I'm not struggling to get my head around Andy Murray's decision to stay away from SPOTY at all, as an article by Giles Smith in today's Times newspaper suggested I would be. I do struggle with the idea that the award is, in the article writer's words, "a pinnacle" of anything. The beanfeest is a bit of fun - worth watching on a cold winter's night if you've nothing better to do. But the outcomes are arbitrary - akin to asking the public to vote for Camembert versus Creme Brûlée versus Tripe and Onions. All worthy foods no doubt - but one better than the other? Nah!
Last year Bradley Wiggins was a worthy winner. But so would Mo Farah, or Jessica Ennis or a dozen others have been. For all of them their "pinnacle" was winning whatever they won. SPOTY more of a pinnacle than two Olympic Gold Medals? Are you having a laugh?
SPOTY is quintessentially British and there's nothing wrong with that. But if Mr Murray has better things to do that's his call - and frankly none of anybody's business. Like other uniquely British institutions - our Royal events and obsessions, Remembrance Sunday and the rest - there is a sense of obligation that we have to stand in line and salute. And there is an overwheening sentimentality underpinning them as well. We might shrug our shoulders and, anything for a quiet life, buy the bull for a day. Most of us do. But when somebody says "Stuff that for a game of soldiers" (or, as in Murray's case suggests by his absence that that might be his view) we have no right to criticise.
SPOTY is a bit of fun for many. It's not the Nobel prize, or an Oscar. It's an inward-looking, often maudlin, sometimes downright embarrassing TV event. To take it uber-seriously as The Times article does is giving it a status way beyond anything it deserves. Nobody is obliged to watch it even less to revere it. Including Andy Murray.
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