Thursday, February 25, 2010

I’m old enough to remember Buster Mottram

I’m worried by Robert Dee’s attempt to sue the Daily Telegraph for identifying him as the world’s worst tennis professional. His argument seems to be based on three key points: that there is a Guatemalan player who is just as crap; that he couldn’t have been crap in 2008, because he didn’t have a world ranking then; and that what with all these people saying he’s crap, he might have trouble getting coaching work.

The last bit is the most irritating, because it suggests that nobody is allowed to say anything that might cause any inconvenience to anybody else, with the logical end point that all objective criticism is now potentially libellous. I don’t know enough about tennis to judge how crap or not Robert Dee is; but if he wins, I might just have to sue him, for depriving me of the right to make money from saying that anything is crap, whether or not it is.

PS:
A parallel conversation on Facebook reminds me that this is the only way to play tennis:

4 comments:

Vicus Scurra said...

It's very troubling isn't it?
Buster Mottram was really crap. And a fascist too. Please direct replies to my solicitor.

Richard said...

There were worse players than Buster Mottram but few better arguments for eugenics.

Tim F said...

I just remember his persistent defence: "I can't be a racialist [Why do racists always say 'racialist'? Does that make it sound better?], I wrote a song with Kenny Lynch."

Billy said...

racialist is one of my favourite words.