Wednesday, August 09, 2006  Sports Non-Event of the Year  When I
were a lad, one of the highlights of my year around Christmas
time was the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year programme,
which, back in those far-off days, gave us the chance to relive
all the great sporting moments of the year gone by.  Sadly, it
is now but a shadow of its former self, the absense of real
sport on the BBC leaving the programme reliant on gimmickry,
chat, and occasional off-colour remarks by the presenters.  The
BBC won't even show clips of the sport it still has - notably
Wimbledon, football and snooker - presumably for fear of
highlighting what it doesn't have.  In short, the programme, and
the oddly-named award itself, has become one of those great
annual television non-events that we somehow still feel
compelled to watch, second in this respect only to the even more
meaningless Eurovision Song Contest.  And yet the national press
seemingly remains obsessed with the show. Over recent weeks,
national sports coverage appears