Sport on TV: Serious questions, and grounds for distress

THERE was a bizarre moment last Tuesday when, thanks to my son messing about with our television's tuner, I was led to believe that A S Byatt, Sarah Dunant and Germaine Greer were appearing on A Question of Sport (BBC 1). The illusion only lasted the 10 seconds it took me to realise it was actually the Booker Prize on BBC 2, but if I was a controller, I'd commission the idea of a Jocks v Literati quiz, provisionally entitled The North Bank Show.

The other notion thrown up by this accidental channel-surfing was that the clobber was much louder on the Booker programme than it was on QoS. In fact, the nation's favourite sports quiz seemed to have undergone a revamp as radical as the Labour Party's - a new title sequence, theme tune jazzed up, but most strikingly, there had also been a 'de-Pringle-ing' of the contestants. The sight of Botham and Beaumont in tasteful oatmeal- coloured shirts, with their guests in a variety of autumn colours, suggested that an image consultant had been busy. Only David Coleman, in a jumper based on the design of a 1950s BBC test-card, flew the flag for the locker-room look.

Some things don't change, notably Botham's readiness to have a go at the cricketing establishment, especially Ted Dexter, the man who once got Devon Malcolm's name the wrong way round. It would help Botham's cause if he could recognise a few cricketers himself; the photo of the South African fast bowler Fanie de Villiers - here last summer, took a bagful of wickets, remember? - foxed him. People in crass houses . . .

Wednesday's edition of Dispatches (Channel 4) asked more serious questions of football club chairmen and safety officers, after the reporter Joe Layburn, with a hidden camera, had recorded fire and crowd control hazards which still exist at many league grounds, despite the Bradford and Hillsborough disasters. The concealed camera has become a statutory instrument of the investigative report, since it conveys the furtiveness which would not surface in front of a five-person crew with advance permission to film.

The evidence provided by the camera-in-the-bag certainly looked damning - abandoned dog-ends stuffed into the gaps between planks, piles of combustible rubbish left under stands, ancient metal gates jammed with beer cans, safety stewards engrossed in the game, not the crowd.

But the sharpest indictments were achieved by old-fashioned face-to-face interviews in which various administrators squirmed to account for their failings. What united them, apart from their complacency, was the Nixonian evasiveness of their language. Phrases such as: 'There is a concern shared by all concerned' or 'I personally haven't come across this fact' or 'I can't comment on your individual situation without looking at the situation' were groped for as frozen brains sought unmarked escape routes.

It seemed more than a coincidence then that the most articulate spokesman was Ray Kennan, the chief executive of Doncaster Rovers, who had instituted a thorough safety overhaul of his club's ground, which included banning smoking and paying the stewards for the required attentiveness. 'How could you sleep at night if anything bad happened?' he asked as justification for doing his job properly. Trevor Hicks, whose two daughters were killed at Hillsborough, also pointed to the corruption of language as the first prelude to these accidents. 'Their mouths make the right noises, but they don't mean it,' he said of those who defend the status quo.

Despite its stylistic indulgences - sepulchral music, tabloid breathlessness and even a concealed judge, Justice Popplewell, in mufti - the programme should be shown forthwith to whichever committee of the great and the good will be doling out the National Lottery cash. We hear a lot about our heritage needs - but what we need least is another stadium disaster.

Happily, there was some light entertainment the same night in the twisting, somersaulting form of the Yorkshire-Yemeni boxer Naseem Hamed. The Big Fight (ITV) saw him take another step towards a world title with a convincing demolition of tough-nut Freddy Cruz, who'd made the mistake of calling the 20-year-old 'Naz' 'a boy'. The ringside interviewer Gary Newbon was taking no chances, and had sensibly protected himself from any similar treatment by sporting a tie with the same leopardskin pattern as Naseem's trunks, a case of nailing your colours to your chest. This raises the question of what Newbon will be wearing should Naseem take a world crown - a tiger-skin rug and turban?

Lastly, a complaint. Channel 4 Racing on Friday was interrupted for John Major's speech. Worse still, the adverts around the race coverage are consistently about savings and healthcare plans, and life insurance. Don't these ad guys know that most armchair punters will not only have done their money, but their brains as well? '****** *****', as the Booker winner James Kelman might say.