Sports Personality disorder: BBC's obsession with wokeness ruins SPOTY

AN idea for 2024. Instead of parliamentary elections, referendums, reality show votes and popularity contests, we simply let the BBC declare the most woke contestant the winner.

Woke overload

You’ve a problem with that suggestion?

We all knew from the very first image of the night that Mary Earps was going to be declared Sports Personality Of The Year, on account of the fact she’d told someone to "**** off" while losing the World Cup

Tough luck.

We’re already halfway there, as was confirmed by Mary Earps’ canonization at Tuesday night’s Sports Personality Of The Year.

A once mighty BBC1 occasion that’s been down-sized since the arena days, but still has to be co-hosted by Clare Balding, Alex Scott and Gary Lineker when all it really needs is the superb Gabby Logan, who has a happy knack of ­making "Hear hear, Fatima" sound exactly like "Shut the **** up, Fatima".

There was also music from Pete Tong, whose presence is often a sign the BBC is trying to be young and funky, which was one of the two things that recently did for A Question Of Sport.

The other, of course, was vaulting political correctness.

Whereas on A Question Of Sport, it lurked in the background, at Sports Personality it slapped you in the face ­during the Unsung Hero ­category where they’d covered every possibly right-on base, including a woman-in-a-burka who was beaten by a bloke-from-the-Windrush-Generation, which seems to outscore everything in the Beeb’s game of woke Top Trumps.

This was merely the warm-up act, however, for the main event, women’s World Cup football — a segment that began with a minute’s hate for Luis Rubiales (Spanish FA lip kiss man) and a Maya Angelou quote delivered, with what sounded more like self-righteous relish than genuine indignation, by Alex Scott, who seems to have worked out she has no great currency unless she’s offended by something.

You could only have imagined her level of fury, then, if Mary Earps hadn’t won — an outcome that wasn’t ever likely, given the shortlist had already eliminated Josh Kerr, whose 1500 metres victory over Jakob Ingebrigtsen was one of the few BBC sporting events to have me out of my seat in 2023, and the great Ronnie O’Sullivan, who would have romped the occasion if he’d been included.

The fact he wasn’t suggests that one of two things was at play here.

The "panel of experts" was either hugely stupid and ­ignorant, or it wasn’t and was doing something much more calculated and political. Upshot was, though, we all knew from the very first image of the night that Mary Earps was going to be declared Sports Personality Of The Year, on account of the fact she’d told someone to "**** off" while losing the World Cup.

Harsh, I admit, but I watched every England game and can confirm that, contrary to BBC and ITV commentary box eulogies, they were ­dreadful.

Luckily for them, every team they played, except Spain, was even more dreadful, especially China whose goalkeeper, Zhu Yu, was such a comically ­disorientated figure I half thought she’d be the subject of ITV’s Vanishing Act drama, this week, until it turned out there was another one-footed corpse on the loose in ­Australia.

Not an opinion you could ever voice on the BBC, where they believe uncritical, blind adoration is the way ahead, even if all it actually does is betray the network’s insecurities about the women’s game, which it clearly thinks cannot withstand even the slightest scrutiny.

Bias is Strictly built in

You could tell by the fact they let him dance last the BBC wanted Layton Williams and Nikita ­Kuzmin to win Strictly Come Dancing.

As well as his professional background, though, Layton carried a hint of arrogance about him and a political agenda that the Beeb clearly thought was an asset but had me crossing out his name the moment he said: "I don’t think people realise how important representation is. We’re challenging gender roles and stereotypes."

Because viewers are only too aware how important the BBC thinks representation is and are heartily sick of being lectured on the subject.

They also sense favouritism, so probably spotted the show’s second-choice winner was Bobby Brazier, who was marked out as an "EastEnders actor" just so you didn’t confuse him with "actor Ellie Leach".

The great thing about the British public is, though, the more you push them in one direction, the more likely they are to roll back over you the opposite way and vote for Ellie, even if she did nearly put herself in Stoke Mandeville with her showdance dismount.

A pleasing outcome but, from a personal angle, one that never came close to saving a series that needed a Tony Adams figure to prick the show’s pomposity and the dreadful sycophancy of judges like Anton Du Beke, who outdid