Midnight in the Garden of Evel Knievel

Giles Smith

"Manchester United clinching the Treble; Tyson biting Holyfield's ear; Schumacher barging Hill off the track in Australia; Sampras sweeping Wimbledon clean; Christie going for gold; Argentina beating England on penalties. Name any one of the defining sporting moments of the last decade, Giles Smith wasn't there. He was at home, watching it on television. Like most people."

Great blurb on the inside cover. Great title. But I'm not sure the book lives up to it. Though Giles Smith does make some good points about the relationship between sport and television in the modern age.

One of these is that live sport is now one of the few televisual events whose outcome can still genuinely unknowable. Election results are called in advance by the pollsters. Plotlines in our favourite soaps are leaked weeks in advance. But sport retains that capacity to surprise us again and again.

Another thing that comes across is that in the age of sport on television it's the pundits and commentators who are the stars, not the athletes. Smith obviously has his favourites: Des Lynam and Kevin Keegan (for the hapless Keeganisms) in football, Murray Walker in Formula One, John McCririck in horse-racing and Sid Waddell in darts. Here's Smith on the tennis:

"Astonishing images from Wimbledon on the last Saturday: skies a colour one can only describe as blue, dotted with strange white fluffy things, and the light full of weird, golden stuff. 'Sunshine,' concluded John Barrett in the BBC commentary box. It's a times like these that you fully appreciate having an expert like Barrett around. Not all of us have memories going back that far."

But the problem with the book is that it is really only a collection of cuttings from Smith's Saturday column in the Telegraph. Entertaining though that is for the reader, it's hardly the most energetic exercise for the author.

One last thing about the title. There's a review at Amazon from an outraged Evel Knievel fan saying that not only does the great Evel only feature in about a page and half of the book (true) but also that the stunt rider pictured on the front cover is not Evel but (gasp) his son. Thunk! The sound of the obsessive fan missing the point, I think. Giles Smith will have enjoyed reading that.