ONCE again Britain has huddled around its portable televisions for the sports-based prize giving. I shall attempt to summarise it thusly:
Overseas Personality: Usain Bolt
Jamaica holds such fond memories as it is the birthplace of my enduring passion reggae. Many is the time when, brow furrowed by the latest atrocity foisted by the Tate Modern, I can be found in my study skanking to Burning Spear and Peter Tosh. Babylon an ting, dont you find?
Lifetime Achievement: ‘Lord’ Coe
Gone are the days when ennobling required a person to discover a new country, browbeat it into submission, and come back to England with enough gemstones to pebbledash Windsor Castle. Mr Coe (his honorific shall go unrecognised by me until her majesty enswords the shoulders of my good friend Bunty for his services to claret) reminds one of a character in a 19th Century novel who, tired of saucing his chambermaid, throws her out into the Christmas Eve snow upon learning she is pregnant. In short, a weasel.
Team Of The Year: Team GB
There was a time when Britain was considered great and one could slap down the old, midnight blue passport onto the bar of any hotel in the world and the question of being able to settle ones bill was considered answered. Sadly, our stock has fallen so dramatically that discovering ones Britishhood is more likely to prompt a plate full of fried eggs and a bucket in which to ‘puke’ ones lager. These days I simply pretend to be Swiss.
Overall Winner : Bradley Wiggins
I once sported (ha!) a pair of lustrous sideburns (or ‘Love Handles’ as they were known at boarding school) to a fancy dress evening thrown by Francis Bacon in 1957. I remember Lucian Freud demanding I sit for a triptych but we were interrupted by Francis punching me in the stomach for forgetting to bring a bag of ice. Just 35 short years later we lost dear Francis and I cannot help but wonder whether he still brooded on this incident, and whether he ever got the ice he so lusciously craved.
