Posted by Barney Ronay Tuesday 20 April 2010 17.28 BST The Guardian
The BBC's best football show will take a turn for the worse if the favourite to replace Adrian Chiles is appointed
Tim Lovejoy, the former Soccer AM anchor, is a candidate to replace Adrian Chiles as host of Match of the Day 2. Photograph: Getty Images
So, farewell then Adrian Chiles. You weren't that bad on Match of the Day 2. In fact, in a sea of quite-badness, genuine badness and Manish Bhasin you offered a rare beacon of all-rightness. This week Chiles announced that he will be leaving the BBC, after being asked to stand down from co-presenting The One Show on Fridays to accommodate the prime‑time TV comeback of Chris Evans (who, for the benefit of younger readers, was briefly quite good on Fridays in the 1990s when he was mates with lots of people who at the time seemed important, like Noel Gallagher and Gazza and the drummer from Dodgy).
This has been energetically reported, but it is in the main a story about the media as reported by the media for the benefit of the media. The One Show will endure for as long as people still feel a craving for gently topical sofa-based chit-chat. Hardcore Chiles fans will find their man on ITV Sport, where, history tells us, he will appear immediately diminished, flustered and oddly third-rate. Bob Wilson, unflappable on the BBC, found himself frozen with advert-break paranoia on ITV. Des Lynam went from charmingly serene to insultingly inanimate and bored.
There is one real issue here, however: what happens now to Match of the Day 2? Chiles was pretty good as the anchor of the BBC's Sunday night highlights show, so good that at times MOTD2 seemed to have arrived from an entirely different universe to the stilted and formulaic MOTD1, with its cardboard punditry and soporifically inane notion of "analysis". Chiles was relaxed and conversational. He brought the best out of his ex-pro pundits, jarring them into saying things they might actually mean, or offering actual genuine opinions, with his unstyled everyman shtick.
Come the end of the season a replacement will be required. And suddenly this feels like an important decision. As the only free-to-air Premier League analysis show of its type, MOTD2 has an important role. It has grown to fill a void. We need it to work. A wrong turn here could be frustratingly terminal.
And here's the nub of it. Two words: Tim Lovejoy.
This is a genuine possibility. In fact Lovejoy is perhaps the man most likely to take over from Chiles because in TV terms this makes all kinds of sense. Handsome Tim, with his crossover charm, his mateyness, his twitchy banter, his sofa-buzz. He's like Adrian's slightly groovier, louder younger brother, with better jeans and a vague sense of knowing people who are in bands.
The only real problem with this is that – oddly for someone so convincingly convinced of his own popularity – lots of people don't really like Lovejoy. Why could this be?
Perhaps it's that lingering sense that he just isn't up to presenting football on the BBC, even as a shouty, broad-brush every-bloke mouthpiece. Lovejoy brings his own brash, self-propelling sub-glamour. But he also brings a palpable ignorance of football beyond recent-vintage Premier League, as professed in his own brutally honest mea culpa hardback confessional Lovejoy On Football (misinterpreted by some as a simple celebrity memoir).
Plus, he brings a uniquely unapologetic amour-propre. Lovejoy loves Lovejoy. This is the dominant Lovejoy theme of any Lovejoy-fronted Lovejoy vehicle. This isn't necessarily an obstacle to presenting sport well. Chiles is clearly also an operator and a toys-out-of-the-pram merchant. George Allison, the BBC's first ever commentator, was an egomaniacal impresario who also managed Arsenal, hung out with movie stars and flashed about the place carrying a gold cigar case. But still some sense of detachment on screen is required, a concession to professional modesty. As opposed to that sense of having Lovejoy-scented laughter barked into your face, your CD collection name-dropped, your inner thigh forcibly autographed and essence of Lovejoy banter expertly syringed into both your ears.
There is a sense that Lovejoy's time, or the time when a Lovejoy made any kind of sense, has simply passed. The days when football was buoyant on a pillow of superheated growth and still mapping virgin territory of crossover-conquest and indie-band tie-in: this was when Lovejoy was just about bearable, or perhaps in some way even necessary, an idiot-mascot for the boom years.
But football just isn't like that any more. Even Premier League clubs are on the verge of collapse. Football looks bloated and stretched, even a bit preposterous. At times like these Lovejoy on the BBC just seems in bad taste, like a juggler at a funeral.
He is by no means a sure thing in any case. There are plenty of credible, non-risk, sober-suited alternatives (and also Manish Bhasin). The BBC may yet smell something amiss in Lovejoy and plump instead for an amiable Mark Pougatch-style fudge.
Plus there is genuine talent out there. James Richardson, host of Channel 4's Football Italia and the Guardian's Football Weekly, and a lone success on the unlamented Setanta, would probably be the most popular choice. Already an online petition has emerged fervently backing his case to present a Premier League show that the nation, perhaps unexpectedly, has taken to its heart as a part-antidote to the self-interest of Sky Sports and the migrainous platitudes of MOTD1.
With this in mind it seems pretty obvious that Richardson would be a very good choice. Not just in keeping up the recent Chiles tradition of intelligent, pleasantly informal debate. But also as a kind of Lovejoy-serum, an anti-Lovejoy, TV garlic to his gurning Lovejoy fangs. Either way the race to replace Chiles on MOTD2 feels unexpectedly important. And that's not a bad start in itself.
The BBC's best football show will take a turn for the worse if the favourite to replace Adrian Chiles is appointed
Tim Lovejoy, the former Soccer AM anchor, is a candidate to replace Adrian Chiles as host of Match of the Day 2. Photograph: Getty Images
So, farewell then Adrian Chiles. You weren't that bad on Match of the Day 2. In fact, in a sea of quite-badness, genuine badness and Manish Bhasin you offered a rare beacon of all-rightness. This week Chiles announced that he will be leaving the BBC, after being asked to stand down from co-presenting The One Show on Fridays to accommodate the prime‑time TV comeback of Chris Evans (who, for the benefit of younger readers, was briefly quite good on Fridays in the 1990s when he was mates with lots of people who at the time seemed important, like Noel Gallagher and Gazza and the drummer from Dodgy).
This has been energetically reported, but it is in the main a story about the media as reported by the media for the benefit of the media. The One Show will endure for as long as people still feel a craving for gently topical sofa-based chit-chat. Hardcore Chiles fans will find their man on ITV Sport, where, history tells us, he will appear immediately diminished, flustered and oddly third-rate. Bob Wilson, unflappable on the BBC, found himself frozen with advert-break paranoia on ITV. Des Lynam went from charmingly serene to insultingly inanimate and bored.
There is one real issue here, however: what happens now to Match of the Day 2? Chiles was pretty good as the anchor of the BBC's Sunday night highlights show, so good that at times MOTD2 seemed to have arrived from an entirely different universe to the stilted and formulaic MOTD1, with its cardboard punditry and soporifically inane notion of "analysis". Chiles was relaxed and conversational. He brought the best out of his ex-pro pundits, jarring them into saying things they might actually mean, or offering actual genuine opinions, with his unstyled everyman shtick.
Come the end of the season a replacement will be required. And suddenly this feels like an important decision. As the only free-to-air Premier League analysis show of its type, MOTD2 has an important role. It has grown to fill a void. We need it to work. A wrong turn here could be frustratingly terminal.
And here's the nub of it. Two words: Tim Lovejoy.
This is a genuine possibility. In fact Lovejoy is perhaps the man most likely to take over from Chiles because in TV terms this makes all kinds of sense. Handsome Tim, with his crossover charm, his mateyness, his twitchy banter, his sofa-buzz. He's like Adrian's slightly groovier, louder younger brother, with better jeans and a vague sense of knowing people who are in bands.
The only real problem with this is that – oddly for someone so convincingly convinced of his own popularity – lots of people don't really like Lovejoy. Why could this be?
Perhaps it's that lingering sense that he just isn't up to presenting football on the BBC, even as a shouty, broad-brush every-bloke mouthpiece. Lovejoy brings his own brash, self-propelling sub-glamour. But he also brings a palpable ignorance of football beyond recent-vintage Premier League, as professed in his own brutally honest mea culpa hardback confessional Lovejoy On Football (misinterpreted by some as a simple celebrity memoir).
Plus, he brings a uniquely unapologetic amour-propre. Lovejoy loves Lovejoy. This is the dominant Lovejoy theme of any Lovejoy-fronted Lovejoy vehicle. This isn't necessarily an obstacle to presenting sport well. Chiles is clearly also an operator and a toys-out-of-the-pram merchant. George Allison, the BBC's first ever commentator, was an egomaniacal impresario who also managed Arsenal, hung out with movie stars and flashed about the place carrying a gold cigar case. But still some sense of detachment on screen is required, a concession to professional modesty. As opposed to that sense of having Lovejoy-scented laughter barked into your face, your CD collection name-dropped, your inner thigh forcibly autographed and essence of Lovejoy banter expertly syringed into both your ears.
There is a sense that Lovejoy's time, or the time when a Lovejoy made any kind of sense, has simply passed. The days when football was buoyant on a pillow of superheated growth and still mapping virgin territory of crossover-conquest and indie-band tie-in: this was when Lovejoy was just about bearable, or perhaps in some way even necessary, an idiot-mascot for the boom years.
But football just isn't like that any more. Even Premier League clubs are on the verge of collapse. Football looks bloated and stretched, even a bit preposterous. At times like these Lovejoy on the BBC just seems in bad taste, like a juggler at a funeral.
He is by no means a sure thing in any case. There are plenty of credible, non-risk, sober-suited alternatives (and also Manish Bhasin). The BBC may yet smell something amiss in Lovejoy and plump instead for an amiable Mark Pougatch-style fudge.
Plus there is genuine talent out there. James Richardson, host of Channel 4's Football Italia and the Guardian's Football Weekly, and a lone success on the unlamented Setanta, would probably be the most popular choice. Already an online petition has emerged fervently backing his case to present a Premier League show that the nation, perhaps unexpectedly, has taken to its heart as a part-antidote to the self-interest of Sky Sports and the migrainous platitudes of MOTD1.
With this in mind it seems pretty obvious that Richardson would be a very good choice. Not just in keeping up the recent Chiles tradition of intelligent, pleasantly informal debate. But also as a kind of Lovejoy-serum, an anti-Lovejoy, TV garlic to his gurning Lovejoy fangs. Either way the race to replace Chiles on MOTD2 feels unexpectedly important. And that's not a bad start in itself.
Seriously FFS 
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