Glitz and glamour but Bernie Ecclestone’s winning formula still hard to love

All sport is, inherently, ludicrous.

Let’s start right there. Whether it’s thumping leather balls with your head and feet, sticking your noggin between the bums of two other men or women in a rugby scrum or running ad nauseum around a track, the whole thing doesn’t really make any sense in any practical or biological way.

It’s why all these online forums where people laud their chosen sport at the expense of others are so tiresome. Hurling is the greatest field sport on earth, apparently, football is the beautiful game and rugby is, well, rugby. Unfortunately, this is the time of year when those pointless arguments migrate like locusts from our small screens to the slightly bigger ones we call TVs. And into newspapers and magazines, too.