I was much taken with Paul Kimmage's "big interview" with Maria Sharapova. It was blurbed on the front of the Sunday Times sports section: "Sharapova on finding love and posing for Playboy". As a tennis fan - well, Maria fan, okay - I turned straight to pages 20 and 21.
It began in the most excitable, breathless, fan-with-a-typewriter student newspaper fashion with an imaginary conversation between Kimmage and a friend:
"I've never felt so embarrassed... one minute I'm in complete control and behaving like a consummate professional and the next ... It slipped out."
"What!"
"The question I would never have asked Federer or Nadal."
"What was the question?"
"Would you consider posing in the raw?"
"What!"
"I asked Sharapova if she would ever consider getting naked for Playboy."
I was about to give up at this point - having discovered that the blurb was, as I suspected, more than a little manufactured - but I'm glad I continued into the third set because the meat of the article, a lengthy look at the relationship between Maria and her father, was fascinating and superbly written.
I know Ms Sharapova is a star. On this eveidence I think Mr Kimmage, a former professional cyclist and twice winner of sports-interviewer-of-the-year awards by the Sports Journalists' Association, should have star status too.
