AS LONG AS THEY`RE HAPPY....

One of the good things about BBC Breakfast is that it brings you up to date not just with the news of the day but also the sport and the weather forecasts. One of the reasons I watch it.

But it seems we just can`t have the sport and the weather forecasts these days. This week, we have had the dubious and doubtless expensive spectacle of the sport being presented direct from Royal Ascot by the diminutive Chris Hollins (pictured right in the picture above.) How his father, former Chelsea and England midfielder John Hollins must be turning in his Weymouth dugout.

Next to Chris we have the lovely Carol Kirkwood who has popped up on our screens throughout the week in a selection of outfits designed to befit the surroundings of the royal meeting. Carol looked very nice.....but she is, after all, a weather girl. Chris looked, well, like Chris.....but he is, after all, a sports presenter. It might be nice, just for once, to have the sport and the weather presented for what they are, rather than exposing grumpy old gits like me to the flagrant waste of licence fees on lavish, unnecessary, amateurish prancing. It truly fails to make the sport any more cheery or the weather any less inclement, but as long as Chris and Carol are happy, why should I complain. I just have to pay for their antics, that`s all.

And a word of warning for next week. The Wimbledon tennis thingy is on for the next two weeks and I just wonder how many BBC staff, reporters, commentators and analysts (mostly costly foreign imports) are being lined up to converge on our screens. You can be sure that the weather and the sport will be presented direct from Wimbledon and no doubt we will once more have to try and listen out for them among Chris and Carol`s high jinks. But, as long as they`re happy, that`s all that matters.