So here I am, sat on the veranda of my penthouse luxury suite on the Thames, clutching my SPOTY 2013 trophy in my right hand and my Wimbledon Singles Tournament Men’s Champion Final urn in the other.
Behind me, quaffing champagne and endless supplies of Hawkeye bitter are the highest of the highest of the glitterati and celeberati. Sir (Sir!) Ben Kingsley has just parked up on the jetty below in his sailor’s dinghy and waved to me with a traditional maritime greeting of respect, the two fingered salute made famous by the one and only Winston Churchill whose grandson, Winston Winston Winston Churchill, dropped by not five minutes ago to collect the rent.
In my kitchen, the world’s political elite are arguing over global warming, economic meltdown and the recent death of Lou Reed. As far as I know, Lou never lifted a tennis racket in his life, although a little bird in the shape of Hannah Cockroft no less, tells me he was party to a lot more racketeering than he would have had us believe.
But tonight, after this glorious success of all successes, surpassed only by…. Well, surpassed by nothing actually, tonight has just taken the biscuit.
Mine is not to reason why, count the cost or favour, fortune or fight anyone on any beaches anywhere. Mine is to lap it all up, big style.
I have to admit (no, really I do) to feeling some moments of sympathy for my unlucky rivals in this year’s SPOTY competition (which I won by the way, just in case you didn’t know). AP McCoy (who he?) is still trying to get people to recognise him and is floating from guest to guest at my party, trying to persuade them that they really do know him – or would do if they had been following the results of the 2.15 at Uttoxeter on that last rainy Bank Holiday Monday. Leigh ‘Weatherspoon’ Halfpenny has rendered himself a few pennies short of the full shilling tonight in the only way that rugby players know – by the downing of vast quantities of vodka followed by the obligatory tossing of each other into the River Thames. Disgusting behaviour for a supposed ‘personality’ never mind a SPOTY for 2013!
Chris Froome has taken himself off in a huff and is sitting on the kitchen barstool, his legs going round and round furiously in vain – he’s getting no-where. You can take the boy off the bike, but you can’t take the bike out of the boy as Stephen Gerrard reliably informed me when we shared a bowl of twiglets together.
Mo Farah and Christine Ohuruogu have continued to do what they do best: run around in ever-decreasing circles ad infinitum until everybody has developed neck pains watching them.
There’s no getting away from it: in order to win the most prestigious sports competition in the world, the Sports Personality Of The Year, on the world’s most prestigious broadcaster, the wonderful BBC1, one needs to have a bucket load of personality.
And that ladies and gentlemen, is why I, the Soon-to-be-Lord Andrew John Paul George Ringo Murray of Kirkintilloch, have secured the prize in such emphatic style.
Now there is only one thing left to complete my universe. Recognition of my achievements by my local club, which has, as you can imagine, been less than effusive in its praise in recent weeks.
No matter. The time is now right for the club secretary, Grace, to phone me and inform me that the club is ready to bestow the ultimate accolade upon me.
The Chairmanship.
Grace, I am ready for your favours.
More from the Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player here!
