One of the consequences of growing older, I find, is that you become progressively less interested in other people's sex lives. These days, frankly, I find it difficult to show much interest even in my own. I am the kind of guy who skips the who-is-doing-who stories in the red tops to go straight to the sudoku, which annoyingly I am not much good at either.
It meant that much of Piers Morgan's line of questioning to Boris Becker in Piers Morgan's Life Stories on ITV was irrelevant to me. "The question everybody in Britain wants to ask," slavered the Prince of Prurience, "is what happened in that broom cupboard?" Well no, actually. The question I wanted to ask was at what point had Boris decided it might be a good idea to model his hairstyle on Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein.
But Piers was firmly in the cupboard at Nobu with the door locked, the mop and bucket pushed to the corner, and the bottles of Domestos stacked out of the way on the shelves, and he was not about to come out. His broom cupboard question appeared at least three times; in the trailer to the show, as a teaser into the break, and during the interview itself. The irony is that the Viscount of Voyeurism will know better than anybody that there was no broom cupboard. Even I know that. It is a tabloid invention, like David Mellor's Chelsea shirt, and Katie Price's career.
Boris's brief encounter took place in the stairwell, and was in the nature of what used to be known round these parts as a knee trembler, often involving a Woodbine being stubbed out and placed behind the ear for later, post-coital, use when running for the last bus.
Bar the Woodbine and the bus, that was Boris's often told story, and so closely did he stick to the early 60s British kitchen-sink movie template, a pregnancy ensued, which is where Boris parts company with the British New Wave, and instead of Hylda Baker dealing with matters in black and white in some back-street terrace, his daughter Anna, "who will always be my princess," was born.
I thought this was all fairly familiar territory, but maybe viewers hanging on after the X Factor have short memories. They certainly seem to have trouble remembering how much better original versions of songs sounded, before being mangled on the show.
Piers also refreshed us on Boris's prosecution for non-payment of tax. The case hinged on the question of the tennis player's residency. He claimed the room he kept in his sister's house for his visits back to Germany was not his primary home — what we tax experts call a reverse Jacqui Smith.
The really interesting stuff, though, was about the tennis, the inescapable conclusion being that Boris's problems with drugs, booze, and mythical broom cupboards stemmed from being too young to cope with a Wimbledon championship at the age of 17, and from the rigours of the ATP tour.
"When you won Wimbledon, you became instantly more attractive to the opposite sex," said Piers, lobbing one into his favourite area, between the navel and the kneecap, "It must have been like being in the chocolate shop with unlimited money." Boris's strategy was to despatch this kind of question to the back of the court, with a raised eyebrow, and a twinkle that said, "I did OK, thanks for asking."
No wonder he is Britain's favourite German (albeit at the head of a very short list, as he himself said). He dealt with the scandals with good humour, and was as revelatory as this kind of programme would allow about the tennis. After his first Wimbledon triumph, he said, he was haunted by the thought that it would be his "15 minutes of fame," so the second was more important to him. His description of the wobbly legs that occasionally afflicted him on match points served as an eloquent explanation of why, more than any other sport, a tennis match is not over until it is over.
If it is difficult to find anything new to say about Boris Becker, you would think it well nigh impossible in the case of Muhammad Ali, but a documentary on the History channel, Becoming Muhammad Ali, was full of fresh insight, and footage I had not seen before, and I write as a sucker for Ali material.
There was lots of stuff from the Cassius Clay yearsThey, including a great sequence of Ali chasing Archie Moore's car down the road taunting him, and the revelation that Ali's famous photo-shoot with The Beatles nearly never happened because John Lennon believed Sonny Liston would beat Ali, and thought it judicious for the Fab Four to be photographed with the winner.
None of which answers the question of Boris's hair, which these days is slicked back in the style of Jack Nicholson in Chinatown. Neat, smart, and comfortably settled down, it is a metaphor for the man himself.
