The great God Television

Yes, this on-the-spot interviewing. Some, apparently, think that it makes for rivettingly spontaneous and exhilerating television; others don't, feeling that it is at best banal and at worst offensive. Those who subscribe to the latter view will have had their opinion bolstered by the Americans on Saturday night.

Channel Four Racing has been the pioneer of the instant interview here. I prefer not to watch these, as I think that (a) they usually produce very dull and inane dialogue and (b) they should not be encouraged because, in the interests of professionalism, I think that a jockey should not be discouraged from concentrating on the job in hand until he has finished the job, ie until he has weighed in. We have all seen far too many instances of the consequences of a jockey taking his mind off the job prematurely, and I am not merely referring to failures to weigh in: incidents which spring immediately to mind include Mr. J. T. McNamara nearly getting Spot The Difference killed at Cheltenham because he believed that the time to start "celebrating" (ie concentrating on something other than the task in hand) is once the winning post had been passed, rather than once his job is finished. Anyway, as I prefer to watch Racing UK while Channel Four is revelling in this unprofessionalism, I missed what I am told was a memorable post-race interview after last year's Gold Cup when, shortly after passing the post, Ruby Walsh had a camera and microphone shoved in his face, with a question along the lines of, "Well Ruby, you chose the wrong horse and it's cost you a Gold Cup win; how does it feel?". Apparently Ruby's reply didn't fall far short of telling the interviewer to f**k off, to which the interviewer rather crestfallenly tried to justify himself with, "Well, I had to ask", to which Ruby's response was, "No you didn't". End of interview.

Anyway, Saturday's Kentucky Derby telecast made it clear that the Stateside norm is to behave with considerably less sensitivity even than that. The treatment of two victims made this clear. Firstly we were treated to a very good feature on the likeable Larry Jones, who trained a Kentucky Derby place-getter in 2007 (Hard Spun) and in 2008 (Eight Belles). The latter, of course, sustained a fatal injury shortly after passing the post in second place behind Big Brown. What I didn't know until Saturday was that, shortly after watching the death of his filly, Jones (who is clearly a proper horseman and horse-lover rather than a merely a businessman whose way of making money is to supervise a horse-training business, as was made clear by the fact that he is giving up training because, his stable having grown significantly as a result of his success, he says that he now feels like a racing manager rather than a hands-on horse trainer, and that is not how he likes it) had a camera and microphone shoved in his face with the question asked of how he felt. This was spectating car crashes taken to extremes, and Jones, choking back the tears, quite rightly gave the reporter a piece of his mind, before answering the question by pointing out what should have been obvious, that he felt as if he had watched a member of his family dying. This was a very moving feature - but the perfect punch-line was that we then found that some bright spark had had the great idea of training a camera (but fortunately no microphone) on Jones and his wife as they paused, clearly very moved by the memories which it brought back, to watch it being played on the Churchill Downs TV screens. If the lesson had been that decent behaviour demands that people be allowed some privacy in moments of grief, that had clearly been lost on that cameraman and his producer.

Anyway, victim number two of Alan Partrige-style televisual crassness was 'Chip' Woolley, trainer of this year's winner Mine That Bird. The presenters had clearly decided in advance that Mine That Bird was not going to win and that, coming from New Mexico, he and his trainer should be the standing joke of the programme. The fact that the horse had form good enough to have qualified him for the field was rather lost on the TV team, who clearly used their ignorance of the horse and his trainer as reason for concluding that they were not to be taken seriously. Before the race, Woolley, who was on crutches, was treated as if he had just come down on the latest UFO, as he was subjected to incredulous questioning about the length of the drive he had had to make to get from New Mexico to Churchill Downs, and then hit with the sucker punch, "And what made you think that your horse is good enough to bring here?". He handled this with great dignity, restricting his answer to the condescending prat's latter question to, "Because he was qualified to run". You would have liked to have thought that the horse winning the race would have persuaded the TV team to adopt a different tone, but sadly that would have been asking too much. Immediately after the race, Woolley was, therefore, hit with further questions about how long the drive had taken; understandably he couldn't take any more, and gave the testy retort, "I'd have hoped that now that this horse has won the race, you might have found something to say about him other than what a long drive he had to get here", to which the irrepressible interviewer, clearly as thick-skinned as a rhino, responded with a cheery, "Well, now that you have won the race, will you fly home?". Poor Woolley couldn't take it any more, turning about on his crutches and levering himself off in a different direction - but admirably not before he had found the courtesy to answer the question with the one word, "No". Maybe it isn't so funny/cringe-making (take your pick) in the re-telling, but if ever Steve Coogan wants evidence to support his Alan Partridge portrayal of the mediaman as a brainless and graceless buffoon, then this programme provided it. Thankfully we had the excellent James Willoughby and his team in the UK studio to take things to a significantly higher level in between the bouts of TV presenting US-style.