Wimbledon 2013: social armageddon aside, the BBC did well Besides, Murray really is a sort of 21st‑century saint. Consider the bull he has to deal with: autograph hunters, idiot journalists, brutal training sessions, paparazzi outside his house, Twitter nuthouses giving him grief for a throwaway quip about England from seven years ago, ice baths, back pain, blisters, the teenage-girl angst of an entire nation and - how easily this is forgotten - Novak Djokovic, history's most flexible villain. In order to qualify for canonisation, candidates must have performed two miracles. Murray's triumph on Sunday in the face of this obstacle-course of inanity may well count as the first. So were we to compile a report card, the BBC would probably fare well in most subjects. But just as Mrs Kennedy probably had a splendid car ride through Dallas if you discount the middle of it, the BBC's Wimbledon 2013 is destined to be remembered for the twin catastrophes of Garry Richardson and John Inverdale. Richardson, you will remember, raised eyebrows on Wednesday with a ham-fisted interrogation of Andy Murray. Like fellow mixed-zone pest Phil Jones, Richardson is easy enough to explain - he is a professional irritant, an irksome barrier standing between an athlete and their post-match shower, like a troll guarding an enchanted bridge. Describing him as annoying is like criticising an ant for nibbling your sandwich. It is his very raison d"être. And so to Inverdale, who on Saturday generated one of those colossal face-palm moments that horrify the world for about 24 hours before being almost entirely forgotten. This is what he said: "Do you think [Marion] Bartoli's dad told her when she was little, "you're never going to be a looker, you'll never be a Sharapova, so you have to be scrappy and fight"?" Suddenly, everybody knew everything. Each of the four squillion people who commented or tweeted about Inverdale had a valid point. Yes, sexist swill is still dished out all too casually. But yes, people are ludicrously quick to take offence by proxy these days. Then again, it does seem strange to throttle the entire BBC for one man's idiocy. But equally, attitudes like Inverdale's make the world a slightly worse place to live. Everybody was right. And yet nobody knew anything. Did Bartoli care? What harm was done? Impossible to say. It is that maddening modern dichotomy: everything matters, yet nothing matters. Never has the world been richer with variety or possibility. Never has it felt more like a bunch of angry people shouting in a slowly overheating greenhouse. Strip all the shouting away, and what remains? Only sport. Or, to rephrase: give me a slow-motion Bartoli over a slow-motion Kim Sears any day of the week.