The World Cup is in full flow and every tennis player is obsessed with it. To tell the truth, so are we in the press bunker – my seat in said bunker is directly behind the Italians and now that they have no players to follow, they are watching every cough, spit and dive in Brazil. And cheering or jeering accordingly. It is very, very noisy round my way.
Anyway, the BBC, the host broadcaster at Wimbledon and a frightfully proper institution, has been running a keepy-uppy competition. You know keepy-uppy: it is keeping the ball in the air using your feet, knees, shoulders, back of the neck – if you are being very flash – or any other part of your anatomy you can find. Just don’t let the ball hit the floor.
The Beeb have got the tennis players in SW19 involved, they have made their Wimbledon presenters make fools of themselves and they have even got their footy experts covering the World Cup in Brazil – Clarence Seedorf and Alan Shearer – to have a go. And then they asked Andy…. and guess who came top of the heap? Yep, it’s that man Murray.
It has to be said that bar wasn’t raised that high after Mark Petchey appeared to be doing the Can-Can rather than keepy-uppy, Clare Balding proved that she has absolutely no foot-eye co-ordination (she’s better with horses) and poor Russell Fuller, 5 Live’s lovely tennis correspondent, managed a score of one. Yes, one. The ball hit his foot once and then disappeared off screen. Bless.
But was Andy’s score enough to win him the title? Watch this space….