Ubiquitous Branson

Television often throws up unpleasant images to surprise you, like finding an earwig in the sugar. The BBC has got the transmission rights for Formula One motor racing, and they were lucky in that the Australian Grand Prix (BBC1, Sunday), which opened the new season, proved a very exciting race, and was won by a Brit. There were lots of crashes, nobody was hurt, and that’s the way we like it.

The commentary seemed much the same as ever, but they have created some high-tech titles for the start which are meant to thrill you with the sheer genius of the engineers who make the cars and the carbon-based life forms that drive them, but really only looked like modern razor ads, which are also very noisy and also try to persuade you that you’re scraping away your bristles with something marginally less advanced than the Voyager spacecraft.

But the thing that really got to me, the adder on the putting green, was the sight of Richard Branson, who had flown out to support the team he sponsors, Brawn. Now the last time I went on one of Branson’s trains there was literally no room even to stand in standard class. The fare was probably near what Jenson Button gets for one race, yet we were reliant on the ticket inspector allowing us to sit in first as an act of kindness, without charging us double for the ticket. Why can’t he get that right, instead of swanning round the world? Branson really is a New Labour creation: all spin and less substance, terrific brand recognition and inadequate service.

‘My 50 years of travelling around Whicker’s World…’ said Alan Whicker, and to him it really is Whicker’s World, a planet that bears a passing resemblance to, yet is strangely different from, the one the rest of us inhabit.