SO who is the oldest debutant at Wimbledon this year?
Fifty-seven-year-old John Inverdale must be in with a shout, at least if you count commentators. The BBC man is at the Championships for the 30th year, but only commentated on a match for the first time on Monday. Speaking on the Chris Evans Show on Radio 2, Inverdale presented this as a promotion, but in reality he has been bumped off the evening highlights programme, now compered by Clare Balding, with expert assistance from John McEnroe and Lindsay Davenport.
After Inverdale made the notorious "she'll never be a looker" remark two years ago with reference to Marion Bartoli, it will be interesting to see which players he is let loose on over the course of the fortnight. There is no truth in the rumour that he has already refused to commentate on Ana Ivanovic on the grounds that she does not live up to his exacting standards of beauty.
Second-oldest debutant? Possibly Mark Donaldson, who says he's 38 although we have our doubts. Once a Radio Forth sports presenter and the matchday announcer at Tynecastle, Donaldson, 41, now works for ESPN and is based in Connecticut.
Away from his work on tennis, golf, boxing and a host of other sports, the 43-year-old from Penicuik is co-writing the autobiography of former Scotland international Stevie Nicol.
The butt of jokes about his stupidity from colleagues such as Alan Hansen, Nicol was at times his own worst enemy. There was the time he was in a branch of Boots, for example, and stepped on to a weighing machine. "Quick! Quick! Something's wrong!," he shouted out to his wife, or so the story goes. "I've put on a stone in the last two days!" She then pointed out to him that he was carrying two heavy shopping bags.
More baffling changes at SW19. The locker rooms have doubled in size, there are additional physiotherapy and massage areas, and they have ice baths in there. So warm were conditions at SW19 on Tuesday the younger diarist caused a scene when he broke in there to throw himself in.
The press corps at Wimbledon is little more than an overgrown bunch of schoolchildren. Evidence of this is a puerile obsession with the word "balls". Apparently Andy Murray wore the wrong shorts one day at Queen's which caused rather too much chafing on his upper thigh when he put one in there for his second serve.
Liam Broady didn't fluff his lines in the first round at Wimbledon on Monday. Rather unlike his Davis Cup debut in Glasgow in March, when he endured the bizarre initiation rite of making a speech in front of thousands of people. " It was just a rambling to be honest. I nattered on about nothing." The diarists know the feeling.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article