BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2012: Hail Bradley Wiggins the undisputed king of cool What if the benchmark is sportsmanship? This is the bloke who ordered the Tour peloton to allow reigning champion Cadel Evans, one of the pursuers sabotaged by tacks on the road, to recover from the puncture and catch up. In the year of Lance Armstrong and all that, Le Gentleman was the perfect antidote. And if we were judging on who made most impact on the national psyche? No contest. To see the British invasion of Chartres and Paris, with their "Allez Wiggo" banners and Union Jacks, on the historic weekend when Wiggins ended up speeding down the Champs-Élysées in yellow, was to recognise a man who had quite captured Britain's imagination. We understood implicitly, as Wiggins himself suggested, that "kids from a council estate in Kilburn don't win the Tour de France." Which brings us to the "personality" bit. If you truly believe this award should be as much about personality as achievement, Wiggins still prevails, because here was something completely different; an idiosyncratic presence in an era of sanitised, platitude-spouting sports stars, a moody, Mod maverick, being proudly and defiantly true to himself. Britain seemed to fall for this beguiling mix of the obsessive loner and the extrovert character, the bloke who could one minute be offering a thunderous, expletive-riddled riposte at a press conference to those anonymous internet critics who hinted that he doped, and the next thanking the Tour press corps for putting up with him being "a pain in the a---." Honesty shone through him. Even the French learned to love "Wiggo Le Froggy" and the "greatest sideburns - rouflaquettes - since Elvis." He never pretended to be loveable, yet somehow when even his wife, Cath, conceded that Brad the cyclist could be a "bit of a t---," it made him even easier to warm to because you sensed he would probably agree. He made us laugh, and nod in agreement when, after 2,350 miles of sweat, toil and agony up mountain and down dale, over five wondrous summer weeks, he hoped his story of yellow and gold would be seen as an achievement worth saluting in an era of celebrities being feted for just being celebrities. "I will never be a celebrity," he said. I despise that whole culture. I train hard, I work hard but, ultimately, I'm very normal. In short, he is one of us. We know he will arise some time soon as Sir Bradley, but also that he will just carry on being plain old, uniquely wonderful Wiggo.