💾 Archived View for freeshell.de › f1 › 2023-06-01_Commentators.gmi captured on 2024-08-25 at 01:25:48. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-07-22)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I mentioned artificial wetness at the 1984 Monaco Grand Prix...
...so I watched that race. This was the era of Prost, Mansell and Lauda, and the new boy was Senna. Some big names there. But the nostalgia for me was Murray Walker commentating. He was a big part of why I started watching. At one point in the race the rain got into his TV monitors, and he could only see the pit straight outside the commentary box. But he still had plenty to say, and still made it exciting. He was a huge enthusiast, and conveyed that to the audience.
Many TV people want to do interviews on camera. Murray Walker talked to everybody off camera just for research, and had pages of notes posted on the commentary box wall. And everyone talked to him because he was a genuine bloke and he wanted to see the best in everyone.
His enthusiastic delivery sometimes meant that his sentences didn't go where he expected, and he could say things that seem ridiculous out of context. But when you were listening you could tell that he started saying something sensible but the words painted him into a corner. There was one in the 1984 race.
It's really heavy driving rain now, and I imagine in the cockpit it must be absolutely... unimaginable.
Since he retired there have been many commentators, some good and some... less so. None of them have been able to get across the level of enthusiasm that Murray Walker exuded, and something has been missing because of that. When he died a couple of years ago I was quite saddened.