Wimbledon is boring and posh, and to me that is enough reason to despise it

The Independent's grump-in-chief, Sean O'Grady, explains why the blanket coverage and middle-class fawning leave him cold

Two upper-class people enjoying Wimbledon, the home of overpriced fruit (Getty)

You would think, from the blanket coverage it gets on the BBC, that Wimbledon was some sort of great shred national event, universally relished by every citizen regardless of background, a unifying spectacle of sport for the masses, a totem of Britishness.

I beg to differ. I have devoted my life to very few things, but avoiding Wimbledon is one of them, and thus far I have succeeded in it.

Obviously my eyes have been subjected to a few frames of these glorified games of Ping-Pong over the decades, either because they sneak into news reports and I can’t get to the remote to switch channels in time, or I’m round someone’s house and I can’t quite get out of the room fast enough to avoid exposure.

Like some people who are sensitive to light or have a pollen allergy, the whole Wimbledon thing has a neuralgic effect on me. I haven’t sought psychiatric advice on this because I regard my condition as the healthy state of mind. Wimbledon, you see, is boring and posh, and to me that is reason enough to despise it.

Tennis is boring. Like most sports, I was forced to have a go at it at school, and could never understand the point of it, or its ridiculous rules, which seem to me less about where you should try and get the ball to, but where you shouldn’t put the ball.

Anyway, as well as being incomprehensible, it goes on for ever, it is therefore more about sheer physical stamina than skill, and it is extremely dull to watch. The BBC should never have been allowed to just fill up the schedules with people most of us have never heard of batting a ball at each other. Or indeed the ones we have heard of doing the same.

Second, it is “posh”. Such is Britain’s deep class-based divisions that some of us find the Henley Regatta, Royal Ascot and, indeed, Wimbledon, simply displays of conspicuous consumption under the guise of some sort of a sporting event.

I recall the ludicrous pretentiousness of “Henman Hill” and the mania that surrounds “Sir” Andy Murray, as far as I can tell a very uninteresting bloke who is famous for being handy with his racquet, but hasn’t done much more for society. Mostly you should get a knighthood for breakthroughs in eye surgery or inventing a new type of vacuum cleaner, not for managing to win a few games of tennis.

Wimbledon is not, despite appearances, really much of a sporting event, but merely another opportunity subtly to put the proles firmly in their place. It is the upper classes at play and I don’t find it a particularly lovely sight.

The fact that it has Kate Middleton for a patron, that goody two-shoes pin-up of the aspirational upper middle cases, just about sums up everything that is gruesome about it.

The champagne tents are always busier than the courts (Getty ) (Getty)

Every year I’m told about the unaffordable price of a punnet of strawberries and cream at the tournament – probably enough to feed a family of five for a week - and every year there are the pointless “celeb” based Wimbledon features all over the papers and tedious gossip about rivalries between super-rich sportsmen and women.

This year there was some sort of fuss about Serena Williams having a bun in the oven, as if it makes any difference to me. or maybe it was John McEnroe who’d got preggers. Even that wouldn’t excite my interest.

At the risk of making a painful pun – but why not, given the pain it has inflicted on me, my verdict on Wimbledon isn’t “Love All” but “Hate All”.