All Star ceremony proves to be a real modest affair

TV VIEW/Brian O'Connor: Here's a rule to set your watch by: if anyone is said to look "natchrel" in front of camera, then it's odds on he or she is what we anthropologists call a "knob-end".

Of course there are exceptions. Richard Nixon famously sweated like a thirsty racehorse whenever a camera got within 50 feet of him, yet still managed to be a bit the same on his own time too.

But on the whole, the ability to remain "natchrel" on TV requires a level of brass neck and self-regard that most of us thankfully can only marvel at. Nixon at least got it half right. Any modestly intelligent human being does start to sweat when a camera is pointed at them. It's called modesty.

Unfortunately, a lack of modesty is a positive boon for a television career. People that in real life would be as welcome through your front door as two feet of flood-water are also the ones that keep your eyes glued to the screen.

Friday night's All-Star ceremony cried out for a prolonged period of egomaniacal showboating.

RTÉ's usual cast of GAA hacks crowded in alongside the usual collection of county board Gaels and they all passed out the usual platitudes among themselves.

The award winners greeted their name call with the sort of bashful modesty that is a tribute to their upbringing - but also made for eye-poppingly dull TV. On hearing his name, each hurling hero shuffled with embarrassment round the back of a partition, blinked awkwardly through little puffs of dry ice, looked around for SeáMcCague who pointed them to the cameras, after which they gratefully lurched off to the security of the other winners.

This went on for half an hour. The only escape from the monotony was the mild frisson of expectation every time Ger Canning appeared. Could the king of cliché utter a gem at the right time for a change? But no.

"Two Kilkenny men in the team. I wonder who'll be next?" said Ger, grinning mysteriously, but interestingly, into the crowd.

God knows who RTÉ could have pulled out of the hat for the All-Stars but Thursday night's soccer coverage cried out for Eamon Dunphy.

Like or loathe the man, there is always a crackle of anticipation when he's around and his absence hung over John Giles and Gerry Armstrong like a smoky, uninsured blanket throughout the Celtic-Vigo tie on Thursday night.

Armstrong tried manfully. His time as a player in Spain gives him credibility and he can get round those Basque names quicker than a fascist tank division. But still it just wasn't the same.

"Agathe's missed a sitter," screeched George Hamilton, but Giles was having none of it. "It was a good chance," uttered football's own little Buddha. "A good chance." "But not a great chance," said Bill knowingly, leaving Gilesy to mutter under his breath.

The contrast with Saturday night's Premiership programme was startling. Happily, Giles and Dunphy are acknowledging each other again. In fact they're now sitting so close together that Bill looks like he might have to throw a bucket of water over the pair of them.

But the sparks are a joy to watch, even if Saturday's highlight was not. Kevin Kilbane's shorts fell off him during the Chelsea game. Actually fell off.

"Did that ever happen to you John?", Bill asked and Dunphy was in like a bullet. "Nah, John held his up with braces!"

There was certainly nothing bashful about Marcel Desailly during a Football Focus profile earlier on Saturday.

"People say we play only for money," Desailly snorted, his voice full of Gallic contempt. "If that was true, I'd have stopped a long time ago. Pleasure makes me continue," he added, somehow making the prospect of Middlesborough away sound like a mild debauch through New Orleans.

We then saw clips of Desailly presenting a soccer show for French TV. The content, even for yours truly's school-boy French, didn't sound too hot but hey, there was no mistaking the style.

"Frank Leboeuf sits here, and eats!" it sounded like at one stage, as Marcel showed us around the French national team's hotel.

C'est la difference. Desailly is a telly natural because he has the monumental self-regard to believe everything he says is of interest to the those looking in.

"He's a bit of a star, the boy," declared Mark Lawrenson.

"He's got that sort of arrogance, that strut, that reminds me of (Eric) Cantona," added the studio guest Gary Pallister.

Cantona's name later cropped up as being the only "non-Brit" in the new National Football Museum's hall of fame in Preston.

How a shaper like the flouncing Ereek can be named alongside the likes of Bobby Moore, Denis Law and George Best is a mystery that the Football Focus group declined to examine. Pity.