Quintin Jardine's blog

I subscribe to just about every available football channel on TV. This includes ESPN, but there I am a reluctant customer, and I might even chuck it. Why? Because of their commentator, one John Champion. He may be the humanitarian of  the year in private, he may be great company in the pub. But I’m afraid there’s something about his style that sets me off. I sense a sneer in everything he says, the tone of a true smart arse, and you know what they say about them. It would be fine if he’d stick to football, but he doesn’t seem capable of describing a game without interspersing his commentary with snide, irrelevant and unnecessary comments. He reached a nadir yesterday when, during a game, he picked out one particular player (No, not Joey Barton) and told his audience that he had been ‘ a bad lad’ and that he had spent some time in a young offenders’ institution. I didn’t know that, and I doubt if many other viewers did either. I don’t know either, why Mr Champion chose to mention it. I’ve since checked on it. Yes, it was a serious offence, but the individual was punished. He might have gone out of the game, but his present employers saw good in him, and now he’s getting on with his life; or he was until a knobhead with a microphone dug out his past and broadcast it to the nation. ESPN is a respected broadcaster, but it’s being brought into disrepute; it should do something about it.