Topless Tennis Star In Magazine Cover Shock

Well, I say magazine. It's The Radio Times. Or RadioTimes, as a cunning rebranding that I somehow missed in the (probably) several years since it was made would have it.

The tennis star in question is Andy Murray, who is standing in his white shorts with a yearning expression in his eyes supposedly indicative of a thirst for future sporting accolades. Unfortunately, given his somewhat unnecessary pectoral exhibition, it looks to me rather like the expression of longing found in the eyes of a small boy who has just been told that the other team is Shirts.

Yes, Wimbledon is upon us again: a sporting fixture that Sordel used to watch for hours a day as a wee bairn but which has rather passed him by in the last decade or two. Grim psychological tussles between well-matched opponents used to be the stuff of summer afternoons back before the opening rounds became a series of thrashings delivered by the top seeds. Generally speaking, tennis up until the quarter finals (at least) is currently a game that might better be resolved by an extended system of byes.

As ever, though, a patriotic heart beats in the breast of the Great British Public when one of our lads takes to the court. Murray has inherited the mantle of Henman (and seemingly, in this cover shot, wishes that it was of a more tangible form) so we will all be rooting for him, while the Scots gaze frostily Southward and complain that the English are misappropriating their tennis stars as avariciously as we previously swiped their oil.

Meanwhile, our nation continues to reel at the shock of success in Formula 1, one of the few sports where we have a more or less unbroken record of comparative success. Lewis Hamilton ("och, Hamilton, he must ha' been a Scots boy") won last year and Jenson Button stands fair to displace him. There is a danger that those who chase the Union Jack wherever it may be flown in a sporting context (whipping themselves up into a chauvinistic fervour at our tremendous performance in the latest international tiddlywinks or dwarf-tossing competition) will hardly know which way to turn. Already party shops are reporting a shortage of white and red make-up in anticipation of the face-painting orgy that is bound to ensue.

For my part, I wish Murray well and (for reasons that perhaps do not need underlining) will be hoping for a future resurgence in the British Ladies' game.