And now for something completely different

An old friend of mine recently made me very envious by taking a three-month sabbatical from his job and using some of the time to drive across the United States. I was delighted to discover he has also started a blog in which he shares his experiences of the journey.

It's an anonymous blog so I won't use his name here, but he is in fact the Anglican vicar who married Gill and I nearly seven years ago, someone who has been one of the greatest and most positive influences on me in my Christian life over the past decade or so.

The blog, entitled Honk If You're Lonely, is part travelogue, part spiritual diary, and is as fascinating and inspirational as its author's perfectly-crafted sermons. If you're into that sort of thing, you can read it HERE.

Was Navratilova the greatest?

Well, according to a Top 100 list of all-time Wimbledon champions in today's Times, she was. But are the men's and women's games really comparable - and would Martina have been quite as successful had the women's game in her day been as competitive as it is now?

The Times has attempted to introduce an objective criteria for measuring greatness, but for me, things like this are a subjective judgement. The greatest players I have seen at Wimbledon in all my years of watching the tournament are as follows:

Men

1. Rod Laver
2. John McEnroe
3. Roger Federer
4. Pete Sampras
5. Bjorn Borg
6. Ken Rosewall
7. Andre Agassi
8. Boris Becker
9. Jimmy Connors
10. Ilie Nastase

Women

1. Serena Williams
2. Martina Navratilova
3. Steffi Graf
4. Justine Henin
5. Billie Jean King
6. Venus Williams
7. Martina Hingis
8. Margaret Court
9. Chris Evert
10. Evonne Goolagong

There are three names on my list who never actually won the Wimbledon title - Rosewall, Nastase and Henin - but all three graced the game with their artistry and richly deserved to lift the crown.

Laver and Serena top the list simply because, in my view, they were unbeatable at their respective peaks - complete tennis machines both.

Great cricketing quotations of our time No 94

"Cricket civilizes people and creates good gentlemen. I want everyone to play cricket in Zimbabwe. I want ours to be a nation of gentlemen."

Robert Mugabe

Should Brown sacrifice his Darling?

Nick Robinson posed an interesting question on the Today Programme this morning - for those who missed it, he has helpfully reproduced the entire script on his blog. But basically the gist of it was: should Gordon Brown sack Alistair Darling as Chancellor as part of a planned "autumn relaunch" of the government?

There will be those who will regard such a question as simply irrelevant, in that the plight of the Brown premiership is no so dire as to be beyond such rearranging of the deckchairs on the Titanic.

Others will argue that Mr Darling is scarcely to blame for the economic difficulties that have buffeted Labour moreorless ever since he took over the job. The Tories' line of attack would doubtless be that he is simply the "fall guy" for Mr Brown.

Both of these are fair points. But for me, the reason Mr Darling should be replaced is the same two reasons that he should never have got the job in the first place - one, because he is Scottish, two, because he is rather dull.

It was always going to be the case that, with Brown as premier, having another Scot in what is effectively the No 2 government role was going to be tricky. When that Scot has a reputation for being almost as dour as Brown himself, it was going to be doubly so.

It would have made a great deal more sense had Brown appointed David Miliband or Alan Johnson to the Treasury role as soon as he has taken over. A year on, they are probably now the two Labour ministers with the most popular appeal. If it is to give itself even a chance at the next election, the party must play to its strengths by promoting one of them - probably Miliband - to the Chancellorship.