Fighting Talk

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Fighting Talk
Fighting Talk logo
Other names	FT
Genre	Sports panel game
Running time	60 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language(s)	English
Home station	BBC Radio Five Live
Host(s)	Colin Murray (2006-present) Christian O'Connell (2004-2005) Johnny Vaughan (2003-2004)
Producer(s)	Simon Crosse
Air dates	04 October 2003 – Present
Website	The official BBC website

Fighting Talk is a topical sports show broadcast on BBC Radio 5 Live during the English football season. Its first season aired in October 2003, and was presented by Johnny Vaughan. The second season featured Christian O'Connell. It is currently hosted by Colin Murray and is aired on Saturday mornings for an hour from 11:00 to 12:00.

1 Format
2 Presenters
3 Pundits
4 Nicknames in Fighting Talk
5 Scoring
6 Spin Offs
7 The 'Stuart Hall' Incident
8 Trivia
9 External links
10 References

[edit] Format

Four guest pundits are invited to expound in turn, preferably with wit and knowledge (sometimes with scant regard for social mores), on a series of topical sporting events. Most sports are thrown into the fray but the emphasis is on top-flight football.

The programme is interspersed with what is called ‘listeners' homework’. The presenter will read out listeners' answers to the previous and current week’s ‘homework question’ - normally appearing as question two, with the most entertaining answer from the previous week winning a fictitious ‘Fighting Talk Mug’ (allegedly red and almost certainly fictional) and the very real (in an entirely improbable sense) chance to appear as a guest on the show towards the end of the season. The homework question usually involves the likening of a sports hero to something else: for example, “What buildings or landmarks could be named after sports people?”.

The penultimate question is known as 'Any Other Business' (AOB) where the guests are afforded a moment to talk about anything they wish, usually something that has irked them in recent days, regardless of its relevance to sport. There have been several notable AOBs, but one by Steve Bunce, a regular on the show, regarding his stay at a particular hotel, was a moment of pure broadcasting ambrosia.

In order to decide the week’s ultimate winner, the two highest scoring pundits are invited to 'Defend the Indefensible'. Each pundit is called to talk for twenty seconds on a distasteful, politically incorrect, topical theme from the perspective of agreement all within twenty seconds.

Previous examples of defending the indefensible include “I’d gladly drink a pint of Maradona’s liposuction fat for Comic Relief” and “Cricket has been cheapened now common people and ladies have jumped on the bandwagon.” After the resignation of Sven-Göran Eriksson, Graham Taylor was required to defend the proposition that "the next England manager should be Graham Taylor". Taylor won.

The questions are, for greater comic effect, sometimes specifically aimed at the pundit who has to answer. A few pundits have refused to answer and forfeit the game, notably Steve Bunce who couldn't bring himself to do down his fellow boxing presenter John Rawling who, on another show, himself refused to criticize his wife's cooking on Christmas Day.

In the most recent series both the presenter and guests have mocked obscure answers by referring to them originating from a Google search, and most recently have intimated that some of the most obscure answers have originated from Wikipedia.

[edit] Presenters

The first season began in October 2003 and was hosted by Johnny Vaughan.^[1] After the first season ended in April 2004, Vaughan left to present the Capital FM breakfast show, and Christian O'Connell took over. O'Connell completed a successful second season from 2004-2005 - the show won the 2006 Sony Radio Academy Award for a sports program^[2] - before leaving to focus on his new Virgin Radio breakfast show at the end of 2005. His last show was in December 2005, and featured his four favourite guests - John Rawling, Steve Bunce, Greg Brady and Bob Mills.

Colin Murray is the show's current presenter, starting back in February 2006.^[3]

His Assistant Producer Mike Holt also had to present the show for one question when Murray couldn't bring himself to adjudicate a round questioning his favourite team by asking 'What was wrong with Liverpool Football Club?'. He left the studio for the duration of the question.

The show has also had a number of guest presenters to cover for holidays or other absences. These include Dickie Davies, Gabby Logan and Terry Wogan.

Simon Crosse has produced all four series of Fighting Talk with comedy writer Giles Boden.

Fighting Talk was originally made available as an mp3 download in October 2004, with a Podcast version following as part of a BBC trial in February 2005. It is currently available for download, in either format, for one week after broadcast. You can also listen again, without the need to download it, by logging on to the BBC website.

[edit] Pundits

Pundits who have appeared on the show include:

Kriss Akabusi, Keith Allen, Dougie "Two Answers" Anderson, Clare Balding, John Barnes, Dave Bassett, Gary Beadle, Mark Bosnich, Greg Brady, Mark Bright, James Brown (former editor of Loaded), Will Buckley, Steve Bunce, Andrew Castle, Steve Claridge, Tim Clarke, Stan Collymore, David Conn, Steve Cram, Allison Curbishley, Dickie Davies, Matt Dawson, Kevin Day, Mick Dennis, Jill Douglas, Gail Emms, John Fashanu, Barry Fantoni, Vanessa Feltz, Roddy Forsyth, Andy Goldstein, Bobby Gould, Stuart Hall, Rob Heeny, Dominic Holland, Iyare Igiehon, Ronnie Irani, Hazel Irvine, Jim Jeffries, Danny Kelly, Des Kelly, Martin Kelner, Stuart Lee, Rod Liddle, Ralf Little, Sean Lock, Gabby Logan, Ian McGarry, Bob Mills, Danny Mills, Paul Morley, Geoffrey Mortlake, Sue Mott, Terry Neill, Trevor Nelson, James Nesbitt, DJ Nihal, Eleanor Oldroyd, John Oliver, Lembit Opik, Gary O'Reilly, Richard Park, Gavin Peacock, Charlie Pickering, Mark Pougatch, Jimmy Pursey, John Rawling, Adil Ray, Dean Saunders, Richard Seymour, Chris Sheasby, Mark Steel, Ian Stone, Phil Taylor, Jim Thane, Paul Tonkinson, Rick Wakeman, Mark Watson, Tom Watt, Jim White, Geoff Whiting, Brian Woolner, and Andy Zaltzman

[edit] Nicknames in Fighting Talk

Real Name	Nickname
Dougie Anderson	Two Answers
Jim Jeffries	The Foreigner
Martin Kelner	King of the One-liners
Eleanor Oldroyd	The First Lady of Fighting Talk
Gavin Peacock	Fu Manchu
John Rawling	Psycho
Ian Stone	The wildcard (Vilda-khada)

[edit] Scoring

Guests earn arbitrary points for 'good punditry', but lose them should they waffle or use predictable cliches, with the scoring accompanied by a variety of appropriate (and humourous) sound effects.

Fittingly disordered and by no means fair, the system is flexible enough to accommodate the presenter’s personal bias (including their favourite football team) and placating the host is a tactic many pundits pursue - Gabby Logan is particularly susceptible to this. Colin Murray (the current presenter) is particularly fickle in whether mention of his beloved Liverpool or Northern Ireland produces plus or minus points.

However, if they take it one step too far, they can lose points very quickly. Indeed it is quite common for pundits to begin the game on a minus score lost during their introduction and subsequent banter at the very beginning of the show.

Colin Murray introduced the 'Golden Envelope' round, where the pundits try to guess the answer that the presenter has written down prior to the show, for one question, usually in the second half. Matching the answer from the envelope is worth ten bonus points, but it very rarely happens.

[edit] Spin Offs

A political Fighting Talk 'special' - featuring MPs Lembit Opik, Steven Pound and Alan Duncan, as well as regular pundit, Bob Mills - was broadcast prior to the 2005 General election.

Another, one-off, politics-based, show using the name of Fighting Talk's penultimate 'Any Other Business' round was presented by Richard Bacon and was broadcast on Sunday 17th December 2006 at 7pm.

At the end of the third season, Colin Murray presented a special World Cup edition of Fighting Talk.

[edit] The 'Stuart Hall' Incident

Fighting Talk made national news with an episode broadcast on 12th March 2005. The panel consisted of Danny Kelly, Will Buckley, John Rawling and Stuart Hall. The question was "What other former all conquering nations of individuals would you like to see have a renaissance?". Stuart Hall picked Zimbabwe, and criticised what Robert Mugabe had done to the country, saying, "...don your flannels, black up, play leather on willow with Mugabe cast as a witch doctor. Imagine him out at Lords casting a curse; tincture of bat's tongues, gorilla's gonads, tiger's testicles...". At which point Christian O'Connell asked "Are we still on air?" ^[4].

It was after this episode that the 'Laurel and Hardy' theme tune (The Waltz of the Cuckoos) was bought in to denote a pundit who had completely 'lost it'.

[edit] Trivia

Stan Collymore won the very first episode of Fighting Talk.

Steve Bunce has appeared on the show more than any other pundit.

Greg Brady (from Detroit's Sports Radio 1130 WDFN) holds the record for pundit with the most amount of wins. Richard Park still has the highest appearance:win ratio.

The highest score ever was acheived by Steve Bunce on 26 November 2005. Following numerous deductions by host Christian O'Connell for Bunce's petulance, Bunce's Any Other Business was a story about Bob Wilson for which O'Connell awarded 5,000 points (Bunce went on to win Defending the Indefenceable)

The lowest score recorded is -2 given to Tim Clark. This happened in the third season of FT.

Dougie Anderson is the youngest pundit to appear on the show so far.

Mark Watson, John Barnes, Jill Douglas, Richard Park, Ian McGarry and of course Stan Collymore are the only pundits to have won on their debuts.

Eleanor Oldroyd was the first woman to appear on the show and earned the sobriquet of 'The First Lady' of Fighting Talk.

Jim Thane was the first listener to be invited to compete live on the show (appearing alongside Steve Bunce, Greg Brady and Dominic Holland), after his name was picked from the list of each week's winners of the 'listener's homework' question for the entire second season. Richard Seymour was the second guest listener, appearing in the third season.

On his last show, Christian O'Connell, invited the wives of Greg Brady, Steve Bunce, John Rawling and Bob Mills to answer (via telephone) one question about the sporting events they were most looking forward to. Bob Mills' wife didn't take part.

On the 13 January 2007 edition of Fighting Talk, host Colin Murray introduced all the panellists by reading from their Wikipedia entries. Eleanor Oldroyd was the only panellist who did not have a Wikipedia entry so they mockingly made one for her. As the show progressed, listeners humorously edited the entry with Murray providing occasional commentary. The new entry was subsequently 'cleaned-up' (though Murray had initially promised that the entry would be fixed at the end of the show).

On the 3 February 2007 edition of Fighting Talk, host Colin Murray introduced all the panelists using four cheerleaders, live in the studio, from the Miami Dolphins American football Team, it being the same weekend of the Super Bowl.

The show made a brief appearance on television (2004, BBC2, early evening slot, presented and written by Johnny Vaughan) and was true to the popular radio format. The scoring sound effects were juxtaposed with complementary images shown on large screens. Negotiations are underway for colin murray to host a live style format in the camden based mtv studios, it's believed this will air on sky one during the close season.

Much comment is made by the presenters about how well it does in the iTunes charts - with a previous best of number 5 in the overall podcast charts for this current series.

Johnny Vaughan came back for 'one week only' on the 10th March 2007 because Colin was appearing in the reality television programme Comic Relief does Fame Academy.

The only known Fighting Talk fansite is located on the social networking website, Facebook. It was created by student, Andy Higginbottom, based at Loughborough University and has to date attracted 97 members including a number of regular contributors who have been assigned officer positions.

The Christmas Day Special in 2006 was ruined by Dougie "Two Answers" Anderson who in a fit of poor sportmanship threw down his headphones when it was revealed he was not the show's final. Also in the show he said that being sat next to Kriss Akabusi was "the happiest moment in his life" but in a later show in 2007 retracted this statement and included Akabusi in his list of Fighting Talk regulars that should not be allowed on the show.

On 24 March 2007, Colin Murray hosted a special 'women only' edition of Fighting Talk. The panel featured regular Eleanor Oldroyd alongside three debutantes - Gail Emms, Hazel Irvine and Sue Mott.