The BBC has been forced to post a message on its World Cup website asking viewers to stop using “offensive abuse” as viewers registered complaints against sports presenters.
John Motson, its veteran commentator, and Mark Lawrenson, the former Liverpool and Republic of Ireland player turned pundit, have been compared with a couple of “old pub bores” for laughing at their own jokes while covering games.
Motson’s “heh heh” laugh has even been likened to Beavis and Butt-Head, the cartoon characters.
Thousands of people across the country have been turning down the volume on their commentary or using an interactive button to switch to Radio 5 Live while watching matches.
The BBC’s studio panels, led by Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen, Lawrenson’s former partner in the Liverpool defence, have been lambasted as members of “a cosy boys’ club” who spend too much time playing golf together and lack any incisive insight and analysis.
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Other English viewers have complained they cannot understand what two pundits — Gordon Strachan, the Celtic manager, and Leonardo, a former Brazil player — are saying.
The BBC has spent at least £3m of licence fee money taking a team of 300 to the World Cup.
The corporation’s viewing figures for last weekend’s England-Paraguay game peaked at 12.8m.
Yet ITV, with one-third of the staff in Germany, had a peak of 17m for Thursday’s match between England and Trinidad and Tobago, making it the most watched event so far this year, even though many people were still at work when the game kicked off.
ITV’s commentary team has also been criticised, with viewers complaining about Clive Tyldesley and Gareth Southgate, the former England player, for making inane comments.
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Scottish football club websites were buzzing with the traditional criticism about the “arrogance” of the BBC’s English commentators who, it is claimed, are unable to hide their allegiance.
One viewer from Edinburgh wrote on the Hearts FC fan club forum: “John Motson has to have the most irritating voice ever! He is the reason the ‘mute’ button was invented,” while another from Portobello posted his own “English commentary guidelines”.
“From a listener’s point of view the non English should make full use of the mute button on the remote control,” he advised.
On another World Cup forum John Mitchell, from Galashiels, vented his frustration at the habit of London-based studios to ditch half-time match analysis when England are not playing, instead: “going over to the engerrrllluuunnnddd camp for the remaining 14 minutes 55 seconds of the interval after having touched very briefly on the game.”
One football fan noted that a BBC commentator had claimed Australia was the only Commonwealth country England had ever lost to.
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“So Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have been expelled from the Commonwealth?” he wrote.