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Peter Fleming

John McEnroe’s old doubles partner may be the most unnervingly weird character ever to analyse any sport on television. His air of intellectual superiority may be well-founded, as it would be for anyone with an IQ over ninety sharing airtime with Barry Cowan, but it does tend to grate.

Although he behaves himself during Wimbledon, when he works for the BBC, Fleming seldom hears a question on Sky that isn’t beneath his dignity. His preferred mode of expressing disdain, particularly towards presenter Marcus Buckland, a modest and charming soul, is the exaggerated pause. How, Mr Buckland once asked him, would he explain the amazing abundance of talent in the men’s game today? Eunuchs grew rabbinical beards in the time Fleming took to ponder this, before offering a desolate ‘I dunno,’ and lapsing into quietude once more.

On a good day, the silence in response to a seemingly unchallenging enquiry – Does Novak Djokovic’s second serve look a bit off? Are Rafa Nadal’s knees playing up? What is the time? – puts you in mind of Pinter performed by the Theatre of the Mute. On a bad one, you could write a wistful rite-of-passage memoir in the style of Alan Bennett in the time he requires to address a wayward Andy Murray two-hander down the line.

Occasionally, when Fleming feels that the foolishness of the question requires more peremptory treatment, he might wince, snort or raise his eyebrows to the crown of his head. Now and again, he will stare in disbelief, the gaze apparently in homage to Jack Nicholson in The Shining or Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men.

When Mr Fleming, facially a hybrid between the Addams Family’s butler Lurch and Jay Gatsby, does deign to share an opinion, it’s invariably worth hearing. He is an extremely bright guy, and he certainly has a presence (that of a Harvard philosophy professor stunned into an existential crisis at mysteriously finding himself redeployed as a third-grade teaching assistant). Tennis, like darts and nothing else, is a sport Sky covers well, and the languid gloss Fleming lends to its broadcasts does much to explain that bucking of the form book. I wouldn’t be without him for the world.

Nor, however, would I wish to get into a big-money staring contest with him, much less be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in the Situation Room at the White House demanding an instant decision from a President Fleming about how to respond to worryingly raised activity levels in an Iranian nuclear silo.