Carlton Kirby kindly took time out of commentating on the Dakar for Eurosport to answer some of my questions. Having tackled the Dakar in an earlier post, here we cover commentating, motorsport and Tuvalu.

Commentating is quite an unusual career. How did you arrive at talking about motorsport for a living?

I’ve always been into motorsport. Bikes in my youth courtesy of my mum. Regular Isle Of Man TTs and Speedway in Sheffield as well as RAC Rally spectating.

After BBC local TV in Norfolk and radio work around the world, I ended up at TV-am on the sports desk with Garry Champion who was nutty about endurance racing and British Touring Cars – infectious. They lost their franchise to GMTV and I left for Eurosport with Jeff Stelling. Dakar followed and a whole load of other stuff on the back of it – as you know from the complaints.

According to the Internet, you’ve been commentating for some 20 years. What have been the highlights, and have you had any utter nightmares?

Highlights: Le Mans every time; Dakar to Cairo 2000 – helicopter over the pyramids is the only way to see them darling; 1000 Lakes WRC; Daytona; being head of broadcasting on Radio Tuvalu; seeing Tom Jones kiss a cleaning lady at TV-am who had interrupted his breakfast to ask for a handshake… she wasn’t pretty.

Utter nightmares: getting the wrong teams in a football report from The Den, Millwall v Portsmouth – LBC didn’t keep me on; presenting the Dakar while on the toilet with a tummy bug, stopping to throw up during the jingles. There are more but my after dinner work will dry up.

Commentators can’t please all of the people all of the time, particularly when it comes to striking a balance between being entertaining and being informative. How conscious are you in your approach – which I’d suggest errs towards enthusiasm over dry facts?

I was described as a Marmite Commentator once… and that’s about right. When I was at the BBC many years ago the most well prepared commentator was Dan Mascal who did tennis. He spent hours preparing and would often just use: “Oh I say” at the end of a rally. You can bore for England if you give a lecture on what you know all the time as some do. It’s what is on the screen that matters. Action, and helping people to enjoy it.

The other issue in motorsport in particular is that you have fanatics who are dedicated to particular championships. I rarely get complaints from Dakar fans and am reasonably well liked in DTM and SGP Speedway. These fans are not there to back you up when the open-wheel techno-mob muster for an attack.

Can you still watch motorsport for pleasure?

I love watching it. I know this is not de rigeur but NASCAR floats my boat – I used to do quite a lot for Motors TV and produced the highlights on Eurosport for four years… happy days.

With the overwhelmingly bad news coming from all quarters this winter – teams leaving championships, calls for cost cutting – what can you find to be enthusiastic about for the rest of 2009?

You only have to go back to club level to realise that motorsport is alive and well. A bit of financial difficulty might just bring the big boys back closer to what the whole game is all about. There is still plenty of fun to be had with metal without spending a fortune.

Finally, is there anything surprising you can tell us about the man that is Carlton Kirby?

Surprising? It’s hard to know. I did have my own radio show on the tropical atoll of Funafuti. I had a colonial bungalow and a yacht which I sailed across the lagoon to the station. It was all part of an aid package from the UN to bring the island nation of Tuvalu closer together (nine islands).

My job was to train up the locals by example. I left the BBC as a reporter to take up the post – everyone said I was mad. When I got there I thought they were right, I’d met everyone within a month. The atoll had 6,500 people on it and covered about 2 square miles. Being shaped like a broken smoke-ring with a large lagoon in the middle, it’s maximum width was just 200m. So a coast to coast race didn’t last long. Goooooood Mooooorning Tuuuuuvaaaaaloooo was my opening gambit. All the link jingles I nicked from BBC Radio Norfolk… they still use them I believe.

Generally my life remains quite surprising. As a freelance each year starts with a clean calendar – I’m always pleasantly surprised at the season end just how busy it was. Right now though the biggest and best surprise is just how fantastic fatherhood is. After years of trying my lovely wife Steph has brought Theodore (Teddy) into the world… he’s fantastic.