Football: Bleep and bluster show

THAT WAS THE WEEKEND THAT WAS

The tendency among football's shop-floor personalities towards the liberal use of so-called "industrial" language was illustrated once again when Alan Hansen's examination of The Sack Race went out on BBC2 on Saturday evening, well after the nine o'clock watershed.

Managers and players, with some exceptions, do seem to find it impossibly difficult to express themselves in other ways, which poses a tricky problem for television executives. To bleep or not to bleep, that is the question.

Certainly, there were sharp divisions of opinion over whether the video chroniclers of Graham Taylor's England demise made the right decision.

The makers of a forthcoming fly-on-the-wall study of the current Peterborough manager, Barry Fry, wrestled with the dilemma for some time before choosing their course. They plan to bleep - but may later regret the decision.

The trouble is that the colourful Fry's speech is so frequently punctuated with f-words (and stronger) that some of the footage in the Anglia TV programme contains almost more bleep than talk.

"It isn't just in the dressing-room, either, where you might expect it," a station insider revealed. "He seems to speak to the directors in the same way as his players."

Originally scheduled for local consumption as Peterborough battle against relegation, the programme is now earmarked to reach a wider audience in a Network First slot to be shown in all regions.