As part of my work, I am forced to endure far too many hours of watching football on Sky TV. Listening to the smarmy presenters is, unfortunately, a necessary task and when they persist in lying to me, it pisses me off big style.
It is bad enough hearing Jamie Redknapp misinforming me on the games but I expect and accept this type of rubbish. But when the commentators insist on pretending that they are at the stadium (as they do for Champions League and Spanish La Liga games) when they are actually in a London studio, I move to grumpy old man mode.
Two examples.....For 30 minutes of the 2nd Half of the Champions League game between Internazionale and Spartak Moscow, Sky persisted in telling us that the Italians were 3-1 ahead before claiming that "there is some confusion in the stadium about the score" and backtracking to the actual 2-1 score. But this wasn't in the same league as a Barcelona v Espanyol match a number of years back. The satellite transmission failed and, when the signal returned, Rob Palmer informed us that we hadn't missed anything and carried on with his usual nonsense to do with the taxi journey from the airport. Then he noticed that 2-0 had become 3-0! He went into middle class blathering mode - oh how we giggled...
Incidentally, I raised this point at a recent meeting with some Sky people (aliens?) but they were genetically predisposed to duplicitousness - the interaction took on the form of Tony "Trust Me" Blair's monthly press conference.
