Collin Hogg: Wild pair make for great sports

Even when Andrew Mulligan and Mark Richardson descend into bickering, The Crowd Goes Wild is still a good time.

Even for those not interested in the national pastime, here is some weekday entertainment more fun than most.

For a good fight on television at the moment, the best bet is either Parliament or The Crowd Goes Wild, which is still posing as a sports show.

It's about as much a sports show as TV One's Seven Sharp is a current affairs show but, in the case of The Crowd Goes Wild, the dodgy job description doesn't matter because it can be a lot of fun - not to mention, as I said, combative.

There's been a certain appeal about the idea of unstable people fronting TV shows ever since that famous old movie Network, which starred a news presenter losing his marbles live to the nation.

Viewers began tuning in, not for the news, but for the crazy guy reading it. And that's just how it is for me with The Crowd Goes Wild (Prime, 7pm weekdays). I like Andrew Mulligan and Mark Richardson, the crazy guys who front it. Also I am one of those malformed locals who cares not a jot - not a single tennis string, nor hockey puck - for sport of almost any sort, so I'm not watching it because it's a sports show.

Mind you, there are some sports the sporty blokes who front The Crowd Goes Wild don't seem to much care for either. One of them could be golf and another might be basketball. There was a great deal of bickering on the shows I caught last week.

At one point on Thursday's edition Mulligan shouted at Richardson, "I'm not letting you speak," directing a big, dramatic, silencing glare at him. "No one finds you interesting when it comes to basketball."

Richardson did his best to look miffed but his face wouldn't let him and, anyway, he gives as good as he gets. "You just contradicted yourself on national television," he'd yelled in triumph at Mulligan a little earlier.

The news of the day - and the week - was the cricket scandal, a bit of a sticky wicket for a show like The Crowd Goes Wild, which is really more about celebration than information.

Brendon McCullum had that day done his famous press conference and Mulligan and former test cricketer Richardson were in a terrible tizz about it and quite defensive.

"He doesn't need the stress," said Mulligan, sounding more like a women's magazine editor than a sports commentator, "he's having a baby." The bickering frontmen did have to shut up occasionally for field reports, though these tend to go for the laughs. The best on Thursday featured an interview with a chatty but completely incomprehensible Irish boxer and an attempt by the reporter to steal his "lucky" gloves.

Friday's Crowd Goes Wild was a special edition, devoted to staging what turned into a clumsy quiz show between the two presenters, in an apparent bid to put their bickering to rest.

With a doleful Ric Salizzo as quizmaster and two sets of characterless teams to play with, Mulligan and Richardson simply filled the space by bickering even more than usual.

Not their finest half-hour, but still more fun than most at 7 o'clock.