At the Blair ebb tide, when the Brown tide flows, a Murray comes and a Henman goes. If not poetry, there's a certain symmetry going on, don't you think? Tony and Tim - the darlings of that mythical but all too real place, Middle England - and Gordon and Andy, admired for their skills rather than charms; brooding, sulky and far less instinctively in tune with the Daily Mail-reading millions. That is not to malign a great paper of record or its readership, but last week as I walked back past the mile-long queue for a glimpse of Tim, it was the only newspaper anyone was reading. It was quite extraordinary and quite unsurprising. They're Tim's and Tony's people but will they ever learn to love the dour duo? Will they take the scruffy-haired Scots to their floral-bloused bosom?
There are subtle differences between Tim and Tony. Blair fingered Middle England's erogenous zone with lubricious political dexterity but for Timothy Henry Henman there was no artifice. He was the flesh of their flesh. He embodies the values they respond to, the virtues they cherish, and the failures they identify with. In his fantastic but frustrated career, by steering a middle course between those twin impostors - triumph that eluded him and disaster that British tennis once was - he remained resolutely, reassuringly, one of them. Even his nickname is like something from Kipling and - do you know what? - I am sure I saw him in that queue, several times over.
That's it! Here's one for the psychologically homeless crazies who believe the whole world is a festering cesspit of conspiracies. (The Twin Towers' supporting columns inside weighed 2.5 tonnes per foot, you know, so, let me finish, how come, yadda, yadda, yadda . . .) Henman was a bio-replicant clone created by Blairist boffins to divert a specific section of society for two weeks every year from the hideous reality that we are all going to hell in a handcart. Prove me wrong.
At the going down of the sun, I bought a copy of the Henman biography by Simon Felstein and I've got to say, no slight on the author, but it's a hard read. Not a hard read in the James Joyce Ulysses kind of way but in the "oh no, not another page" kind of way. His life is so extraordinarily ordinary that unless you are a tennis anorak, or committed Henmanologist, there is not much to bite on. The promise to uncover "the real truth about Tiger Tim" is, I fear, true to its mission.
But that's the appeal. When Simon calls him a "uniquely British sportsman" he is right. Henman's is the unshowy but steely determination that conquered a third of the globe. Who, then, could be the perfect wife for this perfect kind of hero with his "boyish good looks and English charm"? For this quintessentially English middle-class paragon-throwback? Felstein says of Lucy that she is "perfect for him. Very English, pretty in an unexciting way, stoical and easy-going". Sid and Nancy they are not. Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson more like, and Wimbledon will miss Tim ter-bbly.
True to his tribe's customary understatement, Tim has yet to unleash an autobiography. Murray has one in the pipeline and the blurb states: "Temperamental, gifted, passionate, fiery . . . Andy's story will enthrall [sic] and excite the entire country." The crowds will scream for him, wave their flags and the Centre Court will urge him on, but never in the field of human conquest will it be like it was for Tim. For the postcode fetishists of SW19, Murray, like Greg, will only ever be a proxy hero.
Even his mum, Judy, admits he prefers New York. She told me: "He loves the atmosphere, the rock 'n' roll, the night matches, the music and the outdoor hard courts." Murray faces the double fault of not only not quite being the nice boy next door, but of not quite being English. The people in that queue don't fly the flag of St George from their houses, dogs or cars, but they love their Elgar.
Gordon and Andy have a lot to contend with. Whatever they achieve individually, there will be a great many who hanker for the once and future kings of semi-detached, suburban Camelot. I know you can take the Blair/Henman parallel far too far, so I will. As the sun sets on Tim and Tony's island Avalon, they will venture forth to seek their own kinds of peace, maybe inner, maybe Middle Eastern, and mulling over what might have been, will remember forever that tumultuous, adoring, deafening din, when anything seemed possible.
LTA could usefully dissect Eric's tennis brain
Amid all the talk of toughening up British tennis prodigies with boot camps, I received an enlightening email: "I am a single parent with two boys playing the junior game . . . with one travelling the world for world-ranking points. I calculate that my annual expenditure on tennis is well in excess of £35,000 per year."
Eric Angus, whose eldest, Niall, has been competing in junior Wimbledon this week, is far from whingeing, though. He is merely pointing out that there is still a deep-vein cultural assumption within the game that the parents of our young prospects will have that kind of money. Eric went on: "We parents do have a right to expect support from our extremely wealthy national association - what about deals with youth clubs/hostels/universities for cheap communal accommodation where the kids do the cooking and cleaning? Removing the comfort of staying in hotel accommodation saves everyone money and the resulting 'mucking-in' has knock-on benefits for mental toughness on the court."
It's what Johnny Mac would call a no-brainer. The more affordable, the more accessible; the more accessible, the better the competition; the tougher the culture, the more success.
I rang Eric and we spoke for a long while and it's been some time since I heard such sense. His partner, Beverley, died suddenly 18 months ago and the fact that the boys had their tennis was a focus and in one way a godsend. Niall is 17 and 432nd in the ITF junior world rankings and 13-year-old Jordan is also going great guns. He does what any dad would do but the money well is drying up. He told me: "When Bev was around we used to say, 'Imagine doing this on one income'. Well, now I am. There needs to be a change in tournament structure for juniors and a change in funding with some means-testing. They need to make it easier for parents to move beyond the local level to the national level." That's when the bills kick in.
Eric says coaches vet parents to work out whether they'll be able to afford to give their children the requisite future support. "But you can hardly blame them." This isn't a call for people's soviets to start running the LTA; it's a plea for common sense. Roger Draper is doing a good job, but he could do a lot worse than to sit down with Eric Angus for a couple of hours.
Big Sam's BBC boycott strictly for the birds
It's a shame the manager of the endlessly fascinating Newcastle United won't be talking to the BBC next season. Sam has his reasons [as do Sir Alex and Harry] but to boycott MOTD because of Panorama is like blaming Allen Ginsberg for the Vietnam war. Following Sam's logic, were a purple sandpiper or even a breeding pair of slender-billed curlews to turn up in his back garden, he'd not only blank Bill Oddie but would probably bar him from the patio and tell him and his twitcher crew to hop it. I just feel sorry for the Magpies.
Brits swimming upstream to meet basic fitness levels
Britons are now so unfit there is a basic army test to check whether new recruits can run a mile and a half in 11 minutes. Could you? My colleague Matt Williams and I reckon so on a good day but my radio partner Shelagh "Dolphin Girl" Fogarty piped up: "I couldn't run it but I could swim it." Far too much human growth hormone in those skinny lattes.