But on the Beeb is where snooker will almost certainly stay for the simple reason that

But on the Beeb is where snooker will almost certainly stay, for the simple reason that there would be no way for the marketing people at Sky to jazz it up.Well, to give them their due they would probably think of something – fluorescent chalk, perhaps, or replacing a couple of balls in every frame with lookalikes made out of Semtex. But would anyone watch? Of course not, because the very essence of snooker’s appeal is its complete unsexiness.Nowhere else would you find competitors with the pallid complexion and slightly bulbous eyes more often associated with fish which live at depths where light cannot penetrate. Or spectators like the one spotted during the opening week of the 17-day marathon who preferred reading a book – the Variety Club Guide to Writing Short Stories, no less – to watching the match. Or a pundit like John Virgo, who delivers each weary line as if he has spent the last five hours waiting for a train that has just been cancelled.It is all part of the fun, and long may it continue. Perhaps, one day, a final will even grip the nation like the one in 1985, which persuaded many millions of Britons to sit up so late that it was barely worth going to bed. Such moments of sporting togetherness grow ever rarer, but another example – England against Argentina – was the starting point for Thinking of England (BBC2), which asked what it means to be English these days. The answer, in sporting terms at least, seemed to be: getting drunk, filling your face and not taking a blind bit of notice of what’s going on.There is an old racing joke concerning a jockey who is 10 lengths clear on the favourite as he passes the furlong pole.

Suddenly, and in quick succession, he is hit squarely in the face by a 10lb salmon, a platter of luncheon meat sandwiches and a magnum of champagne. Thus distracted, he loses his whip, drops the reins and is beaten a short-head. “What the hell happened?” the trainer asks him when he gets back to the paddock. “Well, it was all going according to plan until the final furlong, guv’nor,” the jockey replies. “But then I was badly hampered.”Down at Henley Regatta, it looks as if everyone spends their time getting very badly hampered indeed, and doing so as far away from the river as is decently possible. “Being English is all about discipline, all about doing the right things,” said one of the thousands of men in blazers. “There’s no hooliganism here, just people having a really nice time.”His point was illustrated by a shot of a woman walking halfway across the car park with the bones of a rather fine poached salmon in her hand, and then placing them carefully in a bin.

Unfortunately for this impeccable image of the upper classes at play, the next scene involved a man who was trying to persuade his wife to show off her embonpoint to the camera.”You’ve heard of Melissha Melinda,” he drawled. “Melissa Mercouri, or whatever,” (“she’s an air hostess”, said a friend helpfully). His unfortunate wife, all the while, was doing her utmost to stop him tearing off her jacket. But of course, he wasn’t being a lout, because he was fuelled by Bolly, not lager.Sport was only a small part of the film, which also took in WI fetes, hippy festivals and holidays in Blackpool. If the Henley set truly represent the best bits of Englishness, though, it is hardly a surprise that their beloved Rolls-Royces now contain German engines..

ANYONE WHO tried as hard as the new Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, to stop the publication of David Yallop’s How They Stole The Game (Poetic Publishing, pounds 16.99) is either seriously maligned or has something to hide. Yallop has made such a good job of arguing that Fifa’s former president, Joao Havelange, and Blatter, the former general secretary, went to devious lengths to guarantee Blatter’s election that at the very least there should be an independent inquiry. Naturally, Blatter denies the main thrust of this important book which is written by the author of several other significant investigative ones including In God’s Name, which claimed that Pope John Paul I was poisoned. Yallop is convinced that football’s international governing body is poisoned with corruption.
There has always been suspicion about the sudden change of heart by the national associations of several countries, including England, away from Sweden’s Lennart Johansson and towards Blatter in the 1998 elections which ended Havelange’s 24-year reign of self-promotion. Yallop maintains that the two-billion dollar television rights gained by Havelange and Blatter for the 2002 and 2006 World Cups allowed them to be “very, very generous when it came to canvassing support”. He says over $1.3m was handed out to certain national associations for “advanced payments on financial assistance”. There were also, he claims, gifts of millions to the confederations.Blatter, who Yallop says Havelange saw as his “living monument”, has always said that the money, particularly that given to the African federations, was intended to help promote the game.

However, the most sinister aspect of Yallop’s investigation concerns Blatter’s visit, in December 1997, to Qatar where he met the Emir who is alleged to have guaranteed all the assistance – financial and political – he could provide to ensure that Blatter was elected. Qatar was known to have ambitious ideas for hosting international tournaments. It is alleged that individual delegates were offered as much as $50,000 each for the promise of their vote.Blatter insists that he was unaware of any bribery. Yet at the beginning of the weekend when the election took place, Johansson was known to have a majority of promised votes of about 20 Suddenly, that advantage disappeared. Yallop contends that $1m was handed out by the Emir’s emissary. In fairness, Johansson has not pursued this; neither has he made any formal complaint against Blatter himself.As for the English FA, although there is no accusation of bribery being involved in their decision to back Blatter, they come out of all this looking familiarly shabby.