We really felt for our mate JoJo McKinnon last night and then felt even worse for ourselves when channel surfing, arriving at ATV World and, suddenly, we were ‘live’ in Dubai watching some race before being transported back to JoJo, and- quelle supris- our old mate David Dungan who waffled something about jockey Jamie Spencer “often getting things more wrong than right” and something being on a “different planet” before the voice of Jerry Greene came through over ‘live’ visuals of a paddock parade and said a few things and made a little joke about Penglai something and David laughed while JoJo went, Hmmm, probably listening to her earpiece waiting to know what the “producer” might be wanting while the two Irish boys kept talking and talking and talking to more “Hmmms” and even “Hmmmmmmmmms?”, lotsa nervous laughter while Jerry, who we still hadn’t seen, kept telling viewers what we were seeing on screen to some more nervous laughter, mentioned Penglai whatever- the horse that’s with Tony Cruz- but this was a different horse and we were then going to Terry Spago- but, no, Terry Spago was not there- so over visuals of horses milling about behind the barriers, the Irish lads were back playing for time and talking about a dead horse and what we thought we heard was that Jamie Spencer was a “waiter” and then it was back with Terry Spago in Dubai and a race named City Of Gold with a horse withdrawn at the last minute and where we only knew the name Mount Athos which was running and “Frankie” was riding something, how “Penglai Pavilion was flat” and Kieron Fallon won on Excellent Result.

Then, the Irish boys soldiered on and waffled over visuals from Dubai about being stiff while Jerry talked about a monkey and David mentioned how viewers in the UK must have been SCREAMING at Jamie Spencer. David was suffering from a strange Jamie Spencer fixation.

There were more Hmmmms and the sound of papers being shuffled, a quick interview ‘live’ from Dubai with Kieron Fallon where he might have said “fook” as the voices of the local Irish boys then returned and did their best to explain what happened in the race and which we could see for ourselves and with absolutely no audio from Dubai. It was Not Only, But Also.

This time their lilting Irish Lullaby mentioned a ouija board and how we were going for a commercial break and- BOOM- Jerry was cut in mid-sentence and off we went to one of those dire ATV station promos featuring the their truly AWFUL resident female voice-over artist who sounds the same whether promoting a drama, a comedy, abalone etc. ATV shows a shitload of commercials for abalone restaurants.

The title board for whatever we were watching came on over some Yanni-type space age music before finally seeing JoJo wearing a very nice beige blouse and jacket with padded shoulders and Derek and Clive- but there was then an abrupt cut-away to some graphics shown over Eighties sci-fi music with sounds of lasers and what sounded like, well, wind. It was probably Yanni.

FINALLY, we had a snippet of our three local amigos before suddenly cutting to some race replays and with Darren Flindell having huge dollops of reverb added to his call where Akeed Mofeed won and then a quick cut to the ‘live’ paddock parade when Jerry, in the ATV studios, made another joke about the McKinnon Stakes being named after JoJjo and JoJo, still, not listening as she was, no doubt, waiting for orders to come in from Ground Control to her earpiece said, Hmmm, and then, we had whiplash when Derek and Clive said the highlight of the night was Hong Kong- meaning, Rich Tapestry.

Rich Tapestry ran? It won? We missed it? What the hell were we watching??? What had we missed? How were we to know about this broadcast?

Oh, come on, HKJC, whoever is piloting these simulcasts keeps crash landing as they obviously have zero idea about television production and, far worse, no understanding that racing fans will not accept farcical crap like this which helps no one- and is no laughing matter though the entire presentation reminded us of a Monty Python skit.