Mamma look a booboo

Tony Deyal

I KNEW what a 'boo-boo' was long before I knew how to boo. I was a boy when Lord Melody sang his classic self-mocking calypso about ugliness, Mamma Look Ah Boo-boo Dey. Its chorus is perhaps the best known of all calypsoes: "Mamma look ah boo-boo/Dey shout/Dey mother tell dem/Shut up your mouth/Dat is youh daddy/Oh no, my daddy can't be ugly so/Shut your mouth/Go away/ Mamma look ah boo-boo dey." In Guyana, 'bubu' has a different meaning - it is essentially dry mucus around the eyes or what Barbadians and Jamaicans call 'bugaboo'. It was not until later in life I learnt that a mistake or error could also be a 'boo-boo'.

Although I have a lot of acquaintances who would easily pass with flying colours whatever test Lord Melody had for boo-boos, my deteriorating sight and looks make me much more tolerant of deficiencies in human physiognomies than I was when in my youth and heckled people mercilessly (as Melody did) with shouted epithets like, "The Creature from the Black Lagoon is your father!" or "When God was giving out good looks you went outside to play with Melody". One calypsonian was said to have been disqualified from a 'boo-boo man' competition because the chief judge declared that professionals were not allowed.

Now, while any bubus or bugaboos are inadvertent and directly due to my increasing age, the boo-boos in which I generally evince an interest are embarrassing mistakes or blunders. I especially like those made by sports, particularly cricket, commentators. My favourite commentator who, like Lord Melody, was always full of self-deprecating humour, was Brian Johnston. Describing one of his boo-boos he wrote: "1974 at Old Trafford - England vs India. It was raining heavily on Saturday morning. The covers were on, everyone with umbrellas or macintoshes, the Indian spectators sitting huddled up looking miserable and cold. Test Match Special came over to me at 11.25 a.m. - "Any chance of play Brian?" "No, I'm afraid not," I said, "it's raining hard, it's cold and miserable, the covers are still on. It doesn't look as if it will get any better either ..." (and here I meant to say, "There's a dirty black cloud") ... "There's a dirty, black crowd here!" "

awkward commentating

At Trent Bridge in 1950 (Johnson recounted), England vs West Indies - Worrell and Weekes put on 283 for the fourth wicket for West Indies and on the Friday evening were hitting the English bowlers all over the field. We got a bit tired of showing four after four so to vary things I said, "I wonder what Norman Yardley (England's captain) is going to do to separate the two batsmen." The camera obediently panned round to Yardley at mid-on but, unfortunately, he was scratching himself in a very awkward place! To cover up this, I had to say something quickly and came out with, "Obviously, a very ticklish problem."

Johnston quotes an unknown commentator who is reputed to have said, "He was bowled by a ball which he should have left alone." This is my cue for another boo-boo or bu-bu or even vu-vu. It is the bubuzela or vuvuzela, also known as a 'lepatata' or a stadium horn. It is an instrument blown by South African football fans. It emits a loud monotone like a foghorn or an elephant. It is supposedly extremely distracting and may also damage hearing. From what I heard during the Confederation Cup in South Africa and the warm-up World Cup matches, a Caribbean conch-shell is soothing compared to a bubuzela, and perhaps it is the reason the South African cricket team is here in the Caribbean instead of back home among the bubuzelas.

Little do they know, however, that we cricket fans who are occasionally forced to listen to the matches on radio have to put up with a lot of booboos and bubuzelas. I cannot forget the commentator who said that a player "elongated himself to the left" and the problems of pronunciation - Is it Chandrapaul or Chanderpaul; Kai-sweater or Keys-wetter? During the two one-day internationals in Dominica, I heard Key-run and Kai-Ron Pollard as well as Dinner-rine and Dee-Onarine. Couldn't the commentators ask the players how they pronounce their names? Actually, on the first day, the team was too busy discussing the relative merits of mangoes and bananas.

poor cricketing 'per capita'

While the discussions were fruitful, the subject was so slippery that any reference to the cricket was perfunctory and coincidental. During Day Two, the argument was about who was the better candidate for the captaincy - Bravo or Sammy. One commentator, and the show's producer, insisted and repeated several times that Sammy is per capita better than Bravo.

The term per capita translates literally into 'for each head' but is used to mean 'for each person' or 'per person'. Perhaps Sammy and Bravo suffer from multiple-personality disorders (and evidence might be found in their lack of consistency) but if the commentator meant that Sammy is 'head and shoulders' above Bravo, he could cite the shampoo of the same name. The only commentators I enjoyed were the cricketers used in Antigua - Curtly Ambrose and Kenneth Benjamin. However, they were fighting an uphill battle in the commentary booth that was worse than the one the West Indies was facing in the field.

The fact is that, per capita, West Indies cricket fans suffer more from poor quality cricket commentary by bubuzelas than World Cup fans from the incessant vuvuzelas. We walk in the footsteps of Arlott and Johnston. We have the incomparable Tony Cozier - master of the language, the statistics, and the great and glorious traditions of the game of cricket. Yet, we hear "forward is Smith" or "Taylor bowls and he hits the ball through the covers for a four." Taylor has to be like the magistrate in the calypso by the Mighty Spoiler about himself charging himself.

Most commentators keep the action going to infinity by saying, "The batsman is playing forward" instead of "The batsman plays forward." It is, therefore, not surprising, though sad to say, the most stilted sentence I have ever heard in almost 60 years of watching and listening to cricket was by West Indian commentator Andrew Mason. Describing a shot by a South African batsman, Mason said, "Not cueing it very well is the batsman Petersen." Boo-boo or bubuzela? You tell me.

Tony Deyal was last seen repeating a Howard Cosell observation: "There are two professions one can be hired at with little experience. One is prostitution. The other is sports-casting. Too frequently they become the same."