If awful summer weather was an Olympic sport Britain would be raking in the medals in 2012 as, for about the sixth year running, new records of rainfall having fallen in various months. This year, April and June have been the stars of the show, accumulating impressive amounts of water not seen since accurate recordings began around 1910. Now, I am not a nostalgic believer that all our summers used to be spent licking ice cream whilst queuing for water by a standpipe (people didn’t start the trend of flying off to the med in the 1960’s to get away from baking Britain) but six rain soaked summers on the trot is taking the piss so much that even the notoriously stoical Brit’s are just about reaching breaking point. We are not even getting the odd nice day.

A friend of mine mentioned something to me the other day that had been nagging me for some time, and that was a theory that the British climate may be going through a small change where our summers are in the process of becoming known as our wet season and the only benefit of June and July would be the lighter evenings. To make this judgement is of course a preposterous theory for either of us to come to, as assessing six years of weather on planet that has been in existence for about 4.5 million years is at best, ambitious. However, it has to be said that the weather has been consistently inconsistent over that six year period, with very warm spring weather (remember March?) followed by a summer of turbulent low pressure systems tracking through the country. It may be that August brings us some joy, but that won’t detract us from the fact that the summer has, so far, been utterly miserable.

The subject of being miserable brings me nicely on to Andy Murray, the best British tennis player since Fred Perry, who it seems, because of his Scottish birthright, has become the victim of venomous attacks on social networking sites. I am not being PC by suggesting that if the abuse he is getting was subjected to someone Asian or Afro-Caribbean, there would be arrests and charges of racial hatred made. It seems that the crime Murray has committed is the inability to conduct an interview in a state of unbridled joy, along with refusing to prostitute himself to the popular press. The last time I looked, Andy Murray was a proud Scotsman representing Great Britain at tennis, it is not his duty to pander to the Daily Mail, Sue Barker or Cliff Richard, yet, because he wore a Paraguay shirt during an England world cup game, he is hated by people across the provincial towns of England. These are generally the same sort of places where Italian waiters get beaten up after their nation has beaten England at football.  Places like Bedford, St Albans and Kings Lynn.

If Murray pranced around like a clown and posed in The Sun in Union Jack shirt with a bulldog on it, he would be a hero, even more so if the tabloids published a picture of him punching the air in a three lions shirt as England scored against Sweden at Euro 2012. The temptation to go down that populist route is very real; you can guarantee that he has had lucrative offers to do so, so I actually admire him for deciding to stay true to his roots as a dour and focused tennis player. Sports stars often get lambasted for forgetting their roots, an allegation that cannot be thrown at Murray, there are those who think that he can only be truly British/English by dressing up as a knight with a tennis racket in his hand with the headline “IT’S WAR” above him. It is a sad indictment of British society that if someone who is very good at his job, be it a sportsman, a politician or any other high profile position, it matters not a jot if he or she is not prepared to tow the line of the media and the masses.

Murray probably won’t win Wimbledon, there are two other players (Federer and Djokovic) who are marginally better performers at the highest level, but he will give it a go like no other British player since Fred Perry. However, if or perhaps when, he does get beaten, he will get savaged as a useless Scottish choker. However,I really hope he does somehow win , it would be huge slap in the face for the British obsession with shit celebrity culture, because as much as OK and Hello and all the other fuckwitts try, Murray will be far too miserable to fall for the bait. I find it strange that whilst everyone champions failed footballers as icons, Murray will, despite being the best player of his generation, get crucified for being a champion. What a fucked up nation it is we live in when someone who dodges a £300m tax bill (Phillip Green) gets a knighthood, whilst the first genuinely British contender at Wimbledon  gets slaughtered for coming from Scotland.

Come on “Miserable Murray” you can do it!!!