- This topic has 22 replies, 17 voices, and was last updated 13 years, 8 months ago by
.
- Posts
Lydia Hislop, Alan Lee, Greg Wood and James Willoughby for me.
But I think we’re pretty well served by a host of good writers. I like the sparky, confrontational style of Hislop and Wood. Not afraid to upset the establishment. Missed the infamous Hislop/Bolger incident at Epsom but witnessed Wood standing up to Henderson/McCoy after Binocular’s Champion Hurdle win.
If I had a criticism I’d say it was that, in general, racing journalists can sometimes give participants in the sport a bit of an easy time of it. But you can understand why, in the microcosm that is the racing industry, that might be the case.
Good job TRF is here to stick the knife in then, eh?
UK racing journalism – your favourites and your thoughts on whether it’s in a healthy state?
Agree with all those Cormack – particularly Lee and Wood whilst Willoughby brings something different,a more left-field view of racing to the party.
Interesting too that none of them write for the industry paper which seems to be clogging itself full of "wooly journalists" who are too busy getting carried away with talk of bright blue skys, lush green grass and white panamas to comment on the racing, how the race was run etc. which is what you expect from the trade paper. The main culprits are Steve Dennis, Lee Mottershead and Peter Thomas – the three regularly come up with pieces that bring nothing to the paper, even the Sunday interviews are generally quite bland and don’t ask any hard hitting questions.
If Lydia Hislop was a Lager she’d probably be a Carlsberg,the only real journalist who tells it as it is,what seperates her from the rest is her almost cavalier approach,the i dont give a damn who thinks what about me.When she has Steve Mellish riding shotgun the pair are untouchable as presenters too. Richard Hughes is the best read out there at the moment,his current Saturday column in the RP is very much the same as Lydias,tell it as it is,i like his racecourse analogies,very funny.You have to hand it to trainers who tolerate those clowns who shove their recorders right under the subjects nose during an interview,they know they are being televised and put their ‘special faces’ on as they pretend to listen intently,they then proceed to write a lot of drivel,we as racing enthusiasts already know.Gerald Delamere deserves a mention too,he has always maintained a solid consistency to his writing,a fine judge to boot!
- Total Posts 17716
Alan Lee of the Times is very good. Can I stick up for Mark Winstanley on Mondays in the ‘Post? I never take any notice of his tips, they seem always to be titchy-priced favourites that get beat, but he is a funny read. Robin Oakley’s bi-weekly Turf column in the Spectator is also good.
The Hughes column is very good. Perhaps he has a book in him.
On TV I think Matt Chapman on ATR beats anyone on the main channels. He takes the piss a bit and that is what this game needs.
- Total Posts 438
Lydia Hislop is the best writer on the sport out there; unfortunately, she’s simply terrible as a television presenter: her breathless, garbled, style often has me reaching for the mute switch. Chris Cook is another good writer; Alan Lee comes across very well when he’s on ATR.
Lee Mottershead is the new Alastair Down, I can’t pay him a higher compliment.
The Boy Wonder, Lee Mottershead, isn’t the racing journalist of the year for nothing, as his paper never tires of reminding us.
Blow me if he didn’t turn up on the Morning Line as well, doing the Graham Cunningham stare into the camera at the end.
His column has had some good articles recently and I particularly liked his one recently about the situation at Hereford. He freshened the story up and gave us some more food for thought about the implications.
He also had a few good stories about the situation with the racecourse commentators facing the boot, originally supposedly to make way for Matt Chapman. Can’t believe that it was Chapman himself who ended up the loser, not the four who were originally threatened…Howard Wright’s column featuring The Fly was often good for items of tittle-tattle in the Racing Post.
He was paid warm tributes on his retirement from full-time writing, especially for the efforts he made to wade through huge racing industry-related documents that other hacks couldn’t be bothered to plough through.
David Ashforth’s humour and spoof articles were always worth reading.
Alastair Down’s column is often readable for its insights and humour.
The most self-indulgent and unreadable writer I have seen is Brough Scott, despite his reputation as an award-winning journalist. His efforts were often cringeworthy, unnecessarily turgid and heavy going and his ventures into other sports for Sunday papers were pretty dire as well.I had the odd chuckle reading Down in his Weekender days and enjoyed one particular article by Ashforth ripping Gosden to pieces but for most of them these days it is little more than an exercise in not ‘rocking the boat’. The fact that Mottershead has made his way to the top of the pile says everything about the current crop.
Tony Morris and Ian Carnaby, though I’ve no idea if they’re still scribbling
Other than that I’m more than content to restrict myself to the good, bad and indifferent on message boards
Ian Carnaby has been appearing more often in the
RPSunday
supplement, though I’ve not been buying it regularly enough of late to know whether this is a fixed arrangement.
Echo Crusty Patch’s endorsement of Lee Mottershead’s recent piece on Hereford, and would add to that a thumbs up for Steve Dennis’s article on a visit to the city the other day to gauge the mood of the local populace re: the course’s possible demise.
Interesting to note, unless I’ve missed it, that Folkestone’s fate doesn’t seem to have elicited quite the same generation of column inches. Maybe the course’s locality, eight miles out of town as it is, doesn’t engender quite the same sense of ownership of and pride in it from the townsfolk as Hereford does, and thus less basis for another mood-gauging piece by Dennis or a contemporary? Just a thought.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
ADDENDUM / ERRATUM (delete as applicable): Needless to say, wrote the above before flicking through yesterday’s
Post
this lunchtime only to find… a mood piece on Folkestone by Steve Dennis. Silly me. Mark you, the assertion from course bookie Peter Norris that Folkestone’s demise seems to have been met more with acceptance than defiance may speak volumes, regardless of the 6,000 attendance at the Westenhanger venue (on a lovely day with no other meeting closer to home than Leicester, remember) at the weekend.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Ian Carnaby has been appearing more often in the
RPSunday
supplement, though I’ve not been buying it regularly enough of late to know whether this is a fixed arrangement.
I’m sure I’ve read Ian Carnaby’s column in the Post quite recently. It’s usually worth a skim.
I remember him being one of the band of distinguished broadcasters who were part of Radio 2’s sports desk bulletins back in the 1980s.
Others who were part of the team were Tommo, Ian Darke, Tony Adamson, Mike Ingham, George Hamilton, Bryon Butler, Christopher Martin-Jenkins, Ian Robertson and Peter Jones.
Carnaby gets brownie points for his long-running sponsorship of that race at Brighton, the Ian Carnaby Apprentice Selling Handicap, run on June 26 this year and won by Bennelong, ridden by Luke Rowe for Richard Rowe.
I haven’t seen the Steve Dennis articles on Folkestone and Hereford but it’s good to know that at least there’s someone else who thinks it would be a pity if they just disappeared without a murmur.
I don’t believe for a minute that Folkestone would reopen again if it closed. It’s not a fashionable course and has had plenty of critics over the years but just looking at Paul’s photo of the goldfish pond on another thread reminds me of some happy days I have had there.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.