AA Gill on Peter Alliss From Sunday TimesI never watch golf, but I looked in at the end of the whatever-it-was in
Scotland last Sunday, where they play for a Victorian custard boat. It
really is spectacularly dull as a spectator sport. It might be like an
afternoon in Hugh Hefner’s den to play, but watching it is abysmal.
I understand that failing to pick up the nuanced incremental excitement and
balletic elegance of the game is entirely my loss and that many of you will
have been utterly enraptured by the gay parade of the most embarrassingly
dressed men in the world. Tell me honestly, do you golf chaps really look at
this stuff and think: “I wonder where he got his short-sleeved nylon shirt
with the logos from?” Or: “Wow! A ginger ponytail with a baseball cap. Cool
look.”
Leaving that aside, I’d never actually come across Peter Alliss before. Oh, my
word! Obviously, I’d heard of him. He’s been around since before
gutta-percha. He probably invented the caddy. But I’d never actually had the
singular experience of having to listen to him. Has he always talked like
that, or is this some charitable dotage thing, poor old chap? Because Alliss
is by far, far and away, by a good 30ft chip out of a bunker for a birdie,
the worst sportscaster I have ever come across, ever, and that’s a crowded
field. He just meanders off on some embarrassing private stream of
consciousness about sunsets and ooh girls these days and that’s just the
sort of game it is and there’s a magic here and look at that sunset and the
old ways weren’t all bad you know, and if I had time I could tell you a
thing or two about Oofy Prosser. And would you look at that, and did I
mention the sunset and those girls? It was like listening to a toby jug have
a stroke. There was an excoriating provincial primness and a repressed
snobbery to it all, and it went on and on. Alliss must be able to clear a
clubhouse bar over a single gin and tonic.
What was unintentionally funny is that this emetic stream of Pringle was so
hideously like a minor character in PG Wodehouse. It seems somehow ironic
that Alliss was burbling on just as Jonathan Ross was departing. I
understand that the Venn diagrams of fans of Ross and Alliss are probably
circles that never overlapped, but it has to be said that Ross is a terrific
broadcaster and a terrible loss to the BBC; and Alliss, well, Alliss isn’t.
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Pablo says-:
I feel as if I have detested Peter Alliss since the beginning of time.
The man is a demented snob and has been for years.He always spoils the BBC golf coverage with his ramblings.
