Hurrah for Ryan Giggs

Perhaps this post should be entitled "Hurrah for Ant & Dec" and whoever else has been caught fiddling the results of television phone-in programmes. Last night's elaborate BBC Sports Personality of the Year show was decided by popular public voting and not brown-nosing or politically correct TV Executives.

This show lost all credibility for me a few years back when Zara Phillips "won" for some Horse-riding event. That was then of course, when lip-service could be paid to Joe Public and an Executive decision could be taken. My cynical head was telling me that Jenson Button would take the prize yesterday, so I was delighted to see Giggsy get it for 20 years of sporting contribution rather than last year's performances per se. The Manchester United fan-base obviously played it's part in this and the organisers will probably be more careful about the shortlist in future years to avoid the result becoming unreasonably distorted, but at least it looks like it will be democratic.

The look on Jenson's Button face as he was awarded runner-up was a classic. Fine performance though his was last year, he started in a car with a technical advantage and had practically sown the title up by the time rival teams had made the modifications they needed to match the Brawn cars and start to race on a level playing field. Formula One has also had a disproportionate number of winners in the past, so Jenson will need to do it again to make it stick.

David Haye was in with a shout but it's too early for him and he needs to learn to be a little more humble and perhaps more gracious, although I remain a big fan. Jessica Ennis grabbed third spot for her Heptathlon Gold and undoubtedly benefitted from the show being beamed live from her home city of Sheffield. Speaking of which, the venue (Sheffield Arena) looked far to big for a television programme and the people at the back must have been bored stiff. It was bad enough that the BBC felt the need to get Beth Tweddle to tumble her way down the isle to be interviewed but Eddie Jordan playing drums on the intro to their sales-pitch for Jenson Button was really scraping the barrel.

The video links were a bit hit and miss as well. The England cricket team looked like they had been assembled at the point of a gun to listen to them get the Team of the Year! If the Ireland rugby team were good enough to be considered in the running for it, it's a traversty that they didn't get it for a long overdue and triumphant Grand Slam. The cricketers got the award for beating a below par Australia. We did at least get some entertainment when Jose-Maria Olazabal presented the Lifetine Achievement award to his friend Seve Ballesteros. Olazabal gave a long and very sincere speech before the pair stood up from what looked like a three-piece suite in Ballesteros' home. Seve is battling with brain cancer which I took to mean he is still very ill - I had thought he had made a complete recovery from having had a tumour removed well over a year ago.