WITH his combination of cold fish expertise and a measured dash of performing seal playfulness, Gary O'Toole has been The Olympic Channel's studio star this past week. Swimming, "in spite of the competitors' painted on Speedo suits, is not the sexiest of spectator sports. But O'Toole, as cool as a plunge in the Forty Foot, has guided us through waves of celebration and controversy with the sureness of a lifeguard patrolling a beach of day trippers.
Almost a decade ago, when Stephen Roche was winning the Tour de France, we were as sailed by terms such as "peleton", "domestique" and "maillot jaune". Overfed office workers began to appear, in public, in cycling shorts. Idyllic country roads became jammed with garish peletons of people who, really, should have known better. Now with "stroke ratio", "six feet leg kick" and "split times" ricocheting around common conversation, swimming is set to reach its high tide mark of popularity.
Michelle Smith, of course, is the superstar. But Gary O'Toole, a former European silver medallist, has cornered the media work, if he wants it. A medical doctor, he's not likely to face the dole anyway. But his most undoctor like willingness and ability to explain the finer points of a subject to the uninitiated, makes him a television producer's dream. Bill O'Herlihy, whose savvy normally takes the form of designer deference towards the studio expert, is now behaving like an O'Toole fan.
At the Barcelona Olympics, Mick Dowling's boxing punditry was superb. But unless our boxers thump their way to multiple gold, Gary O'Toole seems certain to be on the highest level of the pundits' podium when the Atlanta games finish. Success from the competitors, it seems, brings out the best in a pundit. Looking like an ageing New Romantic and scoring a phenomenal rate of prediction, O'Toole has more fans now, especially females, than he ever had as a sportsman.
All the euphoria will fade of course. Michelle Smith has become an Irish sporting legend. Indeed, time may even embellish her standing. But the euphoria will fade. Watching Minister for Sport, Bernard Allen, equivocate on Wednesday night (shortly before Francis Barrett, who trains in a container beat a Brazilian boxer by a huge margin) it was clear that any rush to get shaved and tapered for a plunge into an Irish 50 metre pool would be premature.
Allen, smiling as he evaded O'Herlihy's questions, acted more like a Minister for Fun and Games than a Minister for Sport. This 50 metre pool argument has, for years, been sport's equivalent of draining the Shannon. These projects have, in theory, a symbiotic relationship. But their mutuality is most obvious in the fact that no government really wants to know.
Anyway, over on BBC, Michelle Smith has joined a long list of distinguished Irish adoptees. Sharron Davies remarked at one point that "Michelle brought us back a gold". Not that such appropriation matters that much, I suppose but it does show that alongside new wonders, old traditions can cling like barnacles. Still, there are fine lines throughout coverage of the Olympics. One person's BBC imperialism is another's well meant celebration. As in the case of Francis Barrett, much bonhomie frequently lies uncomfortably close to patronising.
Michelle Smith's golds, of course, have completely changed the traditional emotional graph for Irish viewers of the Olympics. In the past, the opening, athletics free week has allowed us to concentrate on some of the weirdo sports before occasional success and regular disappointment on the track. This year, it's been more difficult to focus on the weirdo events but beach volleyball cannot go unmentioned.
Huge television ratings in the US have forced beach volleyball into the games this time. Beach volleyball is all about beach bunnies and beach bums, bikinis and bronzed bodies, sand and silicone. It is Baywatch for television sports schedules. To add to the drama, the top US women's pair of Nancy Reno and Holly McPeak have been very beachy towards each other in recent weeks.
Nancy, who prides herself on being a feminist, was not impressed by Holly having a breast enlargement operation. Indeed, she was so incensed that she threatened to split the pairing but, in the interests of US success, this potentially disastrous cleavage was avoided. The best part about beach volleyball in Atlanta though, is the fact that the city is 300 miles from the nearest beach. They brought in 1,000 tons of sand.
They brought in massive supplies of Californian hot air too. The "spirit" of beach volleyball was summed up on Eurosport by one of the US team, Barbara Fontana Harris. "I think," said Barbara, "that the energy in the air is just more celebration and a more powerful definition of locality. And that's great." After Gary O'Toole, Ms Harris lacks something in the way of focality. It would make you wonder too, who really is taking drugs? But, as Brendan O'Reilly would have said in the old days "Sin a bhfuil de cursai sport...
THE vault from beach volleyball to Page 3 girls, particularly in the case of the splendidly named Ms McPeak, is not of Sergei Bubka proportions. However, the vault from beach volleyball commentary to Page 3 captions is another matter. Like the Japanese haiku, the Page 3 caption (patented by former knitting editor Ms Patsy Chapman) is, admittedly, a limited literary form.
But, it has its conventions alliteration interjections (the quaint "Cor" being the classic) double meanings an inferred (either overt or punned) relationship to a current news or sports story often a rousing and self congratulatory conclusion, invariably expressed, as Wordsworth would have approved, "in the language of common men".
Consider the following examples of the art. Headline Tracy's in fine form." Text "And they're off! Tantalising Tracy Kirby is baring to go on Grand National day. This fine filly fancied being a jockey until she decided to outstrip'em on Page 3. A bet on Tracy is sure to win a chestful!" Above this caption, Tracy smiles vacuously as she brandishes a riding crop. Cor, indeed!
Page 3 A Celebration was presented by the queen of the genre, Samantha Fox. "Is it here to stay or will it go bust? We take the top off Page 3," she said by way of introducing the programme. But, in spite of the appropriately jocular tone, the top never really did come off. This was, after all, a celebration. Consequently, there was little serious objection to the notion of including bare breasted women in a newspaper.
It's not the sexist implications which are most alarming it's the political ones. The Sun, spouting Tory propaganda to its huge readership, has been vitally important to the British Conservative Party. In fact much of the asset stripping of the British people has been facilitated by those Page 3 pictures which have sold the paper. Labour MP Clare Short's 1986 Bill to have such tabloids deemed, not newspapers, but daily soft porn publications, terrorised the family loving Tories.
They didn't defend Dishy Doris, Randy Rita or Curvy Carol in their own rights. They did so to protect some of the meanest and most dangerous propaganda. "Crackpot Clare's War On Our' Birds" screamed a Sun headline and Page 3 survived. But it may be, if you'll excuse a less than precise metaphor, on its last legs. Time has finally caught up with it. Like the Tories, I suppose.
Leaving politics aside (for those of you more technical minded) there were trade secrets discussed. Spraying the breasts with cold water and then turning on a cooling fan was a technique regularly used "to increase pertness". In fact, in those cases most resistant to pertness, ice was sometimes employed. As well as ageing lads (George Best, Michael Winner, Peter Stringfellow), a fine art critic, an anthropologist and a professor of English were also consulted, raising the tone from the casual and strictly technical to the high academic.
Even Dr Germaine Greer made contributions so this was academically Olympian indeed But in the end, as in every other part of it, it was codology. To be fair, it was funny at times. Page 3 art criticism of a Renaissance painting offered the following "Ciao about that! Vivacious Venus looks bellissimo in her birthday suit, even if she won't show us her Naples. And you're have to wait to see her Botticelli too." What can you say to that?
WITH movies about aliens dominating cinema this year and The X Files zapping all competition in international TV schedules, the "paranormal" and the "unexplained" are back in fashion. Out Of This World is a new Beeb version of an old staple. Spontaneous human combustion, evidence for the existence of luck, ghosts and hauntings were examined in this first episode of six.
The formula is eerily familiar. Carol Vorderman, in the sort of power suit that Sky News's women anchors wear, is the female lead. Cheery Chris Choi is the male and a Dr Richard Wiseman is the resident sceptic. So there you have it glamour, ladishness and science what more could a TV series ask for? Indeed, Page 3 a Celebration used the very same formula with a dash of art added.
Dr Wiseman, scientific to the last, visited a crematorium to examine bones which had been burned at 1,000C for 75 minutes. They were still not reduced to the fine powder found after alleged cases of spontaneous human combustion. "There are all sorts of chemicals and electrical energy in the body," said an American investigator, "and sometimes they just trip."
One man described witnessing flame shooting out the mouth and stomach of a victim. It sounded like a really bad case of Janet Evans syndrome. Not that any of this, or the stories of hauntings, were funny. But they were highly unusual, slightly unnerving and ultimately unsatisfactory. That, of course, is their perennial appeal and that's why Out of this World is a perfectly normal paranormal programme.
FINALLY, though the week's high drama took place in Atlanta, Double Exposure's The Golden Collar was a lingering little drama written by Eamonn Sexton. Set in Liverpool, more specifically in that city's dubious world of personal injury claims, it portrayed a world of urban decay and legal scams which suggested limbo. The characters, even the more dynamic ones Mark McGann and Clare Holman seemed half dead.
The rage of Bernard Hill's Yosser "Gissa job" Hughes in Alan Bleasdale's Boys From The Black Stuff was at least alive and vital. But that was Liverpool in the early 1980s. Now, those with least prospects are portrayed as a legion feigning injury. Blokes in slings, casts and the eponymous collars (whiplash cases) lined up in search of compo. "Law means never having to say you're honest," said McGann (a solicitor). This was grim stuff but it rang as true as a Gary O'Toole prediction. A commendably wry little piece.