Sunday Grandstand: Coverage of the Women's British Open Golf 3.30, BBC2
Iomall nan Tonn 6.10, Scottish
PETER Alliss, one suspects, has to stand in front of the mirror of a morning before women's golf competitions and repeat 20 times: "I must not make sexist remarks." And on the whole, he just manages it.
But it's how close he comes to failing that makes for great television, and turned the BBC's coverage of the final day of the 2005Women's British Open Golf Championships into something special. The inherent tension of knowing that dear old Peter is on his best behaviour bubbles under the surface all the time.
Will he fall off the tightrope when Cristie Kerr (white slacks, pale blue top, glammy ear-rings) gives that extra wiggle before driving off the 18th tee? "Ooh, this is an awkward one for Cristie . . ." he pronounced, breathing in deeply. Then, with a post-climactic sigh: "Ah, she's played a corker."Alliss, of course, is irreplaceable: Dan Maskell mated with Terry Wogan, an arch, knowing artist of the spoken word, funniest most of all in what he leaves unsaid.
"Maybe it's in the bushes, " he says innocently, as his co-commentator invites him to speculate on the position of one of two wayward balls from Annika Sorenstram (black top, pale blue slacks, a killer Chris Evert stare) . Women's golf is far chummier than men's; even the commentary team join in.
"We're having a little look for Annika's ball, " said Beverley Lewis, who has the cheery enthusiasm of the head of the girls' PE department. "It's very tangly over here."
And it's not just undergrowth.
Modern women's professional golf, of course - and Alliss is barred from acknowledging this - is as laden with repressed sex as women's tennis: all those glossy lips and skip caps and fitting clothes. Names straight out of airport fiction, such as Paula Creamer (pink top and paler pink slacks, great swing, greater eyeliner) . Alliss knows this, though. And he knows we know he knows. Thinkwhat the girls will take home with them, he murmured, quite apart from the decent prize money. "Tales to tell of nights out in Southport. Woo-hoo."
Ah, and those hunky caddies.
The star of yesterday's final was the playerAlliss called "JJ" - Jeong Jang (black, all black, delightful smile) , the tiny little Korean who beat everyone.
Alliss, tying himself in knots to avoid saying anything inappropriate about the women, transferred his attentions to JJ's rugged young caddy. Here was a safer role: that of elderly uncle safely scheming romance for his favourite niece. "Handsome boy, " he crooned. "He's keeping her relaxed." "Look, he keeps talking to her . . . nice payday for him too . . . 7.5% of pounds -160,000."
He even began to make up the dialogue between them. "Well done', he's saying."
By the time JJ and her caddy did indeed lock in (lingering? ) embrace after she sank the winning putt, middle-aged women everywhere were sighing wistfully and drafting the opening paragraphs of the Mills & Boon novel.
If JJ was barely higher than a golf bag, Michelle Wie, the 15year-old American wunderkind of women's golf, is at the other extreme. At 6ft 1in, she towered winsomely over Hazel Irvine. Playing at the women's British Open was "so awesome" she is going to try to qualify for the men's Open here next year. Dear, oh dear. Howwill Peter cope?
Tall women also haunted Scottish Television's new Gaelic series celebrating the beauty of Scotland's islands, using aerial photography. Eigg , we learnt, means the island of tall women, so named after five sisters who lived there many centuries ago, all more than 6ft tall.
If nothing else, these programmes would make you want to be a helicopter pilot, swooping and skimming in dreamlike sequences right up the West Coast. Eigg, Rum, Muck, Canna, Sanday, Skye.
This was the Scotland of fantasy; the eagle's eye view:
where the sun always shone, the deerwere always stirring, the poetry always swelling.
If it seemed a Scotland too removed from reality, it nevertheless mesmerised.
The sense of detachment was added to by John Carmichael's Gaelic script, which was simultaneously lyrical and lost in translation, a bit like pibroch to the uneducated ear.
Ian Bell is on holiday.
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