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The Best...theme tune |
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For a time in the late 70s and early 80s, whoever was in charge of the music used for the BBC's sports coverage hit an immense run of form.
In fact, given that his competition consisted largely of a loft-insulation-headed Jimmy Savile and a pre-fame Pete Waterman, he may well have been the best DJ in the country.
For whoever he was, and for the sake of argument let's call him God, he's responsible for not only most of televisual history's great theme tunes, but also history's greatest - that of the BBC's snooker coverage.
This is a song so exciting, so endorphin-inviting, it regularly convinces a nation of fat men that sitting down for a two-day, 32-frame epic actually constitutes exercise. Once, I saw a lone bearded man in a pub play it on his battered old guitar, and it could only have been more impressive if he'd had no fingers. Or no guitar.
Before he turned his wizardry to snooker, God was responsible for a consecutive run of classics unrivalled in modern television. Today we have to make do with ITV cobbling U2's Beautiful Day onto their weedy, short-lived attempt at Premiership football coverage, thus ruining:
* The song
* The football coverage
* Saturdays
Back then, God was picking apart classic albums and marrying them with new compositions. The Formula One theme, called Motor Sport, lifted the bass and guitar from Fleetwood Mac's The Chain, while the build-up to the cricket was Booker T and the MG's Soul Limbo.
These days it's Jamiroquai and Lou Bega's ode to polygamy Mambo Number 5: the musical equivalent of having your perfectly working kidneys replaced with an envelope full of sausages. Rubbish.
The snooker theme, as testament to its brilliance, remains with us today. Performed by the little-known Doug Wood band in 1982, the song is called Drag Racer. A measure of its effectiveness is that it regularly survives repeated listens even though it is commonly played with slow-motion images of the overwhelmingly uncharismatic stars of the modern game.
Any tune that can emerge unscathed after soundtracking Dennis Taylor's gormless trophy dance, or Steve Davis's lop-sided victory smile, must have something pretty special about it. And I'm not sure that even Mozart's best efforts wouldn't be tainted somewhat by a video montage of Stephen Hendry's sub-Adrian Mole visage.
It's so good, that even Chas and Dave's attempt to sabotage its popularity and overshadow its glory by releasing the frankly woeful Snooker Loopy couldn't derail its path to becoming the finest piece of music that's ever been made for television.
Savour it, please, before some clueless toerag in a suit decides that in order to ingratiate the sport of snooker with the younger generations, the theme tune must be a Hi-NRG club banger anthem from the Vengaboys. And if that happens, lose all faith.
David Whitehouse
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