Hide & Seek

Occasional readers of this blog may have come to recognise that it is only with great irritation and self-reproach that Sordel condescends to respond to the Pervasive Evanescent.

Nevertheless, the P. E. is always with us, and so it is that I hang my head in anticipatory shame and turn my attention to: Wimbledon coverage on the B.B.C.

(Just be grateful that I am not watching Big Brother this year.)

The stereotypical depiction of an audience watching a tennis match involves the swivelling of eyeballs right and left at regular intervals, and so it is with the B.B.C.: from One to Two and Two to One the audience is invited to pop with the grace of every serve and volley. "Viewers hoping to see the end of this rally should turn to our coverage on B.B.C. Two" smirks the elusive Sue Barker.

Thank God for remote controls, or it would be more exercise than frail flesh can stand.

Worse still, however, is when the entire channel switches channels. You know that moment when a train pulls out of a station and it seems for a second as though the entire world is moving around you? During Wimbledon, that illusion becomes reality. Rather than switch tennis from 1 to 2 they sometimes switch all other programming from 1 to 2 instead.

Try complaining to the B.B.C. about this (go on, I dare you) and your whining, self-pitying epistle about missing The Supersizers do ... The Fifties because Crimewatch has broken & entered into B.B.C. Two will almost certainly be read out on the air. Shortly thereafter, a B.B.C. "executive" will explain (as one addressing a small and exceptionally dim child) that providing coverage of a live sporting event will inevitably mean adjustments to the schedule.

S/he will then go on to point out (as broadcasters have been very keen to do over the last 24 hours) that 12 million people watched Murray's so-called "epic" five-setter. (On which subject, tell it to the Greeks ... they were ten years outside the gates of Troy and knocking a fluffy ball over a net for four hours doesn't compare.)

12 million people can't, it seems, be wrong, even when four million of them are fruitlessly waiting for Crimewatch, two million of them are watching under protest having planned to watch The Supersizers do ... The Fifties and another three million or so are imprisoned by B.B.C. One having earlier thrown their remote controls out of the window in frustration.

Come to think about it, there must be a sizable proportion of the population who can only receive B.B.C. One. That's the only thing that would explain why anyone is watching it in the first place.

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.