About Bradley Wiggins

The Times runs a regular Q&A column called My Culture Fix, in which people are asked to offer up their favourite books, films, music and so on. And this week we are welcomed into the soul of Bradley Wiggins, the celebrated cyclist.

Things get interesting at the very start when he declares – not “admits” or “confesses” because he doesn’t appear to be embarrassed about it – that he doesn’t really read books. But it’s his response to the next question, when he’s asked to identify his favourite play or playwright, that really sets the agenda: “No”. In its own way, it’s magnificent, a brutal shutting down of an entire art form, a refusal to let the merest whiff of greasepaint come anywhere near his nostrils.

But he does like Only Fools and Horses.

PS: That said, if you want to hear someone talking about his own cultural favourites intelligently and sensitively, but without getting too technical or highfalutin’, you could do much worse than listen to Derren Brown on yesterday’s Desert Island Discs.