SUCCESS at last for our campaign to get Scottish people into the Royal Box.
There he was for the Murray-Federer match, along with five people whose first name seemed to be HRH and one called Viscount: Sir Alex Ferguson, who famously turned up with Sean Connery at one of Murray's press conferences at the US Open three years ago.
We approached the authorities in triumphant mood and told them to admit that they had only invited Fergie under pressure from the Herald. But they claimed, somewhat implausibly it has to be said, that they were going to invite him anyway because he's quite well known. There was another face from the world of football in Thierry Henry, though we suspect he was only invited because he looks like umpire Kader Nooni. For years now, Nooni has been known to members of the British press as Thierry, but this year, with his voice deeper than ever, he has become known to his growing army of admirers as the Barry White of tennis.
Faced with such a smorgasbord of superstardom, one Scottish member of the press corps at Wimbledon had a rather unusual target. He emerged proudly clutching a selfie of himself and Olly Murs. Utterly tragic behaviour.
ON that subject, one of the great successes of this year's Championships has been the prohibition of selfie sticks. If they had been allowed, we would have been guaranteed daily arguments about them. As it was, only as we went into the final weekend did your diarists hear the first complaint about the ban, on the train from Earl's Court to Southfields. "It's, like, ridiculous," said one girl, speaking in Uptalk, which is, like, that originally Australian habit of going up at the end of a sentence so it sounds, sort of, like a question? "It's just so random. What's wrong with selfie sticks?"
"I know," her friend replied. "It's so Wimbledon. But I suppose they are a little bit annoying." Aye, just a little bit.
WHAT's in a name? Roger Federer is quizzed about the deeper meaning of his children's names. "To me, the name Lenny is short for Leonard, and the name Leo is a shortened name for Leonard," his interrogator asks. "Can you explain the naming of your sons?" "I can," replied the Swiss. "I just like both names. And my wife, as well. It didn't have more meaning than that. So it was very simple."
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