CHANNEL 4 UPHOLDING THE WHEELER WAY FOR A TOUCHY-FEELY 2013

It was as inevitable as death or taxes, really.   

Comprising as it does so many characters whose on-screen presence polarises opinion both ways, so it followed that the absence of the likes of John McCririck and Derek Thompson in particular from IMG Media's presenting team for Channel 4 Racing from this January onwards (as revealed in a press statement five days ago, and to those not on the team five days and half an hour ago - for shame, Channel 4 sports editor Jamie Aitchison) was always going to elicit strong comment.

No less scrutinised, however, has been the make-up of the dozen that have been deemed worthy of fronting what will endure as the sole terrestrial racing programme for at least the next four years.   

Certain online proponents of the more natural, lucid, polished orator haven't welcomed the retention of Tanya Stevenson, for all that the absence hereafter of the unsettling bombastic presence of McCririck may - at long last - afford the exchanges expert time enough to deliver her pieces in a more confident and measured manner, rather than rushed out hurriedly in whatever time the ousted oaf deigned to leave her.   

More so than any of the other pre-existing Channel 4 Racing team, opportunity knocks for Stevenson - surely never to be referred to again on air by the crude and impersonal "Female", by the way - to flourish as never before.

The absorption of names old and new from both specialist racing channels is set to introduce the terrestrial racing viewer to Graham Cunningham, by turns authoritative in tone and forensic in research but yet everyman enough in delivery to have forged a reputation as a genuinely outstanding pundit on Racing UK since its advent in 2004.  

The one fear with Cunningham is less that his fulsome analysis will sit uneasily with the Saturday afternoon viewer (quite the opposite), and more that the format of Channel 4 Racing will accommodate it suitably enough without him needing to be chopped off mid-flow to facilitate yet another advertisement or betting flash - pitfalls also of the RUK coverage, admittedly, but all the more so of Channel 4's.  Perhaps, though, the mooted plans to show fewer races during a broadcast (visits to a "third meeting" are understood to be particularly under threat) render this a redundant concern.  Either way, let the man talk.   

A colleague of Cunningham at RUK but as regular a presence across what does remain of the BBC's sporting output, the welcoming into the Channel 4 fold of Rishi Persad has prompted some of the strongest invective.  

As has ever been the case, that spleen-venting has missed the point of his BBC racing remit completely and utterly.  Persad's questions to winning riders returning on horseback are broad, general and untaxing to the point of banal.  They, and particular his frequent opening gambit of "how do you feel?", are also exactly what have been requested of him in the prevailing circumstances.

Pay attention, here comes the history bit. 

The father of the original concept of the "how do you feel?" type of question is widely accepted to be the late BBC foreign correspondent Charles Wheeler, who first started asking it of his interviewees decades ago in an attempt to gauge the human side or cost of conflicts, genocides, disenfranchisement of the innocent etc. etc., and continued to do so right up until his death in 2008, aged 85.

A man of impeccable intelligence, language skills and journalistic integrity, and a withering critic of the "dumbing down" of television journalism as a whole, it may well have driven him to despair that his original construct, which he never used in any manner other than that first intended, latterly became the preserve of comparatively limited TV and radio interviewers, including in, but by no means limited to, horse racing.

However, that less inspired use of "how do you feel?" is precisely what Persad, and a few other reporters in other sports (tennis and football being two that spring readily to mind) have tended to be asked to conform to - hidebound by producers who are genuinely convinced the emotional ride taken by successful human participants in racing is the first thing viewers care about post-race. 

High emotional yield is demanded from this exercise, not a perfect precis from a newly knackered, mud-splattered rider as to where the horse goes next or what limitations the race has exposed in his and others' mounts.  There are up to another 11 people in the brand new presenting team that can do that.  All in good time.

Live broadcasts on Channel 4 Racing will be presided over the most closely by Carl Hicks, BBC Sport's former senior programme editor, assisted by erstwhile production colleague Gerry Morrison.  Persad will have asked the touchy-feely questions of riders at their instruction in the past - questions which would have acquired no greater depth had Sir Ian McKellen have posed them.  It's extremely likely he will be asked to again.

More fool him, you might think, to continue to be so willingly associated with a televisual role which appears to require so little flexing of his broadcasting muscle, but it seems likelier that the affable Trinidadian can elicit comfortably enough reaffirmation of his professional worth from other ongoing engagements not to regard this gig as something akin to career Kryptonite.

Persad doesn't have to operate within such editorial confines when working on RUK, for which his form analysis of the likes of the Wednesday evening floodlit meetings at Kempton is unstintingly fulsome; nor when co-hosting the excellent Armchair Jockeys series of webcasts with Lydia Hislop and Steve Mellish; nor when performing certain other non-racing duties such as those for the Twenty20 World Cup or World Championship snooker at the Crucible.

A revelatory message, then, to those who will never encounter Persad in any other capacity than terrestrial racing - there's rather more to this particular Channel 4 Racing freshman than you may ever come to appreciate.  So, how do you feel?