Match of the Day/Haye Day: Dave shows Gary Lineker how to avoid the greasy palms and juvenile gags

VIEW FROM THE SOFA: On Saturday the bants was in short supply on Dave

David Haye (GETTY IMAGES)

Banter is like palm oil. It has slowly oozed into our lives largely unnoticed, but its insipid, ubiquitous introduction could spell doom for life as we know it.

All right, the increased use of banter isn’t going to lead to thousands of square miles of rainforest being destroyed as our growing reliance on palm oil is doing – though it is a lot more difficult to make a light, moist Victoria sponge with a long shelf life from banter than it is from palm oil – but the fact that you can barely turn on Match of the Day without being slapped across the face by a knob gag is a cause for concern.

We are still two months away from the bants-fest that is Sport Relief but there we were on Wednesday night, settling down to watch analysis of Manchester United’s 3-3 draw with Newcastle, when Gary Lineker twisted Alan Shearer’s comment about the Congolese defender Chancel Mbemba making himself “appear bigger” with his hands into something blatantly onanistic.

“I find that quite interesting,” said Lineker, to which Shearer retorted: “I bet you do.” But the presenter clearly felt he had not leaped far enough over the line, so he continued: “We’ve all done that with our hands.”

Shearer began guffawing – prompting the presenter to join in with the bantastic laughter. He was barely able to introduce the next match. And we slowly shook our heads, saddened that Lineker’s marital problems which had been plastered over the tabloids had affected him to such an extent he has been reduced to making immature jokes about masturbation on live television.

If we wanted laddish laughs, we would have drifted to the channel dedicated to “witty banter”: Dave. But on Saturday the bants was in short supply – intentionally so – as the channel was making its first foray into live sports broadcasting.

Dave, better known for reruns of ancient BBC panel shows and Ice Road Truckers – and the only place you can see Jeremy Clarkson without paying for the punishment – had the rights to David Haye’s comeback to the boxing ring. And it was a professional, slick production, with old hands from the fight game such as presenter Paul Dempsey and commentators Ronald McIntosh and BJ Flores making sure things ran as they should.

It wasn’t Haye’s first appearance on the channel – he had featured on a casually xenophobic vehicle two years ago in which he and comedian Seann Walsh had to spend €10,000 in 24 hours in Ireland. But compared to his last outing on Dave, Saturday’s fight drew more laughs – and, paradoxically, featured less violence.

The fight itself was around four punches long and the laughs came from McIntosh and Flores after the knockout. They had spent the best part of an hour talking up the fight, only for it to be over in a flash. And they had another 45 minutes to fill. “What have we learned?” McIntosh asked, somewhat rhetorically. Flores tried to be diplomatic. “We have learned... that David’s place is here,” he said before presumably throwing up his hands and adding: “What have we learned?”

But we had learned something: that like palm oil, it is possible to avoid banter. Difficult, but not impossible. Just steer clear of MoTD.