Andy gets the Yellow Jersey!

Oh what a hoot! Having barely recovered from the Tour of Luxembourg TT prologue (I can still taste the squash I snorted out of my nose at one point), I managed to watch a video of this presentation, with thanks to Inge for the link to RTL.lu.  (Little Lydia had kindly tweeted me a link during the Tour of Lux, but I couldn't get it to work at the time.)

Luckily I wasn't drinking anything when I watched the presentation, otherwise I may have well have been snorting it all over my keyboard.

What - you mean you haven't watched it? My, what a treat you have in store. The link is here, but in case you can't be bothered to go and watch it, here are my thoughts.

Firstly you have to be quite patient - it's about 29 minutes long, but they don't drag Andy on until about ten minutes from the end. It's introduced by the usual RTL chap - errr, whoops, I don't actually know his name, but he does all the RTL.lu video presentations, and he seems a jolly nice chap. He introduced a string of three or four names, almost forgetting to pause for applause at each one. Well, there wasn't much in the way of applause. "Ha," I thought, "wait until Andy hits the stage, bet there will be a huge roar."

Instead we got the three guys - Christian Pridholme of the Tour was one, err, nope, can't remember the others, I think one of them was the manager of the Mondorf Casino, but I can tell you for certain that none of them was Mr Becca. Humph. Anyway, these guys (referred to for convenience as Shorty, Tubby and Lanky) strode up onto the stage in matching shiny grey suits, and we listened to a bit more waffle from Mr Smooth the presenter - who was also wearing a shiny grey suit. Nice.  Eventually, just as I was beginning to think about skipping forwarding again, we finally get the phrase "Unndy Schleck!!!" Alas, we didn't get a roar of applause, just the same thin smattering, as Our Glorious Leader climbed onto the stage, and guess what he was wearing? Yes, the exact same shiny grey suit! Nice.

Mr Smooth came out from behind his podium and shock! horror! he was wearing jeans and scruffy white trainers. Well, I mean to say. What a let-down. But on second thoughts, perhaps he is trying to keep his "cool" and "youthful" image to attract the youngsters to RTL.lu?  At least he broke up the monotony of shiny suits.

After a considerable amount of waffle, Mr Smooth stopped talking, and wandered slowly off, stage left, leaving Shorty with his arms crossed ("No! No! It looks all wrong!") Tubby with his arms dangling (marginally better, but not very elegant) and Lanky with his hands linked behind his back (best) and Andy with his hands joined in front of him ("No! You look as though you are protecting yourself for a penalty!") all of them standing around looking somewhat awkward. Ah, the first of many awkward moments.

Mr Smooth came back carrying a crumpled scrap of yellow fabric - oh, this is it, this IS the Maillot Jeune. What, no podium girl?

Then we began the entertainment for the night. In what was clearly a rehearsed move, Andy removed his shiny grey jacket, giving it to Tubby, who passed it slickly on to Lanky.

Shorty grabbed the Yellow Jersey, and starting shoving Andy into it.

He clearly does not have small children, as he failed to get the arms in properly. In fact, I think he was trying to get it on the wrong way round, so Andy had to gently get it out of his grip and try again.

With much laughter and inaudible chat between themselves, Andy and the Suits managed to get it the right way round, and here we have Andy - clearly laughing - pulling on the sleeves.

There's something not quite right about this: for a start, why are they pulling it over Andy's head when it has a zip up the front? You can see that the zip is nearly completely undone, which is not making it any easier for Andy to get the darned thing on.

But there is so much laughter on stage, and such a complete lack of panic or fumbling,  that I am convinced it was all set up in advance.

Phew, Andy is more or less inside the jersey, and Tubby attends to the sleeves, while Shorty does up the zip.

Andy, at this point, is probably thinking "I am perfectly capable of doing up the zip myself, you know" but is too polite to say so.

Lanky, feeling left out, has stolen Andy's jacked and is probably going through the pockets for loose change.

Aaand he's in it, folks.

Shorty is not happy with the back of it, and gently smooths it down.

Andy ignores him and starts rolling up his shirt sleeves, having just realised that long white shirt sleeves under what is in effect a tee-shirt looks really dorky.

That's probably why Tubby is laughing.

Mr Smooth is doing his best to get conversation flowing again, but we are all far too busy watching Andy fiddle with his sleeves to pay any attention, even supposing that we could understand Luxembourgisch, assuming that's what he was speaking.

More speeches are made, and Shorty notices that Andy is still gamely struggling with his sleeves, so he steps forward to lend a hand.

I wonder if a single person in the audience is actually listening to poor old Tubby, or are they all captivated by the sleeve-tucking activities?

And you have to say, if you knew that you were going to be shoved into a cycling jersey, why did you wear a long-sleeved shirt in the first place? Obviously you wouldn't want to have to take off your shirt, that would be tacky: and I can see the point that arriving in a normal tee-shirt and a suit would look quite odd: but he could have worn a short-sleeved shirt, I would have thought? It would have meant less fiddling.. or maybe he realised that there was going to be a lot of dead space to fill, and it's quite handy having some "business" to do with your hands, when you don't have any lines to speak.

Finally, Andy is tucked, the speeches are done, and another chap in yet another shiny grey suit arrives on stage.

Oh, maybe he's the one from the Mondorf casino?

For some reason, he keeps looking upwards. Andy looks upwards, too. Eventually, the camera pans upwards to see what they are all looking at.

Nothing. Just blackness. The camera pans back down again. They are still looking up - and now the presentation speech has stopped, and we are all standing or sitting here in silence, with various people glancing upwards from time to time. The camera pans upward again.

Aha! What's that? A tiny pink thing appears. As the background is completely black, we have no idea if the pink think is moving or not. Eventually - and I am not kidding, it takes an age - it gets to the level of the background scenery, so we can deduce that something is being lowered very, very slowly onto the stage.

Very slowly.

Veeerrrrrrrryyyyyy slloooooooooooooooowly.

Just as I reach for the skip button, I realise that it's a bottle of pink champagne. Or, a pink bottle of champagne, if you prefer.

Or is it? Is it real, or a cardboard cut-out? There is no sense of scale, so it's quite hard to work out what we are actually looking at.

But wait - it's pink! No, you fools! Pink is the Giro - the Tour is yellow! *groans and hides face in hands*

Oh, I know! It's a model of the champagne bottle that they normally give to winners on the podium, perhaps when it reaches the stage, TinkerJil will jump out waving pom poms?

No, nothing so exciting: it finally hits the podium, and turns out only to be pink on the back: the front has what looks like a really, really bad picture of a cyclist in a yellow jersey on it.

Andy is given a pen so that he can sign it, and the other guys do the same.

?

No, I have no idea why. Perhaps they are going to raffle it, or sell it on Ebay to raise funds to buy the Leopards back.

All the suits sign it, then they shuffle off back to the left where they were before this underwhelmingly unexciting event occurred.

They stand around, Andy looking somewhat lumpy with his shirt all crumpled up under the jersey.

A minute passed. Another minute passed, followed by another, different, minute. I waited a minute while a minute passed quickly past.

(Sorry, old Monty Python sketch nearly slipped in there.)

Music! Andy looks faintly worried - are they going to expect him to sing? Does Luxembourg have a National Anthem? (no, not the Singing Cat you daft lot, there must be something better than that!)  No, he doesn't sing, nor does anyone else, but the stage gets somewhat dark.  The audience start to get up and leave, so the guys on stage wander casually off, as though this had just been a dress rehearsal.

And by the way, Andy retrieved his jacket - somehow Lanky had managed to slip it onto the stage right podium without me seeing!

And that, folks, was that.   If I hadn't already seen the Tour of Lux prologue, I would have been shouting insults at the screen, for such a sensationally amateur presentation. But after watching the prologue... I guess I was somewhat better prepared for it.

So there you go, Andy now has his yellow jersey for 2010, he had the grace to look pleased about it on the day, regardless of how he felt inside, so well done Andy for being a good sport. And we look forward to seeing you win it for real: maybe not this year, but one year, soon.