed an added element of realism — James Allen’s commentary is complete with Allenisms in this game! “When the lights go out we are…… RAAACIIIIIIIIIIING! It’s almost as if Allen has scripted the commentary himself.

In all seriousness, the commentary has improved greatly from previous years, especially as you can now hear commentary in Career mode, unlike last year where a bug crept in at the last minute. It could still do with a lot of improvement. There is no interaction between James Allen and Martin Brundle. Indeed, Brundle appears to be confined to the pre-race spiel. Formula 1 97 still has the best commentary in my view, because both Murray and Martin would keep you entertained, and they spoke to each other, even if it was just the occasional “That’s right Murray” from Martin.

Another criticism I would have about the commentary is that they never mention the player during Career mode. Granted, this would be difficult due to the fact that you play yourself in Career mode. (Unfortunately you can’t create your avatar with the Eye Toy this year, but I guess that was a bit gimmicky anyway. You can still enter in your own name though.) But it can’t be too difficult to have generic commentary along the lines of, “the Super Aguri driver has spun!” or, “the Brit is in the lead”. Developers used this method to good effect when Jacques Villeneuve couldn’t appear in the video games.

Now for some more bad news I’m afraid. There is a bad bug in this game which causes the field to start very slowly, almost as though they were on the formation lap. The form a nice, orderly queue — sometimes single file, sometimes in two distinct queues — and they are all very polite, they are slow and they don’t overtake each other. Unfortunately this makes it very easy for you, the player, to charge your way through the field. Even if you started from last place, and even if you are in hard mode, you will find yourself leading by the second corner. Doh!

My first suspicion was that this was a problem with formation laps, so I turned the option for formation laps off. It seemed to be the end of the matter, but a few starts later and the problem cropped up again. I read at F1Gamers.com that the bug could perhaps be something to do with Race Car Evolution — skipping RCE avoids the slow starts. I’ve not had a chance to test this out yet, but it doesn’t matter. This simply should not be happening.

Bugs have haunted Sony’s / Studio Liverpool’s Formula 1 series, particularly on the PS2. In a way it is understandable, as they are made on a very tight schedule. But that fact doesn’t make the pill any less bitter for the gamer to swallow. I find it difficult to comprehend how this game was released with such a massive flaw in it.

Luckily the AI cars aren’t slow for very long — maybe half a lap or something — and after that we are back to the difficult challenge we faced during testing and qualifying. Opposing cars really hound you in this game. They will overtake you, and it is such a thrill to be racing like this after years of fairly duff Scalextric-style AI. The AI is also quite clever during qualifying and practice. If they are shown the blue flags they will slow down and get out of your way if you’re on a hot lap. Oh, and they have been known to make mistakes aswell.

A few laps in and you’ll find yourself having to make a pitstop. No surprise there, but this year’s Formula 1 rules which saw the reintroduction of tyre-changing mean that the interactive pitstops — essentially QTE mini-games — are much more of a challenge. If you need to change your front wing you are bound to get in a muddle! Don’t expect to gain so much time on your opponents during pitstops this year!

A final word on damage. It is much better this year. You can’t really get away with slamming into the wall this time around, which is a relief. There is also a cool phase where your tyre will wobble around like Kimi Räikkönen’s at last year’s European Grand Prix. It doesn’t seem to affect the handling too much, but I wonder if when the wheel flies off James Allen says, “See, I told you!”

So there we have it. All-in-all, not a bad game at all this year round. Yet again the whole thing is let down by some bad bugs, but I can see myself playing this game a lot more than I played F1 05 for the sheer reason that it’s much more of a challenge. I can’t wait to unlock those classic cars and the Jerez circuit.