Tom Humphries

As of this afternoon, Tom Humphries is officially one-third of the way through the promotional schedule for his new book, Laptop Dancing And The Nanny Goat Mambo: A Sportswriter’s Year, a diary-format account of 2002 in sport as seen through the eyes of – as he variously describes himself – a “hack”, or “a fan with a typewriter”, or a sportswriter.

One-third finished, that is, insofar as Humphries has only agreed to do three interviews in the first place. It transpires that the author of Irish sport’s most famous interview is deeply ambivalent about being on the business end of a dictaphone. “ I’ll get used to it, you know, by the time I do the last one tomorrow,” he says, in his characteristic quiet, smiling murmur. “Hopefully the last one. There’s this poor woman in the publisher’s trying to get me to do lots of things, but I just… I just don’t feel comfortable doing it. I think hacks should stay in their newspaper offices.”

Luckily for the poor woman in the publisher’s, Tom Humphries is the kind of “hack” who is so beloved that his book will largely find its way into the hands and hearts of his readers all by itself. In his Irish Times reportage and Monday-morning Locker Room column, he can swing from sober and incisive critique, to passages of breathtaking linguistic virtuosity and near-lyricism, to the kind of slapstick comedy you really only find in a kookily hyper-real world like the one he gets paid to document. He is the kind of sportswriter who is read by people who otherwise know and care little about sport, is respected by other journalists and is positively near-deified by your thinking man’s Irish sports fanatic (certainly those of this writer’s acquaintance, anyway). Much of his sportswriter’s job, as he details with gruesome black-comic candour in Laptop Dancing, may be about standing around in the locker rooms and the airports and the rain in search of “nanny goats” (rhyming slang for “quotes”), but Tom Humphries seems to have made it his own personal remit to document the moments of human greatness that are revealed in sport, “to praise and to puncture” great sporting men and women, and with each new match report (to paraphrase Humphries himself) to gleefully watch them as they write another line in the poem of their career.

HOT PRESS: What’s your own background in sport?

TOM HUMPHRIES: From the time I could walk I was playing something, badly. I remember when I was a kid in England, my grandfather bought me a hurley stick, and it kind of fascinated me, so I taught myself how to play hurling badly. And then when I came back to Dublin with my family, having an English accent, there was a desperate need to prove that I was more Irish than the Irish. So I took up Gaelic football as well. I was one of those kids that was kind of really crap but enthusiastic at everything. You know. The sad bastard who turns up every Saturday, even if it’s lashing rain and there’s no chance of a game.

HP: So is wanting to be a sportswriter like wanting to be a music writer? Were you one of those kids who read magazines obsessively and saved them and collected them into little stacks and stuff?

TH: No, not really... (laughs) I have a friend, David Walsh, who works for the Sunday Times, and from the time he was seven he wanted to be a sportswriter. Like, it never struck me to be a sportswriter. I wasn’t obsessive about… stats, or anything. You know. I just liked playing football and hurling, and a bit of soccer, and that was it. The idea that you could make a living in sport despite being crap at sport, hadn’t occurred to me.

HP: So when did it begin to cross your mind that sportswriting might be a thing to do?

TH: It was late ’89, early 1990, and I had been running a kind of co-op that went broke, so I was unemployed again, and somebody suggested it to me. Ireland had qualified for the World Cup the next year, and everyone was going to be going away to cover that, so there might be an opening to cover GAA for a few weeks and get some work out it. So I did something for In Dublin magazine on Dublin hurling, and used that to get into the Tribune in the spring of 1990, and they sort of let me do a few pieces that summer, and I stuck with it until 1992, when I got a staff job. It kind of went from there.

HP: Can you remember the first piece of sports journalism you ever read, that kind of turned a certain light on in your mind?

TH: (Immediately) Yeah. It was around 1988, and I was out of work, and I was in Donaghmede shopping centre, and I picked a book up out of one of those bargain bins for 50 pence, by a guy called Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post, called How Life Imitates The World Series, about baseball. I didn’t know anything about baseball, but… I just couldn’t leave it there with a title like that. So I came home and read it and went, Jeez, it’s not all just reports! It was written in that kind of peculiarly American style of sportswriting. So that was the first time I ever thought about it. And then, around the same time, David Walsh published a whole issue of Magill magazine which profiled the Dublin football team of the 1970s, called The Boys Of The Hill, and they had really nice photos by a guy called Billy Stickland. That was kind of a sensation to me. That was the first time I thought, you know, “Maybe there’s a different way of doing this. Maybe I can do it.”

HP: You write with so much fondness in the book about, as you call it, that peculiarly American style of sportswriting, from “the stogie-fumed era of what is, essentially, a minor American art form”.

TH: I think what I like about it is, there’s a hugely disciplined style of writing there, but the trick is… It’s like watching Fred Astaire tap-dancing. It just looks so easy, the way guys like Red Smith [Pulitzer-winning columnist from the NY Herald-Tribune], or Jim Murray [Pulitzer-winning columnist & co-founder of Sports Illustrated], do it. I read somewhere where Red Smith just worked for hours and hours on a column. Like, it was an eight-hour day doing his column. The next day, though, it looks as though it just came of the top of his head: all these smart one-liners, and off-the-wall descriptions. And he had this great discipline in terms of how short his sentences were, and how newspaper-oriented he was, this kind of easy style he had.

HP: What about your writing? Do you labour over sentences? (Grinny silence). Is it important to you to write beautifully? (Embarrassed laughter) Is it not something you consciously think about?

TH: No. I don’t. I can’t stand reading my own stuff, so I write it and off it goes, and if it works out OK… Usually you read it on a Monday morning and you just cringe, so a long time ago I just gave up on the paper altogether. (Laughs) I never read the Irish Times anymore. It’s too depressing.

HP: Are you the sort of person who must have a deadline in order to get something finished?

TH: Yeah. Yeah. I have to have a deadline, and I have to be about an hour away from it, you know, with something that’s going to take three hours to write.

HP: Oh dear God.

TH: And I just have to… I kind of have to be in a panic, to write it. That’s why I kind of like going to World Cups, because the match ends and they want the stuff five minutes later. That suits me. Sometimes they send you out to the States for a week, and they say, “We want one really good feature. Take your time over it.” …That just kills me.

HP: Do you think sportswriting in 2003 deserves the rather crap reputation it seems to have? For, firstly, being cliché-ridden and generally dreadfully written, and secondly, for thriving principally on scandal and being out to get people?

TH: Yeah, I think so. Because in a way we let the tabloids dictate the pace. As a sort of profession we’re not really… trusted, or respected by the people we cover. And by and large the standard of sports editing has tended to be poor, and sportswriting hasn’t changed in 20 or 30 years. Sports editors don’t demand much of people. A lot of the Sunday writers are very good, because they’re writing creative, really good feature-driven stuff, but a lot of the day-to-day news stuff I don’t think sort of stretches itself. There aren’t enough guys just doing a good, interesting daily column, where they go out and find something interesting to write about.

TH: And the other problem is, I just don’t think we’ve adapted to TV at all. We still sit in press boxes and people have an argument over whether the free kick was taken in the 63rd or 62nd – and to the guy reading the report on the train 24 hours later, it doesn’t matter, he just wants to read an interesting impression of the match.

But I think there’s an opportunity there. We should just say, “Okay, television does all the reporting now. Maybe we should step back and just comment on things.” Of course the only problem with doing that, is that the tradeoff between getting access to people and making objective critical comment about them, is the same as it is in the music business. The band you want to interview next week don’t appreciate it if you slag off the new album this week.

HP: Have you found that that’s gotten worse over the last 10 years?

TH: Yeah, definitely. In professional sports, anyway. The reward comes a lot quicker, and a lot bigger, and players are surrounded by PR people from an early age, who sort of tell them, “You don’t need to talk to this guy, and you don’t need to talk to that guy.” And the reaction to any sort of criticism is hugely exaggerated. It’s just harder to talk to people on a one-to-one basis, and have a decent conversation with them. You get soccer players who want their PR person to sit in, and there’s a list of questions they don’t want you to ask, and all that kind of crap…

HP: Can you see why they might want the PR person to sit in though? When you see what the UK tabloids get up to, for example…

TH: Yeah. I just don’t know why they just don’t stop dealing with tabloids. Altogether (laughs).

HP: This is the big question, I think.

TH: You get a guy who’s done over in a tabloid, and the next week he sells his side of the story to them… What’s the point of it? I mean, there are a few guys who just don’t talk to the tabloids. And they seem to get on fine. It’s not a necessary staff of life if you’re a soccer player.

HP: You ghostwrote Niall Quinn’s autobiography largely while on the road at the World Cup last year. I’ve not met Niall Quinn, but I have to say there were passages in the book that sounded decidedly like you, not anybody else. How does one go about writing words that are meant to be coming out of someone else’s mouth?

TH: I have to say, it was kind of easy. Niall has a photographic memory, so when you’d check on facts, he’d be bang on the button – and he’s quite articulate anyway, so a lot of it was just transcription and tidying it up into some sort of prose. In the end there was so much time pressure on with that book, I didn’t really worry that much about not sounding like Niall. Because he can write, and he is articulate, and he’s thought about the game a lot. I don’t think it’s that much different to what he would have done if he’d had the time to tidy it all up himself.

HP: Do you reckon ghostwriting compromises a journalist at all?

TH: Em… Yeah. I wouldn’t have done it if he wasn’t packing it in, really. I knew he was finishing his Irish career, and that I wouldn’t have to write about him as a player anymore. I don’t think you can enter into a commercial relationship with someone you’re going to have to cover in future. I knew he was finishing and the World Cup was the end of it, so I was quite happy to do it on that basis. But I think, yeah, you would be compromised.

HP: If Roy Keane came to you tomorrow, and said, “Listen, I’d really like to do another book, and I’d like you to be the ghostwriter,” and meanwhile he’s carrying on at Man U. What could you do.

TH: I’d probably resign from sportswriting. I’d say, “Ok, show me the money.” (Laughs under breath). I’d ask you to forget we ever had this conversation. (Laughs at length). I dunno. Roy Keane kind of fascinates me. I just think… there’s a great book still left in him. Not to run down Eamon Dunphy’s book. I just think when he gets to the end of his career, and he has some… time to look back with more perspective, and talk about some things that, you know, he probably doesn’t want to talk about now… I just think there’s a brilliant book in the guy. He’s smart, and he’s… He’s got a lot more to tell. It’d be a good one to do, but eh… (laughs). Given how badly things turned out after the interview last year, I doubt if he’ll come calling…

HP: Ah, but you’ve seen, and interviewed, him since.

TH: Ah yeah. He’s fine.

HP: It was really cool to read in the book how calm he was, on the day your interview appeared: how he read it on your laptop that day, and was unfailingly polite and decent the whole time.

TH: Yeah. Yeah. Cos the easiest person to blame is the media person, if they’re in any way involved in these things.

HP: In fact, it came as a surprise, because it was so at odds with how he’s typically written about. In the UK media in particular, he was demonised to the point of racism, I felt.

TH: Yeah. Yeah, I thought so too. The way they portrayed him as this kind of raging, drinking, irresponsible – the next word always had to be “Irishman”… Yeah, I felt very sorry for him. They made a caricature out of him. He’s certainly one of the brightest sportspeople I’ve met, and one of the most passionate and committed. He’s one of the few people where you go along, and see doing their job, and he does it 100% every time. That’s rare enough.

And it did impress me that, when we went to the World Cup, and when we did that interview, he was probably the only person there, of all of us, who was actually there with the intention of winning the thing. The rest of us – journalists and players – were there to have a good World Cup, and to enjoy the World Cup, and being there was the pinnacle. He was there to do it as a job of work. And you would be impressed with the way he goes about things, they way he’s – although I’m sure it didn’t look like it if you were a tabloid reader – taken control of his life in the last few years, kind of buckled himself down. And people said, “He let the country down coming down coming home,” and stuff, but… I’m sure for him it was a huge step to get that plane home all on his own, and not go knocking on Mick McCarthy’s door, you know, asking for a second chance, or asking for another chat, or whatever. He just turned and walked away. There was a good bit of dignity in that, I thought.

HP: There is an argument that runs: if Roy really wanted to play the World Cup, he could have made it happen.

TH: I think in a few years when everyone looks back on it they’ll see that if Mick wanted Roy there he could have found a way for it to happen, you know, and if Roy wanted to be there… he could have as well but it seemed to come down to Mick wanting a public expression of contriteness from Roy in that interview with Tommie Gorman. And you know, if it was that small a thing, either of them could have solved it if they wanted to. I think it was a kind of stags-butting-horns-in-the-glen kind of thing by the end. It wasn’t conducive to reasonable people settling it reasonably.

HP: Do you understand Roy’s decision to end his international career regardless of new management, but stick with Man U?

TH: Yeah. I didn’t at first. At first I thought he probably just didn’t fancy coming back, and phasing into a new management structure, and mending all the bridges, et cetera. Having seen him play since, I think he’s not the player he was, and… I’d imagine, the way his brain works, that he’d prefer to be a good player for 25 matches a year than a mediocre player for 40 or 45 matches a year. And I know he’s been quite complimentary about Brian Kerr ever since, and I know Brian Kerr felt that he was genuine when he spoke to him about wanting to come back, so I think it was probably again a lot of distortion and a lot of bad timing on Roy’s part and Man United’s part, when it all came out. But I feel it was probably genuine.

HP: On the other hand, whatever happened to the idea that playing for your country is the most honourable thing a sportsman can do?

TH: Well, that’s… that’s kind of in a way down to sportswriters.

HP: Is it?

TH: Yeah. We let them get away with that kind of thing for years.

HP: Let who get away with what?

TH: Sportspeople. We say to them, “Is this the greatest day of your life?” And they go, “Yeahhh, it’s the greatest day of my life.” And you know: “Would you do anything to wear the green jersey?” “Oh, yeahhh, I would do anything…” But you know, in any walk of life – like, you’d love to work for the New York Times, but that doesn’t mean that after two years of working for the New York Times you don’t get completely pissed off with it. It’s got to be the same as playing for Ireland. The first dozen times, it must be a great thrill, and then… people must start getting under your skin, and the way things are done must start annoying you… (laughs) They’re only human, after all. There’s lots of guys have walked away from international football and it hasn’t been a hanging offence. Steve Staunton said he was retiring after the World Cup and that he doesn’t want to play international football anymore, and he plays on for Aston Villa, and there aren’t parties out with guns looking to shoot him. It’s just that everything that Keane does, I think, seems larger than life.

HP: Yes. But I’d contrast that with the passage in your book where Andy Comerford is speaking to the Kilkenny squad after they’ve won the All-Ireland hurling final, and saying, “Always remember you are Kilkenny hurlers…”

TH: Oh, yeah, yeah.

HP: And there’s so much pride there, and it’s so much about representing where you’re from.

TH: Mm-hmm.

HP: Why does that not exist in international football in this country?

TH: I think it does, to some extent. But I think when you become a professional, and it’s part of your job – if you’re Matt Holland or somebody, where you work all week in football, and then you come over here and you’re a footballer in a green shirt – you’re not thinking all the time, “This is for Ireland…” Footballers, I suppose, because they make so much money, and they live in little housing estates with other footballers – you know, six houses in a circle, looking at each other… They live in a different world to a guy who plays hurling for Kilkenny and goes home every Saturday and plays for his club, and who’ll play for Comerford until he retires, basically, and the people who coached him, still coach him at senior level. There’s a different level of contact there.

TH: When you move away from Ireland at fifteen, and go to be a professional footballer, for a few years all you’re worried about is survival, and, you know, whether you’re going to have to come back with your tail between your legs. And if you get onto an international team at youth level or something, it’s an honour, but it’s also part of the ladder up to surviving and making a living out of it. I think you just develop a more pragmatic view of things. I’m sure when they walk out and see those green flags everywhere, it… stirs something, but…

Of course, the rate at which they then drop out of friendly games because they have little niggles, or lip infections, god love them…

HP: I find that so funny about football. Then you see those adverts for hurling, where the blokes are covered in mud, and they have no teeth, and they’re beat up to within an inch of their life, and they’re still like, “Yeahhh!!” That’s absolutely the polar opposite to what football seems to have become…

TH: Yeah, they won’t show up if their tan isn’t right…

HP: Is this part of why you feel the GAA must always be amateur?

TH: Yeah. I think so. Because as soon as it becomes a matter of money, it becomes a matter of who’ll offer you twenty quid more, two hundred quid more, whatever it is, and people start moving around, and then the GAA is just another product, to other sports product. What makes it what it is, is that sense of rootedness that people have, and… you know, the idea of coming from Kilnamuck or Tuam or somewhere, and playing all your life there, and putting it on the… Well, not putting the place on the map, that would be to overstate it, but for what you do to be part of the community’s perception of itself, and the way it expresses itself. It’s different. I notice guys just feel different about it.

HP: The other argument, though, is that people who are brilliant at something, and who put everything into it, surely deserve to be paid a living wage, if not a good one.

TH: I can see how somebody would feel that way, but I think there’s something beautiful about somebody just doing something because they like it, and enjoy it, and give what time they have to it, and the chance to do that, is… I mean, DJ Carey would be the prime example. You know. Shouldn’t he get paid? He’s the best hurler in several generations or whatever. But the chance to grow up, where DJ grew up, in Gowran, and be what he is, wouldn’t exist in 30 or 40 years’ time if the sport went professional and there’s a group of six counties who dominate it, by virtue of what money they had. That whole fabric would just wear away. That’s what I like about it: you know, seeing people bust their gut and display astonishing skill, and they just do it cos they enjoy it. They’re not going to go on strike next year.

HP: Do you reckon it’s time for Croke Park to be available for soccer matches?

TH: Ah yeah, I have no problem with it being available for anything. What I have a problem with, is the sort of Mary Harney-like demands that the GAA just open everything up, Croke Park and all its other pitches included. The GAA is a small amateur organisation – it’s big in the Irish context, but in world sport, it’s tiny. And I don’t see that anybody outside the GAA has a right to put pressure on it to give the world’s biggest professional game, a home. If soccer hasn’t built a stadium after all this, ostensibly that’s soccer’s problem. And it’s just the GAA’s opportunity – if it wants to – to rent out Croke Park, ’cos it had the savvy and the guts, as a non-professional organisation, to build the place. But I don’t think there’s a big moral principle involved. It wouldn’t bother me to see soccer played there. I don’t think it’d bother most GAA people.

HP: Really?

TH: No. I think – again, partly through the media – there’s this distorted image of a typical GAA person, as being totally anti-soccer, and that it’s a big issue with them, and that they’d worry about their parents rolling over in their graves if there was a soccer match being played in Croke Park. And I think 90 percent of GAA people wouldn’t give a shit what was played in Croke Park. They just get on with their lives. And watch Man United on the big screen on a Sunday afternoon, when they come in from a hurling match.

HP: The apex of the book’s account of the year was without question the day you called Montueswednesday: the “day” Roy Keane was sent home. What went through your head when the other writers came knocking on your door with the news? In the book, you said your first thought was, “This could be my fault somehow.”

TH: Yeah. I got this… my blood turned cold. You see, it wasn’t explained to me that he was being sent home because of what had happened at the meeting. I just thought he was being sent home because he had done an interview… with me. It didn’t become clear for maybe an hour or two that there’d been a meeting, and this big… tirade from Roy, so I was sort of wandering around thinking I was more implicated than I was, and wondering whether my kids would have to watch me burned in effigy up at their school. Then it transpired that Roy had gone off like a bomb at the meeting, so… I was kind of quite relieved to hear that, cos I became more marginal as the story unfolded. I was completely taken aback by the whole thing. The phone didn’t stop ringing in the hotel room all night. I had to keep it open for the paper, you know. And these weird things kept happening… Australian TV and stuff, ringing the room. It was just completely bizarre. While I filed away, working. Five sleepless nights. I nearly took up smoking again.

HP: What, do you think, should the role of the media be in a situation like that?

TH: I suppose… (thinks) We didn’t do it, really. After we left Saipan, Mick McCarthy said, “We won’t be taking any more questions about Roy Keane.” And we all basically went along with that, for three or four days. The biggest Irish sports story ever, and we all went, “Okay,” and nobody asked him anything, for three or four days, and then it turned out he’d sold a column to one of the Sunday papers. That was kind of annoying. But we’ve only ourselves to blame, like. News journalists wouldn’t have just sat there and said, “He doesn’t want to talk about it, so just leave him alone.” But there was this feeling that – we all travel with the team, and even though we’re in the media, we’re also kind of part of it, and you can’t upset them too much, and all that. So, maybe, a bit more distance in future, a bit more aggression, wouldn’t… go amiss.

HP: As you pointed out in the book, the Roy Keane story is easily the “biggest” story that you’ve covered, but the Michelle Smith story of a few years ago is really the one that cut to the heart of the way sport is seen and dealt with in Ireland. To what extent do you think we’ve learned anything from that whole experience?

TH: I don’t think we’ve learnt anything from it. I think it was always thought that if Michelle got caught – or if it came out, as it did – that we would do what the Canadians did after Ben Jonson got caught: there was a massive public enquiry, and they set up a body to oversee ethics in sport in Canada, and they really looked at what they were doing with sport. But when it all ended with Michelle, it was never spoken about again. It was completely swept under the carpet. The only comment I hear, now, is: if somebody else is swimming and gets caught, people say, “Oh, she was only doing what the rest of them were doing.” Which, A, I don’t think is true, and B is no moral justification anyway.

Generally, I just find the Olympics depressing, now. I can’t believe in athletics any more. And once you take athletics out of it, it’s all… beach volleyball, and I don’t care about that... And swimming… I don’t know if I had much interest in it before Michelle Smith, but I read so much about it in those two years that I have no interest in it really, except where I’m wondering which of the journalists is going to put their hand up to ask the first drugs question.

So no, I don’t think we wanted to learn anything from it. And I don’t think we did – other than what Ireland and sport is about: it’s just a kind of celebration, you know, the four or five good nights out everyone had watching her. People didn’t really care that much about swimming, or whether swimming would be a pure sport for their kids to go into. We just… had our little day in the sun.

HP: You came under a lot of extremely personal pressure for speaking out at the time, didn’t you?

TH: Yeah, there was a lot of it alright. It was kind of a really hard three years for the journalists who asked questions about it. There was a lot of hate mail, and… phone calls, and… there was sort of hassle at work… I suppose if you’re a news journalist, you get used to that kind of thing, but working in the Toy Department (giggles) it’s all bells and whistles, usually. And em… having people sort of abusing you in the street, or… Somebody rang me up one day and said if they saw me in the street they’d run me over… (laughs)

HP: You said you had some hassle at work? What did you mean?

TH: Em… (deciding whether to proceed). I suppose I resigned from the paper for a while. It was one of those things where I spoke to… a few different people, and afterward I thought, “I’ll really show them.” So I resigned. And the paper just said, “Okay, off you go.” And I said (little kid voice), “That’s not what I meant!” (Giggles). “You’re supposed to come crawling back to me!”… Ah, it all got sorted out…

HP: That was a hell of a poker hand.

TH: Yeah. It went badly wrong. Suddenly I was like, “Hm. I’m never going to work again.”

HP: There’s a story in the book about the retirement of Malcolm Brody from the Belfast Telegraph, at the age of 77, after covering 13 World Cups. You said that everybody’s great unasked question about this accomplishment was, “What the fuck would you still be doing covering a thirteenth World Cup in the first place?”

TH: Yeah, yeah. He’s a nice man, but you do think that. You know. Why would you be arsed? (Laughs uproariously). After 13 World Cups?

HP: Why would you not be arsed?

TH: Well, the point I was making, in his defence, was, you know, it’s better than sitting on a couch in Belfast watching it, but… I dunno, to be honest (laughs a lot). There’s a lot of things wrong with Belfast, but sitting on a couch watching the World Cup when you’re in your mid-70s, rather than chasing David Connolly around for an exhibition of… his new sulky face… (fits of giggles). It just seems like a more dignified way to go out.

HP: So what do you think you’re going to fancy doing at 77?

TH: Oh, I dunno… (gallows expression). That’s the next question: what’s your big idea for getting out? Sportswriters are all like prisoners, you know, they all have these plans for escaping from Colditz… that never come to fruition… There was a craze there during the early internet days. Everybody was going to launch websites that would make them millionaires, and they’d retire... (grins). Em. I don’t really have any plan, except to live off my kids. I’m gonna hothouse them, and sponge off them.

HP: What’s the most recent thing that’s gotten you newly excited? What are you into at the moment?

TH: Em… (thinks). The National League Hurling Final. It was a great match. It was one of those things: there was hardly anybody in Croke Park, and we sort of thought they’re just going to go through the motions, now, for the afternoon. And it just turned out to be this cracking game – these guys just kind of laid into each other. Their skills just kind of absolutely… I take hurling for granted sometimes. And then some days, you look, and the skill is just astonishing, and the things they do…

You never know, really. Sometimes you just go along to things, and everyone’s really excited, and… you just can’t get interested. I remember seeing Michael Johnson breaking the world record in Atlanta, and I was talking to somebody, we were having coffee, and he ran past, and I don’t think either of us bothered to look up to even see if he had fallen over (laughs). And then there are days where I see two kids in a three-legged race, and I’m just so... I feel like the meaning of life has just gone past.