Tommy Martin: No cold turkey but should I try to cut back on consuming so much sport in 2025? 

Yes, it’s escapism and it is probably stopping me from learning the banjo or climbing Kilimanjaro. But has there ever been more worth escaping from?

NO END TO THE DRAMA: Darts may be more game show than sport, says Tommy Martin, but it's reliable live sport on TV at a time when maybe we should be questioning if enough is enough. Pic: Zac Goodwin/PA Wire

We take a lot of long journeys as a family at this time of year, visiting relatives in different parts of the country. While driving, I find myself lapsing into long periods of silence, as if away in another world. “You’re very quiet,” my wife says. “Is everything ok?” It would make me sound much more interesting to tell her that I was contemplating the year just gone, lost in a reverie about the passing of time. I could have dropped in a metaphor about the fields and townlands of the Irish countryside, how they were like our lives, zipping by in the rear-view mirror, death the final destination counting down on Google Maps.

But my wife knows she did not marry an interesting man, so there was no point in pretending. Instead, I glanced at her incredulously and pointed my finger at the car radio which had been burbling away with the afternoon’s sport coverage.