Trailer trash

Football is intrusive, all right; but mightily persuasive as well. It is impossible to steer clear of football, but at the same time — I speak for myself — it is hard not to be fondly enamoured of it. For sure, there is no remote escape from both the obviously besotted obsessives who ration tightly every other game to dole out oceans of space for footy in the public prints, or the soccer-mad broadcast chiefs who schedule the airwaves. Commercial radio’s dedicated channel TalkSport does what it says on the tin — take it or leave it. Its BBC counterpart Five Live is meant to cover all news and current affairs, but the football bafflegab continues pitilessly to muscle in. Wretchedly preposterous has become Five Live’s relentlessly repeated trailers, not for specific upcoming programmes but for a general, grating and graceless backslapping applause for the station’s own arrogance. Trailer trash.