Saturday Snippets

With the Borethon of Wimbledon almost upon us, the BBC has had to restrict the showing of a trailer for the tournament after complaints that it was frightening children.
Well bugger me in Barnsley! (© Jonathan Harvey).
If they can make tennis scary then surely they are also capable of making it interesting.
And if terrifying tennis has arrived, how long before watching paint dry becomes an extreme sport?
But my aversion to posh ping-pong is a blessing on these summer evenings.
It means I can linger over my dry martinis and canapés on the South Terrace, watching the sun set over the council houses and listening to the soothing cooing of the wood pigeon and the distant chatter of the chavs outside the Co-op, without having to rush in to a stuffy Pink Drawing Room to watch grunting Amazonian women, elderly men who sit in a baby's high chair and call everyone 'love', and young boys who can sprint faster than a junior baseball team leaving a Neverland sleepover.

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Did anyone believe that a jury could possibly convict Gary Lineker in the recent libel case? I haven't read the full transcript of the trial but I assume the judge was obliged to tell the jury:

"You must focus on the facts of this case and banish from your minds the ineffable niceness of the defendant.
Some of you may have seen the defendant on your televisions presenting programmes about Association Football and been captivated, as is my wife I regret to say, by his boyish charm and his undeniable knowledge of the game which he himself served with such distinction. Who can forget his penalty save against Turkey in the 1966 World Cup Final?
But forget it you must, members of the jury. And much else besides.

I must remind you that when Mr Arthur Smith in his well-known stage drama said that even Mr Lineker's farts were probably perfumed, this was a comic invention, albeit in execrable taste. Even if Defence Counsel had called expert witnesses to substantiate this assertion, it could not and should not have any influence on your consideration of the facts in this case.

It is true that a fellow judge once drew the attention of a jury to the 'fragrance' of a witness, one Mary Archer. It would, however, be totally inappropriate to speak in such terms of a male defendant and - a fortiori - one who has been a distinguished exponent of a rugged, manly sport.

One characterised by the clash of sweaty male bodies, the mingled aromas of vapour-rub and pheremones, the mud-caked thighs, the tangle of arms and legs in goal mouth scrambles, the group hugs and bodies piling onto prostrate bodies when a young striker, running with the speed and grace of a gazelle, has penetrated a tight back four to score, followed by hearty carousing in a communal bath, the foaming waters swirling round the toned, young, naked, male bodies, so redolent of Roman times......the paintings of Alma Tadema....... that film with Kirk Douglas........could the Clerk pass me a glass of water.......the jury will retire...... I shall lie down."

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I'm not sure that Alan Duncan did himself much good by appearing on Ann Robinson's new Friday night topical pot-pourri on BBC1. This particular pot-pourri smells mostly of desperation. Plus an unpleasant whiff of effluent as in the previous week's remorseless attacks on Cherie Blair, not for anything she's said or done but for the way she looks.

The interview with Alan Duncan focussed almost entirely on the fact that he was gay and naturally included the observation that if he became Prime Minister he would be able to give Downing Street's interior design a makeover.

Much was made of the fact that, in the unlikely event that he became Tory leader, then he could become the first gay Prime Minister. It would probably be truer to say that he would be the first openly gay Prime Minister. I'm sure I've read speculation that Spencer Perceval was gay. But he was also the only Prime Minister to be assassinated, so that's not a comfortable precedent for Duncan.

Ted Heath was, and is, a 'confirmed bachelor' but that doesn't necessarily make him gay, although many people made that assumption.
In the 1970s I watched trade unionists marching through London chanting 'Heath is a poof'. In these more enlightened times they might possibly have chanted 'We strongly oppose your Statutory Incomes Policy but your sexuality is not an issue.'
Or possibly not.