Ace

News To Me

January 31, 2004

I know that I'm on record as thinking that athletics is a pretty stupid sport: most coaching is bogus, and so forth, and there isn't a whole lot to say about racing — a three-year old can tell who's in front. All the same, I've always found Brendan Foster partisan, blinkered, uninformative, unamusing, and generally useless. I'm pleased to have my prejudices confirmed by an expert.

And yes, the David Bedford story runs and runs, as it were. The Torygraph reports that his patience finally ran out, the Register quotes Ofcom's verdict that "the 118 118 Runners featured in The Number's TV advertisements do caricature David Bedford by way of a comically exaggerated representation of him looking like he did in the 1970s, sporting a hairstyle and facial hair like his at the time, and wearing running kit almost identical to the running kit that was distinctively worn by him at the time, including red socks, sky-blue shorts with gold braiding and a vest with 2 hoops" and the Grauniad writes that he offered mediation.

The most interesting aspect is that I thought the Number's defence was that their runners resembled Bedford only coincidentally, but the Guardian says:

But Ofcom ruled that The Number's defence - that the runner had appeared in the Sun alongside his doppelgangers six months before making the complaint - did not hold water because he had not seen the ads at that point.

So, they were based on him, after all.

But what is all this about the Number being a Cardiff-based company? That's right, blame the Welsh.

Posted by Dave at January 31, 2004 10:16 AM

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