Some interference on the audio.

While I was surfing that cinematic piece of mindless enthralment that is YouTube, I came across some clips of the wonderfully nostalgic World of Sport – Dickie Davis, Eamonn Andrews, Fred Dinenage an’ all.

Several “sports” featured such as darts and ten pin bowling but it was the wrestling which was the jewel in the crown, and whole prison cell doors in my memory sprang open at the prompt.

Naturally, those of us of a certain age will well recall the rivalry between Giant Haystacks and Shirley Crabtree, aka Big Daddy.  But fewer might recall their forebears such as Jackie Pallo, Billy Two Rivers, Mick McManus, Kendo Nagasaki and the Royal Brothers tag team.

The cast was a mixture of goodies and baddies and no-one in between, and with a plot-line reassuringly repetitive.  Goodies usually sported some bandaged body part to denote their brave vulnerability which the baddie invariably targeted, accompanied with nefarious fouls the ref never saw but which the old women in the front row did, howling their rage and indignation.

The match was decided by two “falls”, a knockout or a submission with the baddie always securing the first “fall”.  Then, from the battered brink of defeat under a welter of fore arm smashes the goodie would miraculously rally to press home a submission. Cue spectator delirium.

In that same era (and I am unsure whether this was on WoS or Grandstand) were televised scrambling and the perplexing vintage hill climbs.

It was a golden era for British scrambling, leastways I don’t recall any Johnny Foreigners until the nearly-English New Zealander Ivan Mauger came along.  Races always seemd to be contested by Arthur Lampkin, Martin Lampkin, Old Uncle Tom Cobbley Lampkin and Vic Eastwood.  It didn’t matter who was in the race or who won, they were so clarted up you couldn’t tell them apart anyway.  Never was the commentary of Murray Walker more needed.  Of course, he could have told us any old story!

Then there was the strangely watchable Vintage Hill Climbs, where an old bloke and his bint would dress up like Sherlock Holmes and Eliza Doolitle and attempt to drive a vintage car up a 1 in 3 mud slick.  The old boy drove – the woman’s purpose was either decorative if the car made it up the hill, or, more importantly, as ballast if it didn’t; by which I mean when the car got stuck in the mud half way up, her job was to jump out, pull up her petticoats clear of the cack, sit on the bonnet or boot  and bounce up and down in a faintly sexualised way for it to gain traction.

There never has been such riveting tosh on the box since – well, not until Big Brother.