Play Nicely Boys

Catchphrases repeated ad nasuem by comedians are funny. Catchphrases repeated ad nasuem by everyone else are tantomount to mental torture. There is a similar phenomenon in sport. Muhammed Ali's pre-bout poetic speeches and hype were wonderful and part of the special aura he created around himself. Attempted by every other boxer since the now mandatory and staged press conference brawl is as dull as dishwater.

Formula One has suffered from a similar amount of rhetoric for many years and I for one am increasingly bored by it. Cue Eddie Irvine on a chat show a couple of weeks ago. In full Irv mode we got the usual F1 drivers can't be friends, they'd steal each others seats and girlfriends as soon as look at each other. Yawn. No doubt he sees this as great masculine fighting talk though what particularly amused me was as he delivered this great bravado he was sat next to Rupert Everett, a proper gay lovie. Irv in his Euro-riche outfit so favoured in the paddock looked decidely dwarfed by Everett, the sort of gay man who makes women moan how unfair it is that all the best men bat for the otherside. Irv went on to clarify thought that none of the other driver's girlfriends were worth nabbing; was this a further dig at his enemies? Hell no, the big man was frightened of a handbag round the ear from his latest girlfriend, you could see it in his eyes…

This continual back biting and general negative vibe that is so evident in F1 doesn't reflect true competition to me. Quite plainly I see a big group of men who are stuck in a public school hierachy timewarp.

I remember speaking to a mechanic of many years standing in the F1 pitlane. He remembered with great fondness the raft race of the Canadian GP. Each year groups of mechanics would build the most ludicrous contraptions and race them across the lake at Montreal, complete with a healthy level sabotage. But as they years went on the fun was sucked out of it, as the guy I spoke to said '"the 'big boys' got involved and started introducing rules and making it too serious'. A big boy did it and ran away, ain't it the truth.

Now come to me to another world, that of motorbike racing. There the top notch riders battling it out, doing that over-taking thing you may have heard of, then they get on the podium all chatty.

© Rebecca Hobbs

(c)RH PR 2007