… this time of year. For women, Tennis. For men, masturbation. Oh come on blokes, who spend eleven months of the year watching twenty two girly-men mincing about for ten grand an hour, or declaring a fascination for thirty more engaging in mud wrestling with funny shaped balls, have suddenly become tennis aficionados.”Oh can we put the Tennis on love”. Red button, Google for who has the biggest tits in the woman’s’ game, select match and get all jiggy with the remote control*. “No, not the men – especially that English hating Scot whose clearly descended from a certain W.Wallace – their power ruins the very aesthetics that make tennis so special” is a lie chucked into the black hole of disbelief worn by long suffering wives and girlfriends.

“Let’s watch this instead” / “Who’s playing?” “Not sure” / “Sharapova you say?” / “Pretty?” / “Well okay I suppose but not a patch on you” hurtles he-lies comet** while one’s inner willy is giving it the pumping elbow “Woooaaaahh, get a LOAD of that body, if she grunts like that on a tennis court, she is going to be absolutely sodding cosmic in the sack”

And now she’s out. Beaten by her rather plain compatriot only recently released from a facefull of teenage acne. And not just beaten, comprehensively stuffed which kind of gets us back to where we started. So a million men lament the buggeration that a once in a generation talent/beauty morph is pounded off court by a girl whose had giblet stuffing in her recent vocational history.

So I’ve heard anyway. I’ve been watching bit of the football occasionally flicking over the BBC smugness to see yet another plucky brit narrowly beaten 6-0, 6-0. Only the Scot left (I love this, “I am not Scottish, I am a Scot” – right on fuzzy hair, reject all that English middle class loving, good on you) and he’s clearly hunting for some distant Spanish ancestry to save him from showing any allegiance to the flag.

Wimbledon may be an institution but it’s a bloody odd one. What people remember of the empire gate-crashed by a million nations who are significantly better at the game. It’s last night of the proms with tennis racquets instead of conducting batons, but the whole displaced nationalism and dangerously edged hats shines through, even tho the sainted Tim has passed onto the commentary box.

Still now all the nice boys and girls have been knocked out, there’s confusion multiplied by 10,000 spectators trying to work out if they should transfer their affection to a fella who clearly cares not the slightest for their adoration. That makes it worth watching even tho the glamour puss has been shown the door.

* I have so many lame wank gags lined up, there’ll be a small prize for who gets them all.

** I believe St. Peter will take that terrible pun into account when sending me “downstairs“`