Anyone For Menace?

It’s typical. You wait all your life for an “extreme” nature documentary series presented a seemingly suicidal nutter called Steve, and then two come along at once. Of course there’s no question of who the daddy of death wish duo Steve Leonard and Steve Irwin is: while pretty-boy English vet Leonard donned what appeared to be a radiation suit helmet before attempting to handle a highly venomous spitting cobra that had been captured by a highly trained snake “picker-upper”, his more gung-ho Australian equivalent, Irwin, eschewed such precautions, preferring instead to chase a snake across some rocky terrain, grab it by the tail and wave it about in front of the camera as if he were giving a demonstration with a lasso. When it indignantly squirted a potentially blinding gob-full of poison its captor’s face, Australian Steve admonished the “narky little critter” with a stern ticking off before sending it on its way and excitedly talking us through the excruciating agony he was suffering as he made haste to the nearest village in order to scrounge some water with which to rinse out his eyes and save his sight.

While both Steve’s are undoubtedly brave to the point of foolhardy, the title of English Steve’s show would suggest that he’s the more fearless of the pair. Don’t be deceived. If David Attenborough’s Meerkats United is the most appropriately monikered wildlife documentary of all time (trust me, it is), then Steve Leonard’s Ultimate Killers has to be the most preposterous. As well as having us believe that Steve Leonard has been killed on numerous occasions, it would also appear to suggest that the raison d’etre of Leonard’s series is to reveal which of the many fierce creatures he annoys for a living it was that killed him last. Perhaps I’m being too pedantic, but I found it disappointing that after three episodes, the nearest he’d come to death was through a fever caused by microbes that cut a swathe through his bloodstream as he waded through an African river attempting to rile up a shoal of Piranha fish.

Meanwhile back in London, it’s been a feverish fortnight for those of us who have wagered a fiver each way on Goran Ivanisevic to win the men’s’ singles at Wimbledon every year for the last decade. Every year, that is, except this one. Such was the wretchedness of my fellow left-hander’s form prior to the start of this year’s tennis extravaganza in SW19, that the odds of 150/1 against him winning Wimbledon available in Morris Racing (a mere seven SWs away in Clapham South) at the start of the tournament seemed stingy in the extreme. Indeed, at the time I would have fancied my own chances against him in a best-of-three on the courts at Clapham Common if he’d been up for a game.

“Aren’t you the geezer who enquired about a price on Ivanisevic and said ‘You could stick another couple of zeros on that and I still wouldn’t touch him with a barge-pole’, a couple of weeks ago?” enquired Mr Morris with a chuckle a few days ago, when I stuck a tenner on the charismatic Croat to beat Timmy-Tim Henman at the slightly less generous odds of even money a few days ago. “Yep, that’s me,” I sighed wearily, once again agog at the manner in which decisions I make in the bookie’s office can have such a profound impact on the outcome of world sporting events. Obviously, I prefer to see it as a tenner won rather than the guts of 1.5 grand lost. As I type, it is the night before Wimbledon fortnight stretches into its third week and Goran still has to emerge victorious. But emerge victorious he undoubtedly shall, because he firmly believes it is his destiny and even though his shoulder is knackered, he can still serve like a motherfucker.

It’s hard to feel sorry for Timmy-Tim. Although he’s probably a grand lad outside of work, he is blessed with all the charisma of a breeze block once he takes to the tennis court. His sole celebratory gesture (switch racquet to left hand and pump clenched right fist in the air underneath jutted out jaw) is grating; as is the penchant of countless Henmaniacs for celebrating his opponents’ double-faults. More annoying still is his wife and parents’ habit of turning up at his every match to sit and stare impassively as his fawning supporters in the cheap seats endure an emotional roller coaster through Centre court. I have never taken a wife, but if I had I would not expect or encourage her to sit and watch every time I had to write an article. In fact, I’d venture to speculate that if the wife I don’t have and the parents I do were lined up on the sofa politely applauding ever time I successfully typed a full-stop at the end of a sentence, I would be slightly freaked out and my performance would be adversely affected. Perhaps this is something Timmy-Tim should look into before his next quest to sweep all before him at Wimbledon.

As this year’s Wimbledon neared its end, this reporter began devoting his energies to obtaining tickets for the fifth Test in the Ashes series between England and Australia, set to take place just down the road at The Oval at the end of August. Despite the fact that it’s probably the only sport in the world with matches that can last a working week and still not produce a winner, I’ve loved cricket ever since my old man patiently explained its myriad rules and intricacies upon discovering me transfixed by a game on television one day when I was little more than knee-high to one of Beefy Botham’s batting pads.

Tentative enquiries so far have revealed that the first four days of each match are sold-out, but tickets for all five Day Fives – the nail-biting climax in most Tests – are freely available because England are so abysmal at cricket that, barring rain, none of the matches are expected to reach a nail-biting climax. I think it was a young Cassius Clay who once mused that there was no point in attempting to beat anyone at their own game, on the grounds that nobody would be stupid enough to invent a game if they thought they were going to get beaten at it.

Even The Greatest got it wrong sometimes.