The first week of Wimbledon (BBC1 and 2 recurring) startedHarry Carpenter and his famous Rain Commentary. Duringthe opening days there was hardly any tennis, but there was morethan enough rain for Harry to perfect his commentary, if perfectingwas what it needed.

It has been years now since Harry began calling WimbledonWmbldn. Later on he contracted Wmbldn to Wmln. This year it isback to being Wmbldn, possibly because Harry's lockjaw has been loosened by the amount of rain demanding commentary. ‘Covers still on the outside courts. Thousands of people waiting, hoping against hope… Not a pretty sight is it?’ The cameras zoomed in elegiacally on the canvas covers as the raindrops bounced. ‘Still, we’re pretty cosy here in the BBC commentary box under the Centre Court, and what’s more I’ve got Ann Jones with me.’ Obviously it was a Beatrix Potter scene down there in the burrow.

The downpour lifted long enough for Borg to demolish El Shafei and his own racket, which exploded. To be more accurate, it imploded, since it is strung to a tension of 80 lb. As we saw in Borg (LWT), the young champion strings his rackets so tightly that they go ‘ping’ in the night, thereby waking up his manager. Borg runs a taut ship. He likes his headband tight too, to bring his eyes closer together. He likes them touching. ‘Do you think it’s going to make any difference to Borg’s play, when he gets married? Somebody asked Gerulaitis. ‘I hope so,’ was the sad reply.

Like a Volvo, Borg is rugged, has good after-sales service, and is very dull. There is no reason to begrudge him his claim to the title of greatest of all time, although it is not only Australians who believe that Rod Laver would have won Wimbledon ten times in a row if the absurd rules against professionalism had not kept him out during the best years of his career. But Borg’s role as chief mourner in a Bergman movie becomes positively treasurable if you compare him with Nastase, as it was possible to do when the rain briefly stopped on a later day.

I turned on the set hoping to see more rain, but instead found Nastase on his hands and knees banging his head against the turf. Then he got up and pretended to skate. Then he got back down on his hands and knees and had a lengthy conversation with the electronic eye, a machine which threatens to crab his act, since he will be able to dispute no more line calls. Imagine how exhausting it must be being Nastase, especially during those terrible few minutes in the morning when there is nobody to show off to except his own face in the shaving mirror. You can imagine him drawing moustaches on himself with the foam, sticking the brush in his ear, etc.

‘There’s a drain down both sides of the court where the water can escape,’ Harry explained. ‘Brighter weather is apparently on the way. But it’s going to be some time…’ More rain next week. But now, a word of praise for Jonathan Dimbleby's In Evidence (Yorkshire), a double-length programme which set out to investigate the police force. Dimbleby deserves points for his ability to goon asking awkward questions long after the people he is talking tohave shown signs of wanting to steer the conversation into ablander channel. Such admirable tenacity should be kept in mindwhen you are reflecting that he writes with a trowel and expects usto be stunned when he uncovers corruption in South America.

'Yesterday almost a child. Tomorrow an officer of the law,'announced Dimbleby as a new recruit to the police force wentthrough the mill. Prospective bobbies were shown how to talk withcholeric citizens. 'It appears to me, sir, that you're a bit irate.’ 'Thiscontrasted nicely with what would presumably have happened inAmerica, where the recruit would have been holding a large gunand the irate citizen would have been spreadeagled against a wall.

That the British police do not as a rule go armed still seems tomost of us a healthy tradition. As Chesterton pointed out, traditionand democracy are the same thing. Dimbleby is very properlyworried about the Special Patrol Group, but his concern wouldhave been more forceful if he had explained that he objected to it asan innovation. By his relative silence on this point he tacitlyaligned himself with those Left-wing wiseacres who believe that inbecoming overtly brutal the police are at last revealing their truenature. This approach is neither as true nor as useful as saying that'saturation policing' is something new and causes more troublethan it is worth.

Dimbleby had no trouble digging up horror stories in the bigcities. An entire and clearly law-abiding family had been picked upfor no reason and suffered a lot of inexplicable bruising while beingrun in. The police investigated themselves and found themselvesinnocent. You don't have to be a member of the Anti-Nazi Leagueto find that unsatisfactory. On the other hand one would havewelcomed from Dimbleby a more forthright acknowledgment ofthe possibility that the British police force does at least as much tohold society together as to pull it apart.

Dimbleby doesn't seem to realise that the police force is the onlything that keeps him from being carved up by people who don't likethe way his face is currently arranged. The tip-off came when heexplained that the police force attracts people of 'authoritarian'sympathies. Undoubtedly it does, but it also attracts people whosimply believe in authority, which is not the same thing as beingauthoritarian. A fine distinction but a crucial one, which a television reporter should be able to make.

The BBC's Dance Month has been more robustly enjoyable thanits twee title sequence might have led you to expect. A programmeabout Nureyev called I Am A Dancer (BBC2) dissuaded you fromany notion that he might have been a bricklayer, but like manyindependent productions it suffered badly from sclerosis of thescript. 'This routine of training, day in and day out, year in andyear out, it never stops. It never stops, this routine of training...'

During one modern ballet performed to the sound of what couldhave been fifty or sixty of Borg's tennis rackets gradually exposedto intense heat, Nureyev and a drowsily sexy ballerina engaged in along attempt to pull each other's tights off without using fingers,toes or teeth. It sounds difficult, but was fun to watch, althoughprobably not as much fun as it was to do.

No Maps on My Taps (BBC2), an excellent import from Americanpublic television, gave you the essence of black tap-dancing. Thetechnique, lovingly fostered during long years of harsh neglect,came up as fresh as paint. There was some attempt to suggest thatwhite tap-dancing was done by numbers rather than from a truerhythmic sense, but this was an understandable case of racism inreverse. As was proved by the miraculous dance numbers in You'llNever Get Rich (BBC2), Fred Astaire had as much rhythm as ahuman being can have. So did Rita Hayworth, who incrediblysucceeded in dancing to the standard set by her own beauty.

29 June, 1980