Dinner time
Apart from the delights of calling the world’s most dramatic and beautiful sport, the thing that preoccupies commentators most is food. OK . . . and drink. Both types of sustenance vie for position at the top of the priority list – and, to be fair, the first drink of the night is considered a marker for how the rest of the evening is going to progress. Get this bit right, and the remaining downtime off the microphone is likely to be just dandy.
For wine, France is king. Sorry, Italy, you have some spectaculars but vini francesi are i migliori. But the boot is most definitely on the other foot in the kitchen. Sorry, France, you can keep your Michelin stars and your fancy sauces because when it comes to top nosh, Italy has it. By far.
There was a time when teams wouldn’t even bring a chef and catering along to races in Italy. So renowned and predictably excellent is the food in this cradle of culinary civilisation that teams knew they could get fed extremely well either at a roadside café or at a modest hotel. This was all in the days before everyone got a bit weird about nutrition.
Then: An unshaven bloke wearing a string vest calls out through a doorway swinging with wooden beads that mark a vague boundary to his guesthouse kitchen: ‘Pasta Arrabiata or risotto? Red or white wine? Help yourself to bread.’
Now: Bloke wearing a shirt with the team logo and a badge marked Doctor before his name: ‘Right, here’s an antihistamine. Wash it down with this electrolyte pulp. No dinner for you this evening. We have to shift those 600 grams or the numbers won’t work on Wednesday…’
As for those of us who push buttons and pens and not pedals, the search for sustenance varies in length according to requirements. In Sean Kelly you find a man extraordinarily content with pizza. In fact, even in France it is his preferred choice. Most nights, annoyingly. Every night, if he could get away with it. I’m sure he went looking for pizza when he raced in South Africa.
Me: ‘What is it with pizza all the bleedin’ time?’
Sean: ‘It covers most food groups all in one go. You have your vegetables, carbohydrates, protein, and even fruit if you go for Hawaiian. Job done.’
There are nights we eat apart.
I follow the advice of a football commentator friend, Jurriaan van Wessem, the son of the head of the Netherlands National Academy of Arts and a man who went AWOL after being sent to study History of Art in Italy. He never returned. Juri says that one should always head for the railway station. Unlike the UK, where an absolute arse called Dr Beeching ripped up the system, Italy kept all its lines, both national and local. So just about everywhere has a station. As trains came before cars, there was usually a hotel of some note nearby to accommodate late arrivals before their journey continued the following day. These places still exist, albeit rather crumbling. Walk in past the exterior flaking paint and signage with letters missing, and you will find a crisply clean place of faded grandeur, at peace with itself. They also usually offer a no-choice menu of spectacular value. As cheap as the chips they don’t sell. I walked into one such place on the Tirreno Adriatico, in Civitanova. There was just one man running the place. It was a Sunday night and it was packed. He showed me to a table and without a word put a half-litre carafe of red in front of me along with a dish of spicy olives for me to pick at. What followed were four courses of the most welcome food you can imagine. A hearty chickpea broth. Spaghetti Vongole: white clams, butter, black pepper and some herbs – magical. A fine slice of grilled pork with diced garlic potatoes. Sorbet and a Limoncello. The bill was €15. I nearly wept.
Sometimes I do have pizza with Sean. They are, of course, excellent in Italy.
‘Shaken, but how stirred he is, is anybody’s guess.’
14
Having Fun – The Secret to Cycling Commentary
I learned a lot from David Duffield – undoubtedly, one of the finest cycling commentators.
Duffers, as he was known to his friends, came into cycling via the bike trade. Here was the man, unsung, who helped to bring the Raleigh Chopper into our world. He had to fight for it too. The bosses were into ‘proper bikes’, but David was convinced the ‘American cruiser’ had a place in Europe. It was a huge success. Then came BMX. David couldn’t believe how much fun these were, and again he had to fight to get what looked like ‘little bikes for big kids’ off the ground. On both counts he was a genius who took a modest salary yet made millions for the companies he worked for, including Raleigh, Halfords, Falcon, Claud Butler, Pashley and Muddyfox among others. When Alex Moulton, who’d developed the ingenious suspension system that enabled the Austin Mini to succeed, decided to have a go at bicycles, it was David Duffield who got the call to help develop the market for his revolutionary small-wheel commuter. Everybody knew the man and knew he was the touchstone for anything cutting edge in the business.
Such out-of-the-box thinking might be part of the reason he became the established ‘alternative’ voice of cycling. The hugely popular Phil Liggett was at ITV and had wrapped up the Tour de France gig and more for the millennia. Four-time Individual Pursuit World Champion Hugh Porter was at the BBC, meaning the Olympics, Commonwealth Games and most other
