Murray Walker vs James Allen

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British F1 fans – will you be tuning in to BBC Radio 5 Live’s qualifying and race broadcasts with Murray Walker this weekend?

Or will you be sticking with ITV’s James Allen for the European Grand Prix?

I’m in a bind – I’ve always been a huge Murray Walker fan (and was thrilled to interview him a few months ago) but I’ll miss Martin Brundle’s excellent insights on the Grand Prix if I mute ITV.

I think it’s going to be the usual case of watching ITV and flicking to BBC radio during the interminable advert breaks.

But once tuned in to Murray I but I won’t be able to turn the audio back to ITV. Sorry Martin…

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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9 comments on “Murray Walker vs James Allen”

  1. Nathan Jones
    21st July 2007, 11:28

    simple, tape the race, watch it on radio 5 and then watch the itv tape afterwards!

  2. nathan, that’s exactly what i did with qually!

    in truth Five Live ruined the coverage by continuously cutting to the golf. the man never had time to get into his stride :(

  3. one other point. i think ITV’s coverage was pretty good today. the event overran but they still had time to do a good roundup. admittedly the fact that it was lewis who was injured, may have helped. but still, better than they have been recently.

  4. I decided to tape Murray using the music centre upstairs (using ad breaks to turn the tape round at intervals), watch qualifying on ITV and then keep the Murray tapes for posterity. The fact that neither my VCR nor my DVD player can record was a major influence in this decision. So was the weight of my music centre!

    The plan would have worked perfectly if that pesky wheel gun had done its job. The qualifying coverage would have fitted on one tape, and the race on two more, and I had three blank tapes at my disposal. As it stands, I really needed to get two hours of quali onto 90 minutes of tape (I recorded over some of the aforementioned Open coverage to achieve this).

    I will probably listen to the Murray version on Monday morning – that way I can listen to the qualifying and the race back-to-back, which I’m looking forward to doing.

  5. Easy for me. Not a big James Allen fan, but I never liked Murray Walker at all. Not even when he was still sufficiently compis mentis to do the job – which he certainly is not, any more.

  6. The race, happily enough, was a lot easier to record than qualifying. I found some more blank tapes to use, and the ad breaks came at all the right times. I’m looking forward to hearing what Murray had to say on the race tomorrow…

  7. I listened to the first half of the race in my car, on the way back from a weekend away, and watched the second half on the telly.

    Walker beats Allen any day. Murray was brilliant.

  8. For the first time ever I think, I listened to some of the Grand Prix on the radio – I was in the car so had no choice.

    To start with I quite enjoyed hearing Murray again, but as time went on I remembered why I wasn’t upset when he retired – the man makes so many mistakes it’s unbelievable! Admittedly, his obvious excitement and enthusiasm make him better to listen to than James Allen most of the time though.

    I had to leave the car with about a third of the race left but going on what Murray was saying, it seemed clear that Lewis was “stooooooooorming” through the field and it was only a matter of time before he won the race, so imagine my surprise to later find out he hadn’t scored a single point!

    If it was a straight fight between listening to Murray again or watching Allen on TV then it would have to be Allen – but only because he comes in a package with Brundle. Ideally I’d like the Brundle bit without Allen!

  9. I am afraid the answer is to watch F1 on the television, listen to 5live, and watch F1.com’s times on the laptop, now surley some enterprising company could manage that. Maybe with picture in picture and a few other useful gimicks.

    Sorry Martin but it is your partner that lets you down.

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