Sky Sports News: Making the international retirement of a moderate full-back sound like the coming of the apocalypse. Ugh. Honestly, who gives a monkey’s testicle?
In my less sexy/paying the bills capacity of sports journalist we are required to have channel 408 bleating out at us from one end of the day to the other. This is on the off chance that, amid all the colour pieces about Doncaster groundsmen and pie charts detailing the crapness of Hull City, it might feed us some breaking news that we can fashion into nuggets of news for our subscribers.
90% of the time it’s ‘banging head against wall’ stuff, though, a trail of ditsy and loud and idiotic newscasters telling us injury news about the Burnley reserve goalkeeper. This is repeated ad nauseam throughout the day to the point where I’m hearing Jim White’s voice in my head before I go to sleep with the career stats of Brian Jensen, a netminder so burly he makes Peter Schmeichel look like Cheryl Cole.
Ah yes, Jim White. The most hyperbolic of all the presenters. I watched in dismay at the end of the summer transfer window when he BROKE the NEWS that Celtic defender DARREN O’DEA had secured a LOAN move to READING, all delivered in a booming Scottish brogue to mirror Billy Connolly at his most animated.
Kill me.
The yellow Breaking News ticker on the bottom of the screen has gone from a scarcely used alert system to something far more omnipresent. It used to flash up just once or twice a day, detailing proper, hard and interesting news, whereas now it’s used to tell us the result of a ground inspection at Kempton or the fate of Torquay’s reserve centre-forward. Ho-hum.
It’s not all bad. Georgie Thompson and her cigarette voice; Natalie Sawyer’s pulchritudinous pouting; Millie Clode’s general loveliness… They do a fine line in lovely ladies but that alone can not make up for the…
…banter. Fucking banter. Just leave it alone.
Jim: “The golfers at the WGC Matchplay got a little surprise when a lone duck appeared on the green at the 15th hole.”
Natalie: “Hahahahaaaa.”
Jim: “That’s right, Natalie, a duck appeared on the course but there was no sign of any birdies.”
Natalie: “Oh Jim.”
Jim: “Oh Natalie. Hahahahaaaa. Anyway we’ll be back at the top of the hour.”
And it rolls round again, and again, to the point where I drink to forget and give myself the sweet release of an early death.
Sky news is just as bad. Actually Sky is just terrible.