SPORT MATTERS TO ALL OF US? NOT THE MODERN BBC

HATS off to Auntie for managing to squeeze a few minutes of actual sport into this light entertainment orgy. Forgive the sarcasm, but if the so-called BBC Sports Personality of the Year ceremony had confined itself to games-playing, we could have been tucked up with our cocoa an hour earlier than we were. Part concert, part One Show- style magazine programme, SPOTY has never looked more detached from its original design. This was an execrable offering, a tired old parade badly rained on from a great height. Cutting the Beeb some slack, Covid has made this a strange year. Sporting pickings are necessarily slimmer than usual. But that did not mean reviews of entire major sports had to be breezed through in a few seconds. The recurring theme of the evening was coronavirus, its heroes and heroines. We salute them, of course. Even if it was a little sentimental at times and often only very tangentially linked to sport. For some reason it took four presenters to deliver this: Gary Lineker, Gabby Logan, Clare Balding and flavour of the month, the ubiquitous Alex Scott, in whose mouth the letter ‘g’ never appears at the end of any word. Covid cuts at the Beeb? Perish the thought. The quartet provided plenty of gushing but not much gravitas. They often spoke in relay, a sentence each. One particular bon mot from Scott: ‘Sport matters a lot to all of us.’ Not to the modern BBC, it doesn’t, other than for the segment on keepie-uppie with loo rolls. Last night’s repertory travelled as far as Salford with a virtual audience of 1,000 appearing on the wall. Tyson Fury, one of the six candidates, was only present in the highlights reels, having asked the public not to vote for him. Strange behaviour. Lewis Hamilton, standing in front of a Christmas tree, joined by video link. Monaco must be in

Tier 4. at least he was a deserving winner in the end, a saving grace in this self-parody. ‘Virtual’ might as well apply to auntie’s coverage of proper live events — as in virtually nothing. Some of us are just old enough to remember when Bill McLaren on rugby union, dan Maskell on tennis, david Coleman on athletics, Harry Carpenter on big fights, Murray Walker on Formula One and richie Benaud on cricket were guides to our sporting educations. alas, it was recorded that Peter alliss — laconic, whimsical, human Voice of Golf as heir to Henry Longhurst — departed this year, bringing an end to the BBC’s golden thread of commentators. Who can hold a candle to these men now? not many, but their successors don’t have much of an opportunity now the TV pool is hugely diluted. Given this, is the annual SPOTy jamboree worth persisting with? I wondered every time the pictures came ‘courtesy’ of some other channel. no Fury in attendance, but not all was lost. They instead managed to get a live interview with the Prime Minister himself: Mr Marcus rashford, of Manchester united and England. His well-pitched campaign for free school meals, an act of conscience born of experience, won him the hastily concocted Special award. and to another celebrated star of this benighted year, Captain Tom, the undisputed 100-laps

Zimmer frame champion of the world. Having taken a promotion, a knighthood and now the Helen rollason award, he surely ends 2020 as our most decorated serviceman since Lord Mountbatten. These well-deserved moments of recognition were immeasurably more welcome than the ludicrous choice of Khabib nurmagomedov as World Sport Star of the year, a successor to Muhammad ali and usain Bolt. nurmagomedov is, as every Sunday evening casual viewer well knew, a leading mixed martial arts fighter, who retired undefeated after 29 contests. He is a russian to boot and, as we recognise, russian competitors are always pure Corinthians. What’s not to like?