“The frisking is frantic and often futile”: David Attenborough provides commentary for women’s curling

February 23, 2014 • 1:44 pm

We often hear about the “Martian zoologist”: a mythical creature who is invoked to show how baffling human behavior would seem to a non-Earthling. And here we see the venerable Sir David taking on that role—narrating, in his inimitable way, women’s curling at the Sochi Olympics.

As PuffHo notes,

The BBC somehow convinced the famed narrator to voice a segment of Team Great Britain’s epic Feb. 11 Olympic match in Sochi against Team USA. The result: a playful interpretation of a beloved game through the lens of a naturalist.

There’s a bit clearer version at the PuffHo site, but I can’t embed it.

24 thoughts on ““The frisking is frantic and often futile”: David Attenborough provides commentary for women’s curling”

  2. I saw it the other day; hilarious! I was wondering if it was real initially, it sounded too good to be true.

  3. Why is it that three of the most odd sports come from Scotland – golf, curling and tossing the caber?

    1. To quote Auric Goldfinger, “Once is happenstance, twice is circumstance and three times is enemy action.”
      The Scottish approach to sport can also be seen in their contribution to football (soccer) : Rangers, Celtic and the traditional “Old Firm Bloodbath”.

    1. This is what I got when I clicked on your link:

      Oh je! Etwas schlimmes ist passiert!

      Tut mir furchtbar leid, aber es gibt hier nichts! Entweder existiert die Seite nach der du suchst nicht mehr, oder die URL Adresse ist falsch oder falsch geschrieben.

      Warum versuchst du nicht danach zu suchen?

      (a 404 error because you posted http:// twice)

        1. Yeah I’m sick of winter and friends in Victoria keep posting pictures of flowers in their gardens!

          2. I keep posting messages that show the temperature from my car’s outside thermometer!

          3. If it makes you feel better, we’re unlikely to have much of a wildflower season here in the Southwest. We haven’t had any rain in months and it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting any anytime soon.

            Instead, February has turned out to be quite a lovely summer, with mostly clear skies and daytime highs in the 80s for the past couple weeks. At this rate, we’re expecting summer to end sometime in April, transitioning to an early Hell, with a looming prospect of our normal June-through-August Hell season replaced with something unimaginable….

            b&

  8. The video captures Attenborough at his best. The straight-man routine is hilarious. He’s one of my heroes. Thanks for posting this Jerry! I love this stuff.

  9. If we’re talking “Attenborough-ing” subjects, one must mention the “Not The Nine …” team doing a gentle sideswipe at His Attenboroughness : Youtube version, and script :
    PROF. TIMOTHY FIELDING I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Can I put this into some sort of perspective? When I caught Gerald in ’68 he was completely wild.
    GERALD, THE GORILLA Wild? I was absolutely livid!
    […]
    GERALD Look, I know you’ve never got on with my mother.
    PROF. Well, she didn’t exactly like me either, did she?
    GERALD She got on perfectly well with David Attenborough.
    PROF. David Attenborough! All I ever hear is David bloody Attenborough!
    GERALD Let’s leave Dave out of this.
    PROF. Oh, shut up and have a banana!
    This sketch passes through my mind from time to time as I theatrically examine my fingernails in the middle of someone else’s comments during a meeting.
    Does anyone have enough Greek to translate what Gerald attributes to Aristotle?

    1. “As Aristotle once said, ἣ ζώαι ἔι𝜈αι [???], ἣ γυνᾶικες ἔι𝜈αι [???].”

      I’m afraid that the combination of his diction (not very classical, and the distinctions of consonants are partly lost in the mask), my rusty ear (who am I kidding, I could never perceive the syllables in a distinct order in the days when I was dating a [non-classical] Greek girl and hanging out with her family and friends), and the sheer bloody Google-confounding number of things Aristotle in his surviving books claimed that “animals are” and “women are”, means… I don’t have enough Greek for that.

      1. When I saw “gunai” (γυναι)I immediately said “women are what?!” but too bad, no answer from Aristotle.

  10. Got to comment #15 without someone mentioning the TSA ! Not that we have to put up with them here – but there’s still enough of it.

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