The prizes were trips to next year’s Champions’ League final and a Grand Prix. But as the footy is at Old Trafford and the motor racing at Silverstone, ITV seem to have got off quite lightly. Altog-ether around £165,000 was raised for Watson, including a few quid from two traffic wardens cheekily sweet-talked by Chris Eubank into making a donation rather than giving him a ticket for his truck parked outside the hotel.We are the champions! What, at football? No, er softball, as it happens. That’s a game which falls somewhere between baseball and rounders, and is one of those activities promoted by our unsung, under-funded friends at Upper Heyford.The “sporting squat” near Oxford, which has had some notable succcesses in the less glamorous precints of sport lately, has just achieved another. The GB “slowpitch” team who include men and women, came away from Florida with the inaugural World Cup Upper Heyford is a hive of “minority” sporting activity. Our government don’t seem to know it exists but the Cuban sports minister visited recently and arranged to send two coaches.insidelines independent.co.ukExit LinesIn the ring I smelled his soul, his bareness, and he smelled mine.

That kind of thing builds a camaraderie you don’t find in other walks of life. Chris Eubank on his bond with his brain-damaged former opponent Michael Watson.. He’s nice but thin George Best on why Tim Henman may never win Wimbledon.. To chairman Peter Ridsdale and the board of directors. The ill-timed dedication by David O’Leary in the paperback version of his controversial book Leeds On Trial, which was published the day after he was sacked.. Julie Hollman could not help laughing as she settled into her chair and pondered the opening question. “What are the chances,” she had been asked, “of getting through this interview without the Olympic heptathlon champion being mentioned?”

Julie Hollman could not help laughing as she settled into her chair and pondered the opening question. Just across the street from our rendezvous in Starbucks, next to the entrance to Peterborough Cathedral, Lewis’s face is the first you see as you walk into W H Smith.

Britain’s greatest all-round female athlete is on the cover of the new Radio Times.She is not, however, going to be in Manchester a week on Friday to defend her Commonwealth crown. Hollman will be in the City of Manchester Stadium to contest the heptathlon. And, judging by her form this year, it is not difficult to imagine the little-known lass from the Lincolnshire village of Deeping St James, a sleepy hamlet five miles north of Peterborough, emerging victorious from the seven-event competition and suddenly being hailed as the new Denise Lewis.”Well,” she said, considering the prospect, “I just hope I’m treated as myself I want to be the new Julie Hollman, as such I don’t want to be compared to Denise all the time. I mean, it’s nice to have that comparison, but she’s totally different to me. The only comparison is that we do the same event and that we’ve had the same coach She’s a great athlete. She’s got all her strengths and I’ve got my weaknesses – and, well, some of my strengths – that I’m working on.”For the time being, Hollman is working on her weaknesses and on her burgeoning strengths as the best-kept secret in British athletics.