TV review: Inside Sport: Kieren Fallon: The Ride To Redemption

Published on Friday 18 December 2009 23:25

FEW people can keep the Queen mildly amused, far less have her giggling like a schoolgirl. Kieren Fallon is one.

Few men become known, thanks to their wit and sophistication, as the Nigel Havers of their profession. Kieren Fallon is one.

And few people, having mixed with high society for a couple of decades, would have the chutzpah to claim that their periodic brushes with the authorities were the result of discrimination against them because of their lowly origins. Kieren Fallon, as you will have guessed by now, is one.

That was the central contradiction of Monday's Inside Sport, one which interviewer Clare Balding all but ignored in her desire to remain sympathetic with her subject. Thanks to her expertise and to the respect in which she is held within horse racing, Balding succeeded in revealing more about the former champion jockey than most past profiles have managed to do – but, in the face of the Irishman's insistence on his essential innocence, she could do little more than raise a sceptical eyebrow from time to time and leave viewers to make up our own minds.

This may well be a better approach to programme-making than simplistic moralising, but it left at least one viewer frustrated by the failure to ask some pertinent follow-up questions. Fallon is a complex, intelligent man, and he should have been challenged more strongly on his implication that he had fallen foul of the class system – either that of British society in general, or of the horse-racing industry in particular.

Not every problem in his long and successful career has been of Fallon's own making, but, after a rsum of the ups and downs of his career, Balding rightly said to him, "You do start thinking this can't just be bad luck."

"Thanks, Clare," he replied with an embarrassed smirk. So why, she continued, taking a less direct line of attack, did he think he had been singled out by the authorities?

"Possibly because I was never educated and didn't come from the right place," he claimed.

We had already seen footage of the place he comes from, Crusheen in County Clare, and it would certainly not rival Surrey's stockbroker belt for affluence. But we had also seen him chatting to the Queen, and heard an old colleague testify to his charm and make that Nigel Havers reference. As a result, we found it hard to accept his claim that he was just some rustic daftie who had been picked on time after time over the two decades since he moved to Britain from Ireland at the age of 24.

Balding, however, seemed at least half willing to believe him, and was soon suggesting to him that he was "almost too soft".

"You're probably right," he answered, as if the thought had just occurred to him.

In Balding's defence, it should be noted that others share the notion that Fallon is more sinned against than sinning. For instance former champion jockey John Francome, these days looking like a cross between John Lydon and a turnip, declared: "Bad people think he's an easy touch".

Perhaps they do, and perhaps, barring the odd positive drug test, Fallon has never done anything untoward in his career.

But why, if that was what she was willing to believe or at least leave almost unquestioned, did Balding want to build the veteran's latest comeback as his final chance to redeem his redemption? ("This is the ride of his life," she concluded. "The ride to redemption").

Or perhaps it is more relevant to ask why she bothered with the old "redemption" cliche at all. Because the thing is, even if Fallon lasts for another five or six years in the saddle, the bulk of his career is already behind him. And that means that, even if his conduct is spotless from now on, he will, on balance, be remembered as the jockey who, in his interviewer's own words, "doesn't just flirt with controversy – he embraced it".

Whatever he does in the coming years, no matter how many more winners he rides, Fallon will always be remembered as much for his run-ins with racing's ruling bodies as for his marvellous empathy with race horses. That's the reality. Having said all that, the abiding impression of him from this half-hour was pretty favourable – not because he got an easy ride from Balding, but because he came across as a fascinating character, and a man who could be really good, entertaining company.

As the Queen will no doubt tell you if you ask her.