The World Cup
Various channels
This Old Thing: the Vintage Clothes Show
Channel 4
How is your World Cup going? I can’t concentrate on the football: the coverage is far too distracting for that. I find myself obsessed with the small things. For instance, the BBC pundit Alan Shearer’s pen. Why does he hold it in his hand while he talks – I fantasise that he’s working on a PhD thesis between games – and is it the same pen I’ve seen Danny Murphy clutching? If so, did Shearer lend it to Murphy or did Murphy pinch it? Maybe they all have pens; in which case, who is the pen monitor? Is it Gary? Or does Mark “Grandma” Lawrenson stroll around with an old Bird’s Custard tin at the end of the evening and gather them all up? It must be Lawro. Gary doesn’t need any more burdens. He’s got his new glasses to deal with, the ones he must whip on in order to read – sigh – tweets. Oh, the shame of this! He doesn’t want to look old, poor thing; he’s got a junior wife. The result: these spectacles move faster than Luis Suárez.
Yes, Phil Neville is dull. He might as well be describing the contents of a Wickes catalogue. Let’s be honest, though. They all sound dreary, pundits and commentators alike. In a way, it’s surprising. Their trousers are mostly so tight – Shearer’s magnificently polished crotch in particular suggests that he might be hiding a full-size replica of the World Cup in his pants – that you’d think their voices would be higher, squeakier, generally funnier. But a low monotone prevails, a few exotic top notes provided on the BBC by Thierry Henry and Clarence Seedorf (and on ITV by Gus Poyet). Rio Ferdinand’s voice is properly, terrifyingly boring. It’s just as well that Lineker wears an earpiece: at least his producers can shout and wake him up once Ferdinand is mid-sentence.
One last thing. Where – you knew I’d get there in the end – are all the women? The BBC’s Gabby Logan is mostly marooned pitch-side. The seats they have made available for the tight, little backsides of these generally charmless, loaded and dumb-sounding men! Isn’t there room for even one female?
I wonder if Dawn O’Porter likes footy. If so, they should get her in. Smart and tolerably cute, she’s a bit like Claudia Winkleman, minus the affectation and the too-long fringe. Her new series This Old Thing: the Vintage Clothes Show (Wednesdays, 8pm) is a shameless mash-up of What Not to Wear and The Great British Sewing Bee and yet, thanks to her, it mostly works. For one thing, she practises what she preaches; O’Porter really would rather wear a 1960s shift dress that cost £20 and came with a heady bouquet of sweat and ancient Blue Grass than some supposedly more modish number picked up at predictable old Whistles. For another, she is sufficiently embarrassed by the icky transformational format of her new series – “Oh, I’m going to cry! I never in a million years thought a 1970s hostess dress in maroon brocade with a matching cape would suit me!” – occasionally to let it show. The viewer can forgive her for anything, including how she is always going to look better in lime green Courrèges than the poor girls whose high street shopping habits she is so determined to break.
O’Porter has “set up” a “workshop” in which a bunch of seamstresses are permanently on hand to fix disastrous eBay bargains – a series of alterations (not always successful) that punctuate the show. The rest of the time, she’s out and about with her victims. First, she goes through their wardrobes, girlish repositories of fast fashion, at which she pokes gentle fun. Then she takes them to the nearest vintage shop, the better to see how they might look in 1980s pencil skirts, 1950s bandeau tops and frocks from across the decades.
Believe me when I tell you that this is amazingly entertaining. “Ugh, no way!” shouted Chevonne, a shop assistant from Bristol, when O’Porter asked what she thought of second-hand jeans. “They could be sticky and horrible.” Ten minutes later, however, she was eating her words. “I thought it would stink,” she said, admiring her “new” gold jacket and leather hot pants combo. She then proceeded to celebrate by shaking her booty all over the workshop.
Honestly, if O’Porter can work this kind of magic with a load of second-hand clothes and a couple of truculent twentysomethings, think what she might do in the BBC’s World Cup studio. Shearer’s shiny trousers wouldn’t stand a chance.
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