MUCH OF MY life is spent writing about race politics, suicide and genocide. For relief, I write about sport – but that doesn’t always work.

The love affair with sport has been a long one, from mediocre junior athletic days to some later competence as a golfer. But an excess of it has sickened the appetite, the taste diminished by having to digest so much of today’s sporting culture: the unaccountable sporting behemoths like the IOC and FIFA; crass corruption in, and of, sport by vulturine commerce; grotesque ‘celebrity’ behaviour; the flawed codes of conduct; peptides plentiful enough to harm horses; sledging that demeans the sledger; sports betting ads (nauseam); match-fixing everywhere; the winning-at-any-and-all-costs credo; the overload of events and replays; and racism alive and well, on and off the fields.