‘Turn it up, turn it up’, so says veteran and maestro Aussie commentator Ray Warren. And don’t commentators half turn it up, they’re ten times louder than the spectators and supporters. The worse thing you could do to a commentator is tell them to shut up. Not only will you hurt their feelings, obviously, but you only begin to realise how bloody boring it is without them – (noise for quiet, wind noise) ‘will someone please say something’.
For some commentators, the words just flow, like water trickling down a hill, others are sleepy and tired, like your pet dog taking an over-extended nap in the corner of your back yard, while others are loud, boom-crash, like a flash flood coming from no where – ‘oh no where doomed’.
My brother and I used to be macho wannabes, getting our kicks out of watching the Rugby League, especially State of Origin, and World Wrestling Federation. Didn’t the commentators just go off their heads, ‘oh crunch’, ‘oh will take a look at that’. I don’t know what we would have done without the commentators, they were our lifeline. Were we asleep? No way, wide awake. This is like an ode to the commentators.
On a number of occasions I’d be caught out with these commentators doing their magic. I’d be having dinner or doing something else, and then…..as if by some unknown force, the commentators would light the airwaves, and I was mesmerised. It didn’t matter what I was doing. I didn’t walk, I ran to the idiot box, because that’s what I like, ‘Oh the football; oh the wrestling’.
The biff and barge would sometimes flow on between my brother and I and we would be biffing and barging away. My parents would get us in trouble and ban us from watching anything on TV. Oh man, what a blow. Didn’t we start behaving ourselves. We were on our best manners after this, like little angels.
One time, the wrestling was on, Wrestlemania it was called, with Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant, and what contests these two brutes had, and we were in the bad books. So what does my mum do, turn the volume up so we can here it. But our door was locked and all we comprehended was mumble. Man we were crying like a bunch of naughty and desperate little girlies. You know how it goes, ‘please can we watch it mum, please, wah hah’. We had all our wrestling toy figures with us all ready to go, but no, it didn’t mean didily squat. My parents, who can’t even stand watching wrestling, watched all of Wrestlemania, shouting out alongside the commentators, what a tease, and they didn’t even tape it for us. I think we eeded a commentator morning-after pill.
