Working in sports television is rather like being a teacher
There is surprisingly little difference between school kids and top-flight athletes, most of whom have long been drinking from the same cup as Peter Pan when it comes to growing up. School and sport both require you to commit to some fairly long and antisocial hours but the greatest similarity is the long, glorious downtime of summer holidays and the off season.
There is nothing like saying goodbye to the team after the last broadcast of the year, it is very similar to the scenes in the playground on the final day of term ? a wild overexcitement and a rather headless charge out of the school gates. This year, July and August stretched out invitingly through blank pages in the diary. It feels like the world is your oyster. But the clam closes quickly when the wife produces from the kitchen drawer her list of DIY requirements which have built up over the last 10 months. The first two weeks were spent going round the house with Polyfilla and a brush, trying desperately to sort out the persistent damp problem. Hardly hitting Ibiza for a month of hedonistic indulgence.
But it did fill the long wait for the kids to break up ? quite literally watching paint dry until we could bring out the bucket and spades. I?m not sure who was more pleased the day school was out for summer; my six year old or me. We left for the beach from the gates with my daughter still in her uniform.
And we whooped and hollered on the way, and I sa...