The scenario is familiar. It is late at night. Drink has been taken. One is alone and the initial euphoria has given way to maudlin depression. A telephone is to hand and there is the need to speak to someone. Recently, I was on the receiving end of such a call and what surprised me was that the caller was my old pal, Turk Thrust.

Readers will remember that Turk (right) is the perma-tanned Hollywood script doctor and the man behind FOSU (Formula One Script Unit) which used to give us down-to-the-wire World Championships.

Turk was feeling sorry for himself. 'Mike the phone hasn't started ringing. There are all these moves in Formula One and poor old Turk has been left out. Who came up with the idea of Piquet Junior crashing at Singapore to give Alonso the race and so guarantee funding for the following year? No need to answer, Mike, you know who.

'Bernie has gone ahead with the Sky deal and you'd have thought they'd have been on to me. I've got ideas for Sky, solid Rupert Murdoch ideas. Ideas the BBC haven't considered it being uptight and British. Sorry Mike, but you know what I mean.'

'No offence taken, Turk,' I say, 'but how would you improve on Auntie's coverage?'

'Martin Brundle does the grid walk and you know who he always ignores? The girls who hold the umbrellas over the drivers. Girls with long legs and short skirts. They have to have special insights, they get to hang around with drivers.

'They deserve their slot. You know, telling what it's like to hold an umbrella, there's an art to that. They should have their place. We make a space for these girls, give them challenges, like mud wrestling. Good, good family entertainment of the sort that Murdoch has given so many countries.

'Murdoch introduced horoscopes to The Sunday Times. Okay, it's in the Fluffy section along with news on moisturisers, aromatherapy and frocks, but it is still there. Nobody with two points of IQ to rub together has believed this shit since Galileo proved that the universe was not terracentric. Even the Voodoo Vendors of the Vatican concede that Galileo was right, also Copernicus, whom the Vatican tortured and burned alive. It is all shite, but it is Murdoch's brand of shite.

'We have someone called, say, Psychic Cheryl, casting horoscopes. She comes out with shit like, 'Sebastian's guiding planet, Jupiter, is in decline whereas Mercury, which rules Jenson, is in the ascendant. Venus, who rules tyre degradation, smiles favourably on HRT. There is a 50/50 chance of rain.

'See where I am going with this, Mike? We make Formula One attractive to knuckle-dragging drongos and bubble-brained bimbos. It is the Murdoch formula.'

I want to interrupt, but Turk is on a roll. 'The BBC has put together a crack team. Tony Jardine claims that Sky will do things better. You may not remember Jardine, but he was in the ITV team for most of the time, a man with the charisma of week-old lettuce. He wants to be part of the new set-up and, I guess, so do most others with a track record.

'The roll call of who is competing sounds like the legion of the lost, the cohort of the damned, to borrow from your own Rudyard Kipling. Everyone from Eurosport, for a start.'

'Remember Beverley Turner? She styled herself Queen of Speed and wrote a hard-hitting book accusing Formula One of being fuelled by testosterone. To the Fluffy media this was a revelation and she went on air to promote this unique insight. The Exploited One failed to mention that she had preened and pouted for FHM.

'I ask you, Mike, what in principle is the difference between that and umbrella girls mud wrestling 'for the lads', as I believe you say in Blighty?'

It was late at night and though I have much time for Turk, I was getting a tad tired, but I have been there myself and let him continue. Turk said, 'Of course Bernie has lost the plot with Bahrain, but not in the way you think. Introduce a Murdoch company into the equation and you have a new vista.

'The European GP has been held in a number of countries, why not have a Troublespot Grand Prix? Libya would be ideal, it has a rich motor racing history, it used to hold the Tripoli GP.

'To the usual drama of pit stops, strategies and all the usual boring stuff, we could add possible kidnapping, float the notion that a sniper may be on the roof of a grandstand. That's Entertainment, Mike.

'Castro's men kidnapped Fangio on the eve of the 1958 Cuban GP. We could work with that, sign up some terrorist cell in need of a headline. I know you, Mike, you will say it is a sick idea, but Bernie wants to run a race in Bahrain and there will be protests, what could be more sick than that? I say, let's get the action inside the stadium where it can be seen.'