For and against the vuvuzela

They are the talk of the 2010 South Africa World Cup. Not the great goals, awesome players, refereeing decisions or carefully choreographed goalscoring celebrations.

No, the metre-long vuvuzela horns that fill the air with a noise that has split opinion.

The cacophony of complaints has reached such a pitch that the BBC is investigating an option on its digital red button service that allows viewers to select coverage minus the noise.

Not everybody hates them, though. Sainsbury's, which picked up on the horns after last year's Confederations Cup in South Africa, has sold 40,000 England-branded vuvuzelas so far at �2 each and expects to shift 75,000 over the course of the competition. On Saturday when England played their World Cup opener against the USA, Sainsbury's said it sold a vuvuzela every two seconds.

With the on-pitch entertainment in short supply so far, EDP reporters ED FOSS and STEVE DOWNES give their arguments for and against this 'joyful expression of African culture'.

STEVE DOWNES'S VIEW

I have a phobia of wasps. They make me sweat, run and scream like a rolling Ronaldo.

But I love football which, up until now, has been mercifully wasp-free because it is played in the winter.

So imagine my horror when I switched on the World Cup coverage on the TV to hear what sounded like a million-strong swarm of the insufferable insects buzzing throughout the matches.

England's matches have always been watched by me in a cold sweat, but now every contest in this accursed tournament has been ruined. And not just for me.

Players are being booked for playing on after the referee has blown his whistle: a whistle they cannot hear. Managers are struggling to get their instructions across to players while they are on the pitch.

The world's biggest football competition is being overshadowed by a ridiculous 'instrument' that doesn't even play a tune.

I would certainly ban them, nay exterminate these insect impersonators. And to those who complain that they are an intrinsic part of African culture, I would offer them the choice of having the vuvuzelas rammed down their throat or melted down and made into toys for South African orphans. That way, we would save the sanity of billions of watchers worldwide, while helping the needy at the same time - replacing rage and tinnitus with a warm, contented feeling.

There is one silver lining to this cloud, though. At least the sound of the horrible horns is drowning out the whining noises that emanate from Garth Crooks.

ED FOSS'S VIEW

Which has been louder - the charming, culturally relevant tone of the vuvuzela or the cacophony of petty middle class whinging which has greeted its very existence?

While the former has been entertaining and helped uniquely mark out the World Cup's first visit to the African continent, the latter has been utterly deafening.

The dullness of the tournament to date, both on the pitch with its paucity of goals (and almost non existent moments of genius) and off the pitch with its lack of characters (and, depressingly, lack of WAGs so we at least get some photos of shopping and other non-related football activity in print and online), has been put into context by the obsessive coverage of a small plastic horn.

How can the story of the World Cup so far be concentrated on such a dull singular subject?

There appears to have been no hooliganism, no drug bans and no career ending tackles yet to date, so we're all writing about a traditional musical instrument which is bringing both delight and atmosphere to South Africa's football grounds.

What a crying tragedy that is.

Have none of these vuvuzela whingers ever listened to a West Indian cricket match commentary, with its all-day, seven to eight hours of underlying conch shell and calypso drum beat noise?

Compare that to 90 minutes of vuvuzelas, it doesn't come close. And both are brilliant.

One serious aspect - the prospect of commentary being broadcast with the vuvuzela blasts stripped out using sound trickery strikes me as pure Big Brother and more than a little depressing. Almost as depressing in fact as Chris Moyle's bizarre and rambling commentary efforts available through an online BBC add-on.

But on a lighter note, why not follow the words of that wise old Archbishop Desmond Tutu?

'Learn to love vuvu, says Tutu,' as one headline put it.

Anyway, I'm going to go to Sainsbury's on the way home to buy one each for my two daughters, if there are any left. That should provide some fun when we go camping this weekend.