Hooray for medium pace

Outside Edge

DVD Box Set. 570 minutes, £39.99
A full decade before Ashes Fever, cricket was pulling in ten million viewers on prime time ITV. Well, ish: Outside Edge is about cricket in the same way that Fawlty Towers is about hotels, the on-field activities of Brent Park village cricket club a back-drop for closely observed off-field intrigues. It’s as much about relationships, affairs and potential divorce resulting from untoward events on away trips to Dorking, as it is about getting 11 together for the deadly annual rivalry with Cromer.

Most long-runningTV series have had their cricket episode, but Outside Edge is possibly the longest work of fiction set around the game (go on – write in). Winner of the 1994 British Comedy Awards best comedy-drama, this box set brings together the 21 episodes from the three mid-90s series plus a stretched-too-thin Christmas Special – in which the team go to Corfu – and the original one-off TV version of Richard Harris’ play from 1982, with Paul Eddington, Maureen Lipman and Prunella Scales in the lead roles.

The Brent Park team are a disparate bunch, brought together by cricket, who would have no reason to be friends or even to know each other in the Real World: the ageing lech, the ageing lothario, the ambitious yuppie – and the none-more-relaxed Kevin (Timothy Spall) and his brassy/nympho wife (Josie Lawrence).

At the heart of it all is Roger Dervish (Robert Dawes, just on the cusp on overdoing it): captain, treasurer, match secretary, president, Godfrey Evans obsessive, idiot. A pompous ass, somewhere on the comic grotesque line between Captain Mainwaring and David Brent, he’s at once ridiculous and pitiable: he responds to an attempted dressing-room coup by taking to his bed and pretending to have some kind of terminal illnesss, in a last-ditch bid to win back support for his captaincy.

Needless to say, Dervish is a hopeless player as well as a buffoon; but if he wasn’t captain, then his mousey and put-upon wife Mim (Brenda Blethyn) wouldn’t do the teas. And then what? With no laughter track, Outside Edge is a slow burner, based on bittersweet character comedy rather than belly-laughs. Like Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, set in the Home Counties, with the cast of a Mike Leigh film, it’s slightly dated only by the glut of edgier comedy-drama that has followed in the decade since it was aired.

Those for whom amateur cricket denotes Premier Leagues, gym sessions and youth policies will not find their views reflected here. But Outside Edge is/was a great, deadpan slice of Middle England: you need to give it time but anyone who’s ever played for a ramshackle mixed-age village or club side, run by someone who sees themselves as a cross between Mike Brearley and Winston Churchill, will recognise and quietly enjoy plenty of the shenanigans here.
In a nutshell
Box-set of long-running cricket sitcom
Any sauce?

Perpetual pursuit of Timothy Spall round cricket pavilions by nympho-maniacal Josie Lawrence in a fur coat. You be the judge.
Verdict ••••

Mark Nicholas crosses over

Back in the ’70s, a well-loved cricket personality branched out and built a cult following on ITV on weekday teatimes. Indoor League involved Fred Trueman wandering around an old man’s pub, somewhere in The North smoking a pipe and wearing a jumper, while introducing games of darts, shove ha’penny and even arm wrestling. At the end he said: “I’ll see thee next week.”

Thirty years on, we have Mark Nicholas presenting Britain’s Best Dish. 

It’s change, but it’s not progress.

The pitch must have gone something like this: “You know that BBC show where celebrity chefs competed to find the best British dish to celebrate the Queen’s 80th birthday? Let’s just copy it but with ordinary punters doing the cooking. And Mark Nicholas instead of Jennie Bond. No-one will even notice the difference!”

Fortunately, I’ve managed to skip the first six weeks (seriously! six weeks!), which at one hour a show, even on ITV, is a lot of lives going to waste. So I’ve missed the no doubt excruciating X Factor-style heats which, in turn, have led to some kind of endless regional play-offs where – and I may well have misunderstood the rules here – two people have to cook the same dish, expressly so Nicholas can tell us it’s the “Battle of the pies”

Hell’s kitchen indeed.

Basically it’s a bit of cooking, a bit of judging and a lot of padding. But does that stop Nicho applying Ashes ’05-style hyperbole to what is, effectively, a village fete jam-making competition?

It does not.

Ten minutes into the Starters section of the Midlands semi-final, Nicho glides over to a woman who has squashed a giant crab into a wok. “I’m very pleased with it,” she says, all jolly. “I’ve got it crammed in there!” 

Nicholas is momentarily flummoxed but says something about ‘girl power’ and the claws being out and ushers her towards the judges, three faces distantly familiar from ’90s cookery shows. Ridiculous Day Today-alike music and dizzying camerawork then attempt to whip the teatime audience up into a frenzy.

“This crab is going to take some serious breaking into!” observes Nicho, grinning delightedly, as the judges tuck in, gravely. (Nicho himself doesn’t even get to eat, just stands there watching the ‘experts’ chomping away, like a particularly well-groomed eunuch at an orgy).

For the main course cook-off, Jill is making game pie. Caroline’s doing steak and mushroom. “It’s traditionally a winter dish,” she says.

“It’s the real thing!” exclaims Nicho, apparently apropos of nothing, before adding: “It’s a yum yum day.”

“Two pies in the oven and the all-important chocolate brownie recipe still to come!” he beams. And so on, painfully slowly, to the final of three semi-finals (yes – three). It doesn’t start promisingly.

Nicho Alison, you were telling me earlier that your phone’s been on fire almost!

Alison It has, it’s been alive with all the texts and phone calls. It never stops.

Nicho I bet you couldn’t have believed that your pudding could be the subject of so much attention!

Alison It certainly caused up a stir.

The winner, should you care, isn’t the old chap with his mother’s recipe for apple pie, nor the earnest-looking fella with a spotted dick (oh yes!), but Alison and her sticky pudding. But it’s not over yet. Each course winner has pocketed a mighty sum of £2,000 but the winner of the viewers vote (can we have that on ITV now?) will get £10,000 as the starter, pudding and main course take each other on in yet another final! 

Now, Nicho really cranks it up: “Yup, 10 grand is on the table! This is it!! The nation’s biggest-ever cooking competition reaches its conclusion: the live final!!!” Nicho begins like he’s presenting the National Lottery – possibly a future ambition – before recalling the halcyon prose-poetry days of the C4 highlights. “What we’ve proved is that this nation of ours, this culinary melting pot is home to a vibrant food culture of which we should be mighty proud. Today it’s up to you to decide the much vaunted title of Britain’s best dish who will take the coveted trophy.

“It’s the stuff that dreams are made of,” he adds, wildly. It is as if, in his ear, a voice is shouting. “Pad! For six weeks!”

John’s pork belly wins. “John, John. This meant a lot to you, man, didn’t it?” says Nicho. “I can’t describe in words how much it means to me,” says John, unhelpfully.

And then it’s over. Until – apparently – next year. Nicholas has looked cheerful and smooth throughout the ordeal. He always does. The man’s a pro.

What would Fred Trueman say, though?

2007 World Cup: the ‘high’ ‘lights’

And now… here are our own World Cup highlights. Imagine me introducing them in fancy dress. It’s the theatre of the mind.
 
1. Bob Willis’ post-mortem after England’s exit. Sky had two hours to fill after England’s lame early exit against South Africa. Handily enough, Willis was on hand to give arguably the most imperious display in broadcasting history, as he railed against  everything from the Sunday League to fortnightly waste collection, offered to take over as the ECB’s director of cricket and flung around words like ‘squandered’ with abandon. Gower was trying not to laugh.  

2. Mark Nicholas’ on-air application for Australian residency in the final. He didn’t quite get to screaming ‘Aw, mate! Strewth! Take that you beauty!’ as Gilly laid waste to the Sirils. But he may just as well as. 

3. Those brilliant little films that the BBC used to introduce the highlights esp. the one that had Rishi Persad dressed up as the captain of a ship – Nelson hat and all – overlooking a harbour, making some gag about Australia playing with great freedom. Or something. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Just show us the cricket. Is that so hard? As for the Boy Manish’s weird local-paper voiceovers, we say: never again should the job be given to a competition-winner. 

4. Stickcricket/Spin/Challenge Kemp’s World Cup song. You’ll have read in these pages last month the story behind the making of this ska-based, trumpet smothered, gloomy, lo-fi ode to coach Fletcher’s boys. Well, having got enough hits to go to No 1 (ie more than 250), Kemp is now taking his ‘sound’ out on tour. See the site for more extraordinary details, if you dare. 

5. Damien Fleming on Sky. See, we’re quite big fans of the Flem’s easygoing impishness. But not as big as the Sky producers who, during England v Bangladesh, had him spend a whole over ‘interviewing’ and taking very seriously the punditry of two well oiled northerners in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costumes. Painful. Saying “that’s five off” when you mean “that’s five off the over” isn’t winning you any friends, either, mate.

6. Nasser Hussain. We love the man and the way he shakes with rage at every opportunity. Sport is nothing if it’s not taken seriously and, as his ace autobiog showed, Nass is still punching the walls over leg-before decisions from 1989. His tearful defence of Fletch’s status as the world’s best coach after the South Africa debacle was good value. And when Michael Slater was moaning about the Sirils’ resting Murali, Nass’ “Dry your eyes, Slats” riposte was perfect. If only he hadn’t then whacked him with that chair leg, it would have been Bafta-level stuff.

7. Percy Sonn. The ICC’s prez’s speech at the end of the final defined everything that was wrong about everything. No-one came to see you, mate! Let the Aussies have the Cup!

8.  The BBC’s Panorama about the Bob Woolmer investigation. Apparently, some Pakistanis are Muslims and they quite like cricket. Cheers!

9. Ravi Bopara. Genuinely – exciting to watch and obviously loving it. Let’s get 11 of him in the team.

10. Nicko Nixon. What IS he talking about? “I’m a very nasty man.” “In the pink, Monty.” “There’s only you and me here, Vaughany.” 

11.  Ricky Ponting – talking faster than any man ever talked. Made Sir Patrick Moore look like Bob Willis.

12.  Slinger Malinga. Of course.

You’ll have had your own. 

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