The liberated Brit

If you amassed billions of pounds through skulduggery and lived long enough to celebrate your 80th birthday, would you:

A) Buy a large yacht and a private island in the Caribbean and enjoy the remainder of your life in luxury and comfort;

B) Get engaged to a 25 year old with a lithe curvaceous body worthy of a Playboy magazine centrefold; or

C) Raise the stakes on your skulduggery, convince yourself that you are immortal and attempt to take over the world.

The sensible choice would, of course, be A, but the abiding lesson of history is that crooked 80 year old men tend not to be terribly sensible. Two crooked Octogenarian gentlemen have recently found themselves in a spot of bother.

The first, a Californian chap called Hugh Hefner chose option B a few months ago. After handing over two luxury vehicles to his fiance and taken delivery of a few lorryloads of Viagra at his home, the Playboy Mansion, poor old Hef was jilted five days before his wedding. The experience came as a bit of a shock to the old man's heart and one must wonder how much longer he has left with us.

Hef may have suffered the effects of a badly bruised ego but at least he is safe in the knowledge that his billions and his reputation haven't taken a hammering.

The same cannot be said for the chap who catastrophically went for option C: Rupert Murdoch, the man who made a fortune peddling filth. For decades, Murdoch struck terror into the hearts of politicians in the English speaking world either by promising favours or threatening political assassination through his media empire.

Often it was through Murdoch's possession of compromising information that he was able to wield the most influence. If you were a minister who was married with children but secretly engaged the services of rent boys, a telephone call from Murdoch at 2:00 am with thinly veiled threats might just have been enough to persuade you that it was in your interests to approve the acquisition by a Murdoch company of a major broadcasting house. Alternatively, you could be campaigning in a very tight electoral contest and in desperate need of some powerful friends; if Murdoch threw the weight of his media empire behind you, your difficulties would be at an end. You would also be forever grateful to Mr Murdoch.

All that changed spectacularly just over a fortnight ago. It came to light that Murdoch's employees on the News of the World, a nasty tabloid, had been secretly listening to the voicemail messages of a teenage girl who had been abducted and murdered. Outrage turned to revulsion and horror when it emerged that this was far from an isolated incident; News of the World staff had been hacking into voice mailboxes on an industrial scale.

Rupert and James Murdoch were forced to close down the News of the World and suffer the humiliation of a grilling by British MPs. A man feared and loathed in equal measure was reduced to a shambling, decrepit old man mumbling, umming and erring and demonstrating spectacular illiteracy ("This is the most humble day of my life," he said. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, old Ru, but if you'd paid a little bit better attention at school you might have learned that days do not have feelings, people do)

As Murdoch's Gulfstream G550 took off from Luton Airport at the end of last week, a mood of euphoria swept over the land. From then on, Britain felt different. It felt much like a parting of rain clouds after a thunderstorm. The evil spectre of Rupert Murdoch had left our presence and we felt able to live sensibly as if for the first time.

At the weekend Amir Khan knocked out his opponent to become world light-welterweight champion, Mark Cavendish won the Tour de France, England beat India in the cricket at Lord's and Lewis Hamilton won the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring.

The last of these triumphs was particularly satisfying for Hamilton. In a season of unprecedented domination by Sebastian Vettel in the flawless Red Bull designed by Adrian Newey, one could scarcely imagine him failing to win his home Grand Prix - but he did. Hamilton was imperious right from the start to the end. He never had more than a two second lead at any point in the race and any one of the top three - Hamilton, Mark Webber and Fernando Alonso - could have won the race but Hamilton had a touch more nerve and the biggest balls of the three. So confident was he in his ability that at one point he performed the ultimate mark of disrespect to a Formula One world champion: an outside overtaking manoeuvre.

Attempting to overtake an F1 car on the outside leaves a driver very vulnerable to a counter-attack and is so audacious that it is guaranteed to infuriate his opponent. It is the equivalent of a right hand lead in boxing - a punch which leaves the boxer's body completely exposed to a counter-punch. We did not have the benefit of live radio commentary from Alonso but I would bet that the choicest, frutiest epithets in the Spanish language were screamed into the helmet of the Ferrari driver. Hamilton's boyish grin on the podium said it all: "who be da man!"

Hamilton may not be everybody's cup of tea, but seeing him win the old fashioned way is good for the sport. I had told myself that I was going to give up on Formula One if all we ever saw was the same German chap qualifying at least a second ahead of everyone else on Saturday and then leading a procession on Sunday. That simply isn't racing.

Barring some sort of disaster - like Vettel having a nasty accident - the 2011 title is in the bag already, so the least we can hope for is some fun motor racing for the next nine races.

Gitau
27 July 2011