Tour de France - A sorry State of a Fez

There is always one in the Tour de France. One day, that is, when 3 or 4 hours stretch out ahead of you and it is clear from the moment you go on air that absolutely nothing is going to happen during the stage. On the road to St Etienne yesterday we earned our money.

By 3 in the afternoon both Sean and I had exhausted the possibilities of further analysis from the Alpe d’Huez stage, mulled over the question of whether Carlos Sastre’s slender 1’34” lead of Cadel Evans would be enough to win the Tour and finished off the historical footnotes for the day. You could almost see the tumbleweed blowing through the long road that lay ahead.

In such situations it pays to have 2 things in your commentary box of tools; honesty about how dull the live action is and a sense of humour. The audience may not always appreciate the jokes but it does keep you sane.a

Carlton Kirby, our colleague in Paris started it. A passing reference to Evans as being, ‘tense’ put me in mind of a joke from the late, great Tommy Cooper. The joke goes thus: A man walks into the doctor’s surgery and says; “Doctor I’m worried, I think there’s something wrong with me. One day I feel like a Wigwam, the next day I feel like e Teepee” the doctor replies “You know your trouble? You’re too tense.” The Pandora’s Box of rambling, irrelevance and ribaldry was thus opened.

Cooper himself, though not as far as I know a keen cyclist, was famous for playing the fool. So much so, that when he keeled over and died during a performance the audience laughed uproariously thinking it part of the act. I’m sure he would have seen the funny side.

Tomfoolery in the commentary box is a necessary skill. England’s test match cricket commentators have, after all, made a high art of it and no amount of serious analysis and tactical dissection or discussion of choice of tyres, sprockets or frame materials was going to make stage 18 any more interesting.

The list of topics was endless; plastic bikes, bikes that catch fire, spontaneous combustion of riders, Inspector Clouseau, Carlton’s run in with a dog trained to catch seals whilst cooling himself in an alpine lake, spectacularly lame jokes about nuts and so it went on.

Today may bring more of the same as another break is let go by the CSC team who have just one thing on their mind now, the time trial to Saint-Armand-Montrond. But, until then, do not adjust your set, normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

David Harmon is Eurosport's Tour commentator