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bobbys dazzlers
Bobby’s Dazzlers
By Will last year, at the end of May, No Comments; be the first!
Viewers of Sky Sports were this morning treated to a visual vomitorium with the sight of Bob Willis dressed in what can only be described as a camp-pink sequin jacket, fronting an equally mincing segment on Cricket AM called Bobby’s Dazzlers. This, ladies and gentlemen, was a triumph of cheese; a brawling maelstrom of incongruity. It was ludicrous, unlikely and I demand we see more.
Bob – sorry, Bobby – is dressed in a jacket that looks like it’s been covered in syrup, then rolled over and over on a bed of hundreds and thousands, before being dry-cleaned at the Angel Delight factory’s principle pot of gooey, disgusting shame. Bobby then fires a series of questions at a contestant, with all the seriousness of Bob Holness and Bruce “didn’t they do well?” Forsyth but tsunami quantities of eery cheese.
“Hold your gold there, Del Boy,” he winks, as the contestant fired a blank at his first question. “Nobody likes a smarty-pants.”
This is Bob Willis, the Sunderland screamer; the blancmange-haired tearaway with 325 Test wickets; him of demonic eyes in 1981. He’s a Bob Dylan fan of rare addiction; he even added Dylan as one of his middle names.
Bob, or Bobby, has never courted convention. In 2005 he propped up the table in The Wisden Cricketer’s survey of the greatest commentators, polling just 15% of the votes, only just sneaking ahead of Paul Allott. Perhaps wary of his on-air rants, and subtle-as-a-brick referencing to sponsor names (“Welcome to the Jade Stadium” a particular gem I loved), Sky soon had him grazing in the less risky surroundings of their studios. This has not stopped his furious toe-tapping at the ignorance – hell, the sickening insouciance – of players’ and officials’ knowledge of the laws, not least bowling rates per hour.
“Daryl Harper – hopeless, Billy Bowden – a showpony. Steve Bucknor – past his sell-by date,” he spat in 2005. Umpires get the full Bobby treatment, never more so than poor old Daryl Harper during the West Indies series in February. “He’s got to be given his pension book and [taken] out of there. He is hopeless,” Willis cussed. ‘Nuff respect, BW.
The Daily Telegraph’s Jim White tore into him and Charles Colville a few years ago, describing Bob’s “goggle-eyed rants” with comical precision. “It takes an act of significant will not to cower behind the sofa every time Willis – almost as angry as Colville – comes on screen.”
Out of the fire, into the … pink jacket? Who knows where Bobby’s career is now heading, but he’s rapidly cornering a niche in the cricket commentators’ market. Sky have a gem on their hands. Please, please have him sit in with Shane Warne during stints this summer and let us all sit back and enjoy.
If anyone has the video of Bobby’s Dazzlers to share, drop me a line. This needs global publicity
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