These are bleak days one way or another, so it is good to find solace where you may. ‘The wonderful news, ‘ as Billy Graham ceaselessly banged on, ‘is that our Lord God is a God of mercy’, and it is small mercies that I am after right now.
I found one last night. The sight of Irish golfer Shane Lowry striding up the 18that Royal Portrush to claim his first major title was a cheerful one indeed. He looks like a nice, normal bloke, and he has had to struggle with those familiar demons eventually to get his hands on that $1.935 million pay cheque. But there is something especially gratifying for the connoisseur in his victory: the man clearly knows his way round the tea trolley.
He is what Jeeves would have called a ‘gentleman of full habit’, and it is my considered opinion that there aren’t nearly enough of these around in top-level sport at the moment. In my imperfect memory, the last winner of the British Open to be that familiar with pies was John Daly (1995), whose 19 stone frame was regularly supplemented with unfiltered cigarettes and industrial quantities of booze.
Babe Ruth (18 stone) would have started it in the 1920s, if WG Grace hadn’t done so half a century before. George Foreman (also 18 stone) took the World Heavyweight belt with both his waistline and in his age in the mid forties. Rugby has had its Bad Boy Bill Cavubati (24 stone), its Richard Bands and many others. And who can forget into what strange and solid shapes Diego Maradona and Paul Gascoigne ended up in at the fag end of their playing careers. Benni Macarthy famously told Karren Brady that she was ‘the devil with a pair of tits’ when she told him to lose weight. He probably wasn’t expecting her response: ‘at least I’m supposed to have tits.’
But it is cricket that maybe leads the way, with its Colin Milburn, Mike Gatting and the immortal Dwayne Leverock, whose shattering dive at slip against India in the 2007 world cup had seismographs shaking from Los Angeles to Luanda. I remember the sumptuously well proportioned Arjuna Ranatangu of Sri Lanka being taunted by the Australians in an effort to draw him out of his crease while facing Shane Warne.
Aussie sledger: ‘Put a Mars Bar on a good length. That should do it’
Ranatunga: ‘If you do, I’ll bet David Boon gets there first.’
And on it goes. Weighing in at only 15 or 16 stone, Shane Lowry is borderline thin in comparison, but you just get the sneaking feeling that a goodly proportion of those winnings will end up in the chip shop of his County Offaly home town, and that is good enough for me.
So as the Piffle Wagon rolls in to Downing Street in a couple of day’s time, and the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition chains his bike to the lamp-post of improbability, I will be raising a glass to Mr Lowry, both for cheering me up, and for the proper enjoyment of cakes.
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