Attention Darren Flindell: be careful, be very careful with your call of Winx on Saturday.
Please, for your sake, no mentioning of ‘London to a brick on’, or ‘Kingston Town can’t win’ or ‘down the stretch they come.’ Maybe not even go near, ‘she’s running like a tremendous machine’ either.
Reason being, well buddy, yesterday in the United States, that place where really strange things seem to happen, a law suit was filed against a movie which stars Bill Murray and our own Naomi Watts.
And here’s why.
In the movie, and please be seated, holding on to the arm chair’s arms when you read this because it is real, but in the movie, called St Vincent, Bill Murray’s character is in a wheel chair, racing a young boy also wheel chair bound, down the corridors of the hospital. In the excitement of the contest, Murray says, “and down the stretch they come.”
Nobody knew this, but old Dave Johnson, the now 77 year old who made those words famous during his race calling career, had copyrighted that phrase back in 2012. Making it, according to him – his words and they can’t be used ever again by anyone bar him. Even harmlessly in a feelgood movie, it seems.
Murray is not being sued, but the producers and screen play writers are.
The movie St Vincent was released in 2014 and Johnson didn’t see it until very recently when a friend innocently pointed out that his famous phrase was in the flick. It was then he filed suit.
So Dazza….you’ve been warned.
We are all eagerly awaiting your call and what you will come up with over the last 100m on Saturday in her race.
In her last start, when you articulated the: “Here’s the World Champion Winx. Simply invincible,” well, it was brilliant, succinct and on point.
That will be hard to beat, mate.
