Joe Molloy

And that's quite a hard thing to do.

And a lot of presenters can't really do that with that same level of...

natural and a bit of a smirk and welcome along and he imbued the thing with a sense of big time and in part that's just because he'd been doing it for so long you take on an authority as it goes on but your presence alone can sometimes elevate an event and he had that about him but it was really good to camera and then look I don't remember like the early early stuff before like Brawley O'Rourke and Spillane were in their pomp

So, you know, akin to Bill O'Hurley, he was a good comparison in some ways.

I don't think Michael Lester's gift was to ask some genius question that would elicit mad responses from anyone, regardless of who was in the panel.

I think he had the good sense and good timing to understand that he had nuclear weapons on his panel.

And he decided, well, I'm not going to disarm them.

If they're nuclear weapons, I'm going to let them be nuclear weapons.

And he really did, to the point where,

I'm sure some people said, you know, he actually should counter that a bit.

But I think he understood that, one, that could be a fool's errand.

And two, if you keep repeatedly killing off strong opinion at source, you're going to stymie it over time.

You know, just by osmosis, it'll just become, they'll be less inclined to give strong opinion or it'll become antagonistic and then the atmosphere is bad.

He just let them say mad things about amateurs.

And I'm sure somebody will go home and could say, well, you know, I'm sure the players involved would say, well, he should have stood up for the player more here or there.

But I think he had the good sense to understand this is really good TV.

It's honest opinion.

And like, if people feel it's gone too far, that's for almost higher ups than me to decide.

And so he just let the thing flourish.

And then for, you know, what, 15, 15, 20 years, it was unmissable.