Greavsie in funny old state of confusion

Sport on TV

PLENTY to discuss on last week's Sport in Question (ITV, Monday): the state of football, the state of boxing, the state of cricket . . . enough states, really, to form a continent. And plenty of fascinating side-issues bubbled up along the way. Ray Illingworth, for instance, took time out to give a casual but impressive thumbs-up to the idea of bringing back National Service, which is always nice.

Sport in Question is sport's answer to Question Time, with Ian St John in the role of David Dimbleby. A panel of experts hunkers down over the table and a bank of punters lobs them questions or propositions. If the programme lacks a little of Question Time's focus, that may well be down to Jimmy Greaves, who is here in the role of Jimmy Greaves. For instance, the panel was asked to consider the notion that football was in the gutter. Greaves took this as the cue for a larger discussion altogether. "I think the country's in the gutter," he said. "I think we're all in a state of confusion." And if we weren't confused already, we certainly were after Greaves's surreal check-list of reasons why the country is in the state it's in. The list included - in so far as I could understand it - joy- riders holidaying in Kenya, British monuments to German war heroes and the tax man threatening to take away Greaves's house.

The boxing discussion was easier to follow, though not troubled by clarity in the end. Someone in the audience wondered whether boxing hadn't brought its troubles on itself - whether the furious nature of some recent bouts wasn't directly linked to the swagger and hot air the sport goes in for. After all, boxers now routinely enter the ring in self-aggrandising showers of fireworks and, in the case of Prince Naseem Hamed last week, wear shorts apparently fashioned from strips of crocodile skin.

On the panel, Gary Newbon, ITV's Mr Boxing, would hear none of this - and none of anything else either, his principal debating tactic here being to shout, interrupt and minimise the time he spent listening. "The hype side of it is totally irrelevant," Newbon said, before contradicting himself a split-second later by declaring noisily: "We're into personality, show-business boxing, whether you like it or not." The water grew still muddier.

Planted in the audience, a representative of the British Medical Association pointed out that the laws of boxing were designed expressly to protect the fighters' genitalia - so why not a rule prohibiting blows to the head? This seemed, at first hearing, to have a neat, rounded logic to it, but you could see the sport going entirely to pieces once medical interests had got, as it were, a toehold. After all, blows to the kidneys and the stomach aren't, strictly speaking, good for one. You could envisage the legal target area being reduced until anything other than a gentle cuff to the shoulder, followed by a full apology, would result in immediate disqualification and a life ban.

The audience got to vote, via hand-held remote controls, on the issues that mattered. Seventy-eight per cent of those who could find the little machine under their seat thought there was no case for banning boxing. Later, 62 per cent considered that the treatment dished out to Eric Cantona by the FA was sufficient punishment. Perhaps they were wooed by Manchester United's manager, Alex Ferguson, who pointed out that Eric only ever got into trouble in the second half of matches. This was probably the weakest defence ever heard.

All in all, this was a fairly feisty 40 minutes, but what, you wonder, is the programme going to be like in the inevitable quiet weeks when there is nothing more juicy to discuss than a cancellation at Haydock Park or a controversial off-court incident in the under-15 badminton trials at Chorley. One fears a sizeable portion of the programme's audience will, in these circumstances, use the channel-change button on the remote control at home and do a little bit of voting of their own.

Saint and Greavsie's World of Sport (ITV, Tuesday) finds our heroes in more relaxed mode, on a circular plinth, on black chat-seats. The programme is an opportunity to show nostalgia-inducing moments from the 1970s - those glorious days when football grounds were always packed, when Dickie Davies was known as "Richard", and when Brian Moore affected, for football commentary purposes, a positively aristocratic pluminess.

The programme is still more obviously an opportunity for Greavsie to make Saint laugh by doing very little indeed, other than tossing in the odd charmingly Cockney exclamation. What happens, roughly speaking, is this: Greaves says "Cor blimey!" and Saint is prompted to laugh without containment. "Strewth," adds Greaves, and Saint drops to his knees with tears of mirth pouring down his cheeks and begins pummelling the floor, shouting "Don't! Don't!" "Well I never," quips Greaves and paramedics arrive to stretcher the juddering body of Saint to an awaiting helicopter.

At the conclusion of an item on Ali, Greaves remarked: "What a wonderful exponent in the art of mouthwork." There's not a lot you can say to that. It's Saint and Greavsie's World of Sport; we just live in it.