Sport on TV: Wright wins respect on a night of wrong turns

AS FAR as the average referee is concerned, the most appropriate name for a new chat show hosted by the Gunners' centre-forward would have been "Ian Wright Talks Back". Sadly, of course, this line had already been snaffled by another motormouth with Arsenal connections, and so instead the weekend started with Friday Night's All Wright (ITV), a rare opportunity for Wrighty to speak his mind in public without getting himself banned for the next 10 games.

If you saw it, cherish the memory, because one day in a decade or so, you may be asked to resolve a bar-room dispute. "I've got this friend of a friend," someone will say, "who reckons that back before the Millennium, Ian Wright did a weird, one-off chat show which went out late on a Friday night. There was a girl band everyone's forgotten about, and a boxer, Prince something, everyone's forgotten about him, too. There was Lionel Richie, and Sam from the Street. And Dion Dublin, the Coventry manager, playing a sax. Me, I reckon it's an urban myth. Know anything about it?"

And you will reply: No, mate, I was watching Parky. Why? Because sharing in the surreal experience that was FNAW was just another of those things that you do on Friday night but then feel rather guilty about the following morning. Ten pints of lager and a chicken rogan josh is bad enough. Rounding it off by watching Mark Bright read poetry, or All Saints lip-synching their single for the 157th time, was one more jolt than any system could stand.

To be fair, Wright himself was not the problem, or at least, not the major part of it. It was not his fault that the formula was jelly-legged with exhaustion, or that most of the scripted links were simply humiliating. A less self-confident host, for instance, might have abandoned the whole project when, just five minutes in, the "joke" involving St Francis of Assisi hit the floor so hard that it must have left a crater six feet wide.

Yet Wright plugged on gamely, and you can try as you might - and when someone plays for the Arsenal, it is only right and proper to try very hard indeed - but it is impossible to dislike him. There is not a trace of sham in his rollicking good humour, and when someone has the cheek to invite Lionel Richie to join him in a duet, and then, what's more, carries it off rather well, you can only shake your head and murmur one of his own favourite phrases: hey, man. Respect.

After all, this was Wright's first stab at a show of his own, after impressive guest appearances on both Clive Anderson and A Question Of Sport, the Christmas edition of which he rescued almost single-handed. True, you could flick one way and find Parkinson, and the other to Chris Evans, and realise that it takes more than attitude and enthusiasm to make a good chat host. But then, anyone who has seen Evans playing in a charity match will know that he has much further to travel in Wright's profession than the footballer does in his. And while the chance to make such direct comparisons did Wright few favours - Evans even had a shared guest in Prince Naseem - it would hardly have been Wrighty's style to duck a confrontation.

The obvious difference here, of course, is that even an egomaniac like Evans would never seek or claim to be a Premiership footballer, and for all that he bears a passing resemblance to John Hartson, Arsenal would never sign him up on the basis of his reputation as entertainer. The reverse, though, is no longer true, and you did not have to search too far for a reason why. Was it merely coincidence that Nike had bought a long slot in one of the ad breaks? Or that the most telling insight into the state of modern sport was an exchange of jeers between Wright and Naseem on the merits of Nike and Adidas, one which will be mirrored in thousands of playgrounds across Britain tomorrow lunchtime? Probably not.

Another theatre of operations in the sportswear war was the Australian Open Tennis Championship (Eurosport/BBC), where the skirmish between Tim Henman (an Adidas man) and Greg Rusedski (who goes in to battle for Nike) was over almost before it had started. Henman's early exit was particularly irritating for the Beeb, since they must have spent fortunes to get there, only to arrive in Melbourne to find that 50 per cent of their excuse was already preparing for the trip home.

Then again - are they actually there at all, or are we all being hoodwinked by the sporting equivalent of Capricorn Five? Has anyone seen Barry Davies standing at courtside? For that matter, was there any worthwhile evidence that Davies was in Milan for the figure-skating last week? Gerry Williams, admittedly, appeared to be in the same debriefing room as Greg Rusedski after the "Brit" won his second-round match, but that does not prove anything. It could just as easily have been a re-run of any Rusedski interview from the last two years. Let's face it: no one would notice the difference.