Latest news with #commentary
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Sport
- Daily Mail
Commentator Chip Caray's shocking slip of the tongue during Pride night commercial goes viral
A baseball commentator suffered an unfortunate slip of the tongue at the worst possible time on Saturday. St. Louis Cardinals announcer Chip Caray was asked to read a Disability Pride promo during the fourth inning of their game against the Cincinnati Reds. But he accidentally mispronounced 'flag', turning the word into an unintentional homophobic slur. 'Disability Pride Night is July 10 and with a themed ticket fans take home a Cardinals cap featuring the Disability Pride f**', Caray said before correcting himself to say 'flag'. There was then a painful silence that lasted around 30 seconds after the mistake as the game continued in the background. Caray's colleague Brad Thompson finally broke the silence by commenting on a pitch that was called for a ball. Fans quickly flocked to social media to comment on the humiliating error and share their thoughts. One posted: 'Uh oh, thats a rough one lol'. Another commented: 'Loudest silence I've ever heard lol'. A third added: 'It was an obvious slip of the tongue just a simple apology and move on.' 'The silence after is the apology he's obviously mortified and probably has a thousand thoughts running in his head,' another viewer said. 'He should not be reprimanded. It was literally a slip of the tongue. I highly doubt Caray is running around using that word. People need to focus on real outrage.'
The Independent
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Mark Nicholas' proudest memory tinged by sadness as 2005 Ashes marked end of era
Mark Nicholas has bittersweet memories of his role fronting Channel 4's coverage of the 2005 Ashes, his pride in the enduring 'mythology' of the series tinged by sadness at the end of the free-to-air era. Nicholas was the broadcasting anchor charged with carrying a rapt nation through many of the key moments of a contest that remains seared into the memories of cricket fans. Heading up an elite commentary cast featuring the likes of the late Richie Benaud and Tony Greig, as well as Sir Geoffrey Boycott, Michael Atherton and Michael Slater, Nicholas' debonair style crystallised many of the most thrilling moments as England regained the urn for the first time in 18 years. One passage in particular lives on, Steve Harmison's vital dismissal of Michael Clarke at Edgbaston and the subsequent call of: 'One of the great balls! Given the moment, given the batsman, given the match…that is a staggering gamble!' Speaking to the PA news agency two decades later, the current MCC chair reflects: 'You hear a lot of soundbites from that series, even 20 years on. Some of what I said didn't always make much sense, but I think the best commentary is reactive. When you plan to say certain things it doesn't work as well. ' David Bowie once gave an interview about 'Life on Mars' and said, 'It's a good song but I've no idea what I was writing about'. I sort of know what he means, you can be creatively successful completely unintentionally. 'I cannot tell you how often I get stopped, people telling me with all their hearts that 2005 and our coverage of it was what got them into cricket. 'Of course, it was the fact that England beat Australia after so long and that it was so thrilling. But to hear people, even England cricketers, say you helped get them into the game…you can't be more flattered than that. 'Some of us brought hyperbole, some did the deep analysis, Richie was minimalism brilliantly applied. I remain more proud of that time than anything else in my career, there was a certain element of mythology for all of us that summer, players and commentators alike.' Yet 2005 was not just the high water mark for Nicholas' BAFTA-winning team, it was also the end of the road. Sky television took over exclusive broadcast rights of English cricket in the aftermath, with home Tests having lost their 'Crown Jewel' status as a category A listed event. It remains a source of regret to Nicholas that the surge of public interest, which saw 7.4 million viewers tune in to the Oval finale, instantly encountered a paywall. 'I do feel desperately sad that an opportunity was blown. It will never leave me,' he says. 'They had to make sure Test match cricket stayed (free to air), even if it was in a joint broadcast, and if that meant a bit less money then so be it. 'I'm not anti-Sky at all, I'm glued to their coverage three or four nights a week. But it was a bad misjudgement. Cricket was a very powerful thing at that moment and it was the time to make sure that continued. 'I was asked to co-host the celebration at Trafalgar Square with David Gower and I remember walking home through London with my wife after the crowds cleared. All the way back I was feeling an extraordinary contradiction of euphoric happiness at the summer that had gone and the terrible sadness of losing the coverage.'
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Mark Nicholas' proudest memory tinged by sadness as 2005 Ashes marked end of era
Mark Nicholas has bittersweet memories of his role fronting Channel 4's coverage of the 2005 Ashes, his pride in the enduring 'mythology' of the series tinged by sadness at the end of the free-to-air era. Nicholas was the broadcasting anchor charged with carrying a rapt nation through many of the key moments of a contest that remains seared into the memories of cricket fans. Advertisement Heading up an elite commentary cast featuring the likes of the late Richie Benaud and Tony Greig, as well as Sir Geoffrey Boycott, Michael Atherton and Michael Slater, Nicholas' debonair style crystallised many of the most thrilling moments as England regained the urn for the first time in 18 years. One passage in particular lives on, Steve Harmison's vital dismissal of Michael Clarke at Edgbaston and the subsequent call of: 'One of the great balls! Given the moment, given the batsman, given the match…that is a staggering gamble!' Speaking to the PA news agency two decades later, the current MCC chair reflects: 'You hear a lot of soundbites from that series, even 20 years on. Some of what I said didn't always make much sense, but I think the best commentary is reactive. When you plan to say certain things it doesn't work as well. Advertisement 'David Bowie once gave an interview about 'Life on Mars' and said, 'It's a good song but I've no idea what I was writing about'. I sort of know what he means, you can be creatively successful completely unintentionally. 'I cannot tell you how often I get stopped, people telling me with all their hearts that 2005 and our coverage of it was what got them into cricket. Mark Nicholas and members of the Channel Four team with the BAFTA awarded to their 2005 Ashes coverage (Yui Mok/PA) 'Of course, it was the fact that England beat Australia after so long and that it was so thrilling. But to hear people, even England cricketers, say you helped get them into the game…you can't be more flattered than that. 'Some of us brought hyperbole, some did the deep analysis, Richie was minimalism brilliantly applied. I remain more proud of that time than anything else in my career, there was a certain element of mythology for all of us that summer, players and commentators alike.' Advertisement Yet 2005 was not just the high water mark for Nicholas' BAFTA-winning team, it was also the end of the road. Sky television took over exclusive broadcast rights of English cricket in the aftermath, with home Tests having lost their 'Crown Jewel' status as a category A listed event. It remains a source of regret to Nicholas that the surge of public interest, which saw 7.4 million viewers tune in to the Oval finale, instantly encountered a paywall. English cricket's moment of greatest triumph soon gave way to a viewing paywall (David Davies/PA) 'I do feel desperately sad that an opportunity was blown. It will never leave me,' he says. 'They had to make sure Test match cricket stayed (free to air), even if it was in a joint broadcast, and if that meant a bit less money then so be it. Advertisement 'I'm not anti-Sky at all, I'm glued to their coverage three or four nights a week. But it was a bad misjudgement. Cricket was a very powerful thing at that moment and it was the time to make sure that continued. 'I was asked to co-host the celebration at Trafalgar Square with David Gower and I remember walking home through London with my wife after the crowds cleared. All the way back I was feeling an extraordinary contradiction of euphoric happiness at the summer that had gone and the terrible sadness of losing the coverage.'
BBC News
15-06-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Football commentator Tony Jones retires after 50-year career
The talents of the world's best footballers can often leave those watching for decades, Tony Jones has been putting them into words for audiences around the scrambles, furious bust-ups and matches played in sub-zero temperatures: the veteran TV commentator has seen it career has taken him from cub reporter at the Chester Observer to being the voice behind some of the World Cup, Premier League and FA Cup's most iconic the broadcasters he has worked for are Sky Sports, UEFA and Premier League Productions, which streams the English top flight around the now the 67-year-old from Suffolk has hung up his microphone, having ended on a high covering the UEFA Champions League final on 31 May. While many commentators forensically record the details of each match they cover, Jones does not."How many games have I commentated on? I haven't got a clue," he he does recall is his first football reporting shift: a fixture at Chester City in the came more regularly when he joined Anglia Television, ITV's station in the East of was first deployed as a TV commentator for Ipswich Town's 2-2 draw with Wolverhampton Wanderers in December 1995. For Jones, who spent 40 years living in Norwich, it has all been a blur since."I know some commentators do keep lists of the games they've covered, but I tend to park it and move on to the next one," he says."If you're prepping for Bodø/Glimt and Roma on a Thursday, and then you've got to look at Aston Villa versus Brentford on a Saturday, you can't really spend too much time dwelling on what's gone on before." Some games do live long in the memory, remembers the rush of watching Southampton striker Shane Long score the fastest goal in Premier League history - at 7.69 seconds - in April also recalls Norwich City's remarkable comeback against Middlesbrough in January 2005 as one of the most thrilling games he watched. "There are some players who make you take notice of what they can do, too," adds Jones, a Wrexham fan who moved to Lowestoft in 2021."As a Welshman, certainly Gareth Bale for his outstanding pace."I saw Messi play when he was 17 and you could see then he was an outstanding player."[Cristiano] Ronaldo always had the ability to produce big goals on big days; big occasions." Jones insists commentators are privileged to have "the best seat in the house", but one stadium holds a special place in his heart."I've always loved Goodison Park," he reveals, referencing the stadium that will no longer host senior men's football but will be the new home of Everton's women's ground's TV gantry is notorious for the precarious journey across its roof to access says: "That was an experience in its own right, but it was always such a great position to view from and the atmosphere was always special."These days, the needs of TV probably override everything else and the commentary positions will be discussed between the architects of the new stadium and the TV companies."But clearly for somewhere like Goodison, that was very different. They weren't thinking about that in the 1890s when they built that stand." Jones is less keen on the London Stadium, home of West Ham United since 2016. "It's just not really a football ground," he says. "You tend to be a long way back from the action."I wonder if West Ham will look back and regret the decision to move there. It certainly lacks the atmosphere of the old Upton Park."There have been plenty of other "strange ones" over the years, Jones says."The old Doncaster Rovers ground, Belle Vue: you had to watch from behind the goal."I might as well have been looking at a TV monitor in the studio for the value of watching the game from that angle." Sometimes getting to the ground has been the problem for him, however.A trip to Blackburn Rovers to cover their fixture against West Ham was thrown into chaos when heavy snow caused the cancellation of his flight from Norwich to the elements on the A14 instead, Jones took a call from Premier League officials."They said 'Is this game going to be on?' and I said 'Not a chance,'" he says."But when I got to Ewood Park, it was a green oasis. It was remarkable how the pitch had been cleared."They decided to play it, despite the temperature being -5C (23F)." As for his commentaries, Jones says: "I'm sure there have been numerous occasions when I've got things wrong."When the ball is bouncing around in the penalty area, there might be two or three players on the ball at the same time and you might not know who gets the final touch in."But experience tells you to buy yourself time; to just say the goal has been scored and then wait for the replay."Nothing could have prepared Jones for the challenges of working during the Covid-19 pandemic, however. Grounds were closed to fans as football limped through the end of the 2019-20 says he was fortunate to be among a select few broadcasters who could still attend matches, but that it was a "surreal" environment."It was difficult for us because we need the noise of the stadium," he explains."I'm sure for the players as well it must've been very difficult to find the same motivation that they would've had with a big crowd. "That extra 0.01% that maybe gets them over the line, that gives them the opportunity to take on a defender and beat a defender." Jones insists the role of commentator remains vital, despite the rise of influencers and YouTubers hosting watch-along hopes his work helped listeners around the world understand the value of the job."You occasionally hear people say 'I'd rather watch the game without commentary,'" he sighs. "Well, if you tried doing that I think you'd lose so much."But it is a role Jones is now preparing to walk away could not have ended his stellar career in finer fashion, though, watching Paris St-Germain thrash Inter Milan 5-0 to become champions of Europe for the first is one of many happy memories that he will hold on to in the next chapter of his life, to be spent travelling with his wife and doting on their six insists: "It's not really a job; I've always said this. "It's a fun thing to do and it's even better to be paid for it, certainly for someone who's had a love of football since a child."He is quick to stress the job is not a simple one, though, with "a lot of hard work" going into it."I've had a good career, a long career that I've enjoyed so much of, but the time is right to go on and do other things." Follow East of England news on X, Instagram and Facebook: BBC Beds, Herts & Bucks, BBC Cambridgeshire, BBC Essex, BBC Norfolk, BBC Northamptonshire or BBC Suffolk.
The Guardian
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The radio debut of the House of Commons: ‘there could be a long-running series here' – archive, 1975
Permanent radio broadcasts from the House of Commons began on 3 April 1978, and from the House of Lords on 4 April. Television broadcasts began on 21 November 1989. 10 June 1975 Ed Boyle, the commercial radio commentator for the first broadcast of parliament, yesterday spent two hours cooped up in a tiny glass box at a temperature of nearly 90 degrees, wearing a jacket, tie, and buttoned up collar, suffering from a particularly ferocious type of dysentery which has already brought his weight down to eight stone. Just to add a touch of challenge to the job, he was operating a new type of microphone kindly supplied by the BBC with operating instructions entirely in Japanese. In spite of this, Mr Boyle and his BBC colleague, David Holmes, who were trapped together in the same tiny glass box, managed somehow to give composed and informative account of the proceedings. Mr Holmes admitted afterwards that the heat had been so great that at times he had thought he would not be able to carry on, and though listeners may have noticed his voice fading occasionally, he always remained strikingly coherent and apparently in command. Mr Boyle now intends to make a few swift changes to make life slightly more bearable. Apart from sartorial changes to Bermuda shorts, for himself, he plans to make commentating easier by fading out some members when the discussion gets too technical. 'Some of the questions are really on very minor and erudite issues, and I guess the MPs won't mind if we turn them down occasionally so as to explain to the listeners what is happening.' Yesterday the two broadcasters were blessed by a good chunk of pungent topical debates, with Tony Benn using industry questions as the chance to prove himself a good Euro-democrat, and with splendid quotations like: 'If the opposition wants any head on a charger, the leader of the Conservative party will have to be a lot more seductive as a Salome than she has been so far.' At the same time, there were highly complex questions about, for example, the funding of the new pod for the stretched version of the Rolls-Royce RB 211 – a matter of great importance, but one which cannot be explained in the few seconds between question and answer. Both commentators had to trim down their remarks to within a second or so either way: Mr Holmes reckoned that if he did not spot immediately whether the speaker was calling an MP for a supplementary or for the next question on the order paper, he would lose two of the four or five vital seconds of explaining time. Time was so tight that Mr Boyle had to make a definite policy decision to give the first name of each MP as well as his surname and party. Often their time was so limited they could only say: 'This is a question about Europe' or, 'This is about British Leyland.' Mr Holmes hopes to grab a few more seconds of talking time while MPs are laughing and cheering between answers. But both men were pleased with the way things had gone, and came out of the box easier in mind if not in body than they had been when they went in. 'What's encouraging is that it looks as if we can do a proper job without the house having to change its way of going about business or even the tempo of its debates, so no one need feel that we are interfering in any way,' said Mr Holmes. The commercial company plans to use more material than the BBC will use, with prime minister's questions live every Tuesday and Thursday, plus special debates. It will also have an hour of extracts and highlights each morning – twice as long as the BBC – with an instant feedback service from a panel of MPs who took part in the debate; and possibly a Saturday morning edition giving chunks of the week's committees. Val Arnold-Forster, our radio critic, adds: It was a lucky day for broadcasters, according to David Holmes at the end of the transmission – audibly breathing a sigh of relief. It was too, it was a well or luckily chosen parliamentary day. At first, both Holmes and his opposite number, Ed Boyle of IRN, seemed to feel a trifle defensive about parliament. Well they might, for BBC listeners anyway missed not only some of Woman's Hour and a play, but since political events always seem to invade children's entertainment, they also missed Listen with Mother. Before the actual live broadcast started, both political editors showed us round like keen members of a parent-teachers association displaying their school: eager to tell us about the hallowed tradition, the problems that the whole institution had in a changing society, and the usefulness of the work done. The leader of the house, Edward Short, appeared on both channels in his headmasterly capacity to say that this was a particularly noisy House of Commons, but he hoped that the MPs would be on their best behaviour. A bit unruly, he thought, and not only the MPs either. There would have been more room, said Mr Short, in the tiny broadcaster's box if IRN and BBC had done the decent thing and agreed to a joint transmission. Nobody need have worried: from the moment question time started we were in capable hands. Both David Holmes and Ed Boyle chipped into the debate sotto voce, to identify and give party allegiances and explanations. Both tried valiantly to feed the listener with the details that make the House of Commons come alive. 'Mr Bidwell, chairman of the Tribune Group … Mr Denis Skinner, always a lively performer … Mr Benn is smiling to himself.' But they need not really have bothered: the proceedings were jolly enough. For those of us used to hearing politicians debating cautiously in front of untried audiences or answering laboured questions and phone-ins, it was an entertaining experience to hear such skilful parliamentary technicians as Harold Wilson and Tony Benn, parrying questions, riposting, joking, and scolding. The jokes were not always very good, but that's true of other radio comedians. Perhaps the laughter and applause sometimes seemed excessive but the barbed retorts were well placed and, as in other radio shows, what seemed like impromptu repartee must have been rehearsed, if only in the bath. 'I do not require lessons in political morality from an honourable member who regularly signs the oath of allegiance and snipes continually at the royal family,' snapped Tony Benn to Willie Hamilton. The uproar which worried Edward Short was cheerful mostly. The general cosiness, which came through strikingly as everyone complimented everyone else on performances in the referendum debate, seemed as easy to grasp as the Archers: we could become as familiar with William Whitelaw's idiosyncrasies as Walter Gabriel's. Final verdict: early days yet, but there could be a compulsive, long-running series here.
