Sports Personality Awards

As I write this they will be presenting the 2008 Sports Awards at the Villa Marina. I would be surprised if there was a surprise with the winners!

Its the 7th time that the awards night has been organised by the Sports Council - the picture above, where I pictured Steve Cram with Dot Tilbury and Milky Quayle, was the first and I have been to two others.

Unfortunately the high ideals they started with have not been possible to maintain. I remember that they were very keen to avoid the evening being a "corporate" event and wanted to make it a evening for the real sports fans - £5 including an excellent buffet meal.

The reality is that if you want to attract sponsors to the sports you have to include them in nights like tonight; and if you are very successful you will gradually squeeze out the sports fans. I was able to get a ticket last year (thanks to Stuart Gerrard) but it was very noticeable that the award winners were all coming from the back of the room (with the sponsors at the front).

This year there were even fewer seats available (other than in the balcony). I would have loved to have been there but I would rather be sitting at home marvelling at how well our sports people do (with the help of the sponsors) than being there and hearing about failure due to inadequate resources.

Tonight has given me a chance to do some more computer housekeeping. The ability to find loads of photos and videos from my collection requires a fair degree of organisation and Ben installed an additional hard disk (640GB) to my PC tonight. I also have an external drive (750GB for back up) but my main drive of 380GB was too full. I remember my first hard drive in 1988 - 30MB!