Rarely will excitement grab you and shake you, but there's an elegiac charm that slow burns and reels you in gradually.

And with five or six hours of air to fill, Eurosport's Tour de France team have therefore taken their cues from cricket commentators, happily chatting away and allowing any random tangents and anecdotes to develop as they will. Central to this is our own Sean Kelly. The decision was clearly taken to assume that no one watching knows anything about cycling, probably a wise decision given the amount of people that only remember the sport exists for these three weeks every year, and Kelly is excellent at explaining in a straightforward manner little quirks that would pass over the head of the floating fan.

At one point a rider appeared to be having his back brakes checked by a mechanic hanging out the window of a team car, but Kelly explained that it was actually a clever ruse and as soon as the cyclist had a grip on the car it would accelerate for a time before disengaging to help slingshot the rider forward. In fact such is Kelly's wealth of experience that there doesn't seem to be an event that can take place that he hasn't got an anecdote for.

Whenever anything vaguely interesting occurs co-commentator David Harmon tees him up and leaves him off, and Kelly will happily chat away on how they used wash their own shorts in hotel sinks in the old days or on the difficulty of lancing a boil on your ass.

The only thing Kelly doesn't do is funny. When Harmon went into a lengthy discourse on a beautiful girl he'd seen previously, dressed as an angel for some advertising ruse, and hoping that she'd turn up on the course again, he looked to Kelly for some manly support: "Have you seen her Sean?" "No, I certainly have not, " replied Sean tersely, clearly wishing the conversation would get back to less embarrassing territory, like lancing boils off your ass.

Of course, there's a white elephant in the room that everyone does their best to avoid mentioning, possibly because that elephant has a big hypodermic needle and suffers from 'roid rage. It must be difficult for lifelong cycling fans to have to defend their sport to viewers but you'd think they'd be better at it by now just through practice.

The day after Michael Rasmussen was kicked out by his team Harmon continually reiterated that Rasmussen had not tested positive for anything, and Kelly had no anecdotes regarding illegal performance enhancers. This detached attitude to the issue of drugs made them difficult to take seriously, a bit like the Tour de France itself.

If you've ever tried to explain hurling to someone from North America, they will inevitably at some point say, "So it's like lacrosse?"

Any self-respecting Gael will quickly disagree, knowing full well that lacrosse is what girls play in Enid Blyton books when they're not solving mysteries.

In an attempt to solve this mysterious comparison, having read all the Mallory Towers books, this couch watched some Major League Lacrosse between the Rochester Rattlers and the Boston Canons.

It's nothing like hurling of course, but rather like Olympic handball played with fishing nets. And it's dull. The most interesting thing that happened in the game was a cheerleader being hit by a stray shot from Brett Bucktooth (who with a name like that should really be playing quidditch). Impressively though, the commentators had no sympathy for the distressed lass, choosing simply to admonish her for not paying attention to the game.

Tough love . . . Kelly and Harmon could learn a thing or two from these guys.