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What channel gets to show what sport is a matter not only of national interest, but quite often of government concern.It’s fair to ask why. Quite a lot of sport that hogs the airwaves has little public following and offers not much to look at.I wish someone would explain television golf to me; it’s undoubtedly enjoyable to play, but most of it on television consists of a camera flailing wildly about the sky, pretending to follow an entirely invisible ball. And yet this is obviously something of wide public interest in the way that, say, events in the arts, in business or in industry are assumed to be too marginal to be worth covering in detail.If you proposed to a television executive, for instance, that they might like to broadcast Bayreuth’s new production of The Ring of the Nibelung in total, they would think you had gone mad. But that truly is an event, and can anyone suppose that the number of people interested in Wagner in this country is less than the number gripped by hours and hours of crown-green bowling?The primacy of sport in this country is overwhelming; art, to a very large extent, only gets on the telly when it is made to look like a snooker championship, and serious artists, writers and musicians are forced to compete for a spurious gold medal. Half an hour of Alfred Brendel playing a Beethoven piano sonata? I don’t think so Young Musician of the Year? Well, maybe. The badminton world cup? Would 20 hours be enough?So why am I looking forward to the Olympics so much? Well, quite simple I like the certainty that there is nothing on the telly. For four whole weeks, like the rest of the nation, to be able to switch off your television set and go and do something more interesting instead.

And not to have the sense, either, that you are missing anything which anybody else is that interested in.There’s nothing nicer than knowing for certain, in the wake of Big Brother, that when you go out for dinner you are not going to be bored by anyone saying, “Did you see that programme on the telly last night?” No one is going to start talking about how well our boys are doing in the rifle-shooting, or the hockey, or the yachting, for one simple reason. In the vast majority of sports, we’re not that interested.The great mystery is why television executives give in so readily, as if there were no argument to be had.hensherp dircon.co.uk
More from Philip Hensher. It is, we’ll all agree I’m sure, important for local residents to feel included in local government. That’s why my heart always lifts when Lambeth Council’s full-colour newspaper plops through my door. This month, I was particularly keen to browse though the dazzlingly white, reassuringly hefty pages, in search of the article that would officially inform me that all of the one o’clock clubs in the London Borough of Lambeth were to be closed down forthwith. It is, we’ll all agree I’m sure, important for local residents to feel included in local government.

That’s why my heart always lifts when Lambeth Council’s full-colour newspaper plops through my door. This month, I was particularly keen to browse though the dazzlingly white, reassuringly hefty pages, in search of the article that would officially inform me that all of the one o’clock clubs in the London Borough of Lambeth were to be closed down forthwith.
Sadly, such an article did not appear to be worthy of inclusion, which is odd, because it certainly is of concern to many parents in the borough, parents whose council tax pays for the high- grade paper on which the council celebrates its successes. Anyway, the story (gleaned unofficially via my childminder from the denizens of the one o’clock clubs, who will lose their rights, they have been warned, if they speak to the press) is that the one o’clock clubs were, until recently, run by the parks and recreation department, but were recently turned over to the education department. The education department, in its wisdom, has decided that the one o’clock clubs “serve no educational function”, and so they are going.My son, however, has learned quite a lot in Lambeth’s one o’clock clubs – primarily about playing with other children and sharing with them. He has also learned about tidying up after himself, as the people who run the club we go to tend to be firmer and less indulgent than I am. He has also learned that the wider world can be friendly, nurturing and creative.

Our one o’clock club, in Larkhall Park, SW8, has certainly never suffered from over-funding. But the decorative work undertaken by the staff and pupils is an education in itself.While it is my son, rather than me, who has led the way in insisting that we visit the club, it also provides an important refuge for mothers, particularly the type who are alone with their children all day, and in a small home on a limited budget.I looked too, in my Lambeth primer, for news of the local adventure playground. This playground, as I have mentioned in these pages before, has for a long time been abandoned and derelict, a neglected resource in an area that needs such resources.Therefore, when work on clearing and mending the playground began early this summer, there was much excitement in the household A card proclaimed an open day, and along we all went. Here we learnt that the refurbishment was not being undertaken by the council, but by a group of young locals who had been granted a three-month lease, but no funding. They raised some money on the open day, and have continued to improve the playground.They have also attracted the interest of two local residents who also happen to be the architects behind the Millennium Wheel. They are submitting a design for the complete rebuilding of the playground free of charge, in the hope that this project will be given permanent status and funding. The only problem is that the land on which the playground sits is quite clearly a prime developers’ site It is rumoured to be worth anything up to £25m.