Published: 2 July, 2015
by RICHARD OSLEY

I WOKE up in the middle of the night the other day needing a wee, and when I got to the bathroom Clare Balding was there having a shower. The good woman is everywhere, more insistently everywhere than even Adrian Chiles used to be, pre-Daybreak.

Now, I, as is lawfully required, actually admire her work. Balding is a likeable presenter who can combine serious and silly, and concise and precise in all the right places. But somebody in telly boss towers is slave-driving the poor soul. She presents horse racing and boat races and swimming and Crufts. She has her own talk show, her own quiz show, Britain’s Brightest, and even does the spiritual music gig on Radio 2 early doors on Sunday morning.

And now she is serving up Today At Wimbledon, the nightly highlights tennis package. But it isn’t Today At Wimbledon anymore. No, it’s Wimbledon 2Day these days, grandpa, and Balding has been invited to stroll around a hangar studio worthy of Top Gear with a dutifully dicky audience, silently hello-mumming in the background and guffawing in all the right places. They have turned this historic show into Tennis PM, with Balding required to play the Sky Sports Tim Lovejoy character, casually teasing laugh lines out of John McEnroe rather than actually showing much of what happened on the court. 

It’s the sort of thing that should be locked away on BBC3 and then form part of the corporation’s case for axing the channel altogether. Wimbledon, you see, even with its Hawkeye computer systems and fancy dan centre court roof, and modern day lack of rain, is all about being a bit fuddy-duddy. Its old ye traditions are part of the magic at the All England Club, a place where it’s ok to stubbornly resist change. We should demand no change at all, because it’s a perfect place, a perfect fortnight – one of sport’s perfect festivals.

But now they are messing about with Today At Wimbledon. All we ask is for the Sporting Occasion dee-dah-di-dah theme tune and a fud-dud presenter like Des Lynam – doesn’t have to be him, can be anyone, man or woman – playing the deliberate fool to some ex-champs explaining the tactics of inside out backhands, and the like. But, no. Everything has to be punk’d up, @’d, pimped up, 2day’d.

I’m starting to worry for the old puffins in panamas you see proudly marshalling the five-hour queue outside the grounds. Unless they learn to tweet or twerk (something like that), their days must be numbered. Balding with have their jobs by tea-time.

• By the time you read this, England’s lioness football team will have either qualified for the World Cup final or be flying home as plucky semi-finalists. Either way, there’s another bone to pick with the Beeb here. Its commitment to the tournament has been hugely welcome, but commentator Jonathan Pearce didn’t half ruin the moment in the quarter-finals. During the tension of injury time, with our heroines holding on, Pearce began busking about how sweaty his back was. Poor show.