Another rock star of British media
Nobody has dared attempt to explain cricket to me — they make novelty tea towels about explaining cricket to Americans and I’m an extra special sports-impervious case — but I gather England has just done really well against India. Um, yay?
As I understand it, cricket is a game that involves this man, Henry Blofeld, nattering on the radio for days on end about…pretty much everything except the sports contest in front of him. As Wikipedia put it:
Blofeld’s cricket commentary is celebrated for his plummy voice and his idiosyncratic mention of superfluous details, including cranes, numbers of pink shirts in the crowd; pigeons, buses, aeroplanes and helicopters that happen to be passing by. He is also known to talk about the food on offer, in particular cakes, for extended periods of time after the tea and lunch breaks with occasional interruptions of the situation on the field. He also uses the phrase “my dear old thing”, or variants thereof, to address fellow commentators and guests.
By the way, Uncle B heard that Blofeld’s brother, a high court judge, pissed off Ian Fleming and thus gave a name to supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Wikipedia says it was either Henry’s father, who went to school with Fleming, or another Blofeld altogether, depending on which page you consult.
Whatevs.
Here’s a YouTube that will give you a sense of the accent and the dialogue.
Also, the same exact thing happened to my father, only he ended up behind a potted palm in the lobby.
August 16, 2011 — 8:55 pm
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