Crumbling Cliff is wet, wet, wet; Spirit of Blitz is the pits.

It's been a week of nostalgia, with events evoking some grim wartime memories. I refer not to the senseless manslaughter at the Somme, but the senseless man's laughter at Wimbledon.

Sir Cliff Richard, grinning and chuckling inanely, tried to recreate "The Spirit Of The Blitz" (his phrase) on a rainswept centre court.

What a sight. The spirit of Middle England, personified by a middle-aged pop star on the middle court, singing middling, middle-brow, middle-of- the-road songs for the middle-middle class.

I nearly had an involuntary personal protein spill at this display of Little Englander pulling together in adversity idiocy, that must have confirmed the rest of the world's opinion of us as a completely mental nation.

Can you imagine the French behaving in this way during their tournament? And what would be the verdict of American viewers?

That we're a bunch of hapless losers, led by a thoroughly wet singer, and belting out thoroughly wet songs on a thoroughly wet day.

As for the wartime spirit, it reminded me not of the Blitz but the Somme because, once the rain stopped and the tennis started, Britain's finest young men were quickly and cruelly mown down. As usual.

Even so, as Sir Cliff sang the prophetic Bachelor Boy, I swear I saw Sue Barker's eyes fill with tears.

Some readers may remember that, back in the Seventies, the fearsomely heterosexual crooner nearly married our Sue, and it's rumoured that they even planned to move into a dream home together.

Where? Where else but Middlesex?

TIME

TO GET SHOT OF TV

NASTY

I invented a new verb recently, which I've sent for inclusion in the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

It's the verb to Tarrant, which I defined as "the urge to appear on television as often as possible, regardless of the appalling quality of the shows you're fronting".

It's ironic that Tiswas (the Seventies children's TV show that made him famous) has proved to be the most adult programme that Chris Tarrant has ever presented.

Since then, he's immatured with age and his grown-up shows have become increasingly juvenile, starting with the embarrassing OTT, and culminating in the disastrous Man O Man, a series which (as far as I can see) could only be of interest to male homosexuals.

I thought of another verb this week because, when a presenter hosts a Saturday prime-time ITV series whose ratings drop to a pitiful 4.5 million (its lowest yet), it's clearly time for drastic action.

In fact, the TV company has no option but to blow his brains out in the back of a car in a Pulp Fiction sort of a way.

Word would then get around that the luckless celeb had been Tarantinoed.

ITV is increasingly misjudging what its viewers want and relying on tacky sensationalism instead of quality programming.

And despite the old saying, they're in great danger of finding out that businesses do go broke through underestimating the intelligence of the public.

First class BA? Pass the sick bag

Want a definition of chutzpah? I'll give you one.

A British Airways passenger, who liked to travel First Class but resented paying pounds 3,000 for a ticket to New York, booked three seats in Economy, total cost pounds 700.

Then he lifted the separators, sprawled luxuriously across all three seats (after all, the only real advantage first class travellers get is more leg room), took out a bottle of champagne and a can of fish roe, and gave himself the VIP treatment while horrified stewards looked on, powerless to intervene.

He knew that even if he'd paid pounds 20,000 for a ticket, he'd still be left waiting for his baggage at the other end, so why not beat the airline at its own game? That's chutzpah.

I was reminded of his cunning stunt this week when I read about the impending BA strike, a dispute in which it's impossible to take sides.

I've little sympathy for the flight crews, who think an average salary of pounds 75,000 isn't enough (even MPs wouldn't dare to demand that much).

But I've no sympathy at all for their employers, whose recent history has been a disgraceful catalogue of dirty tricks and shabby conduct.

Yes, they make huge profits - they have a virtual monopoly on many routes, so they could hardly fail to do so - but their arrogance singes the hair from the back of my teeth.

BA is an organisation that's suffering from a very bad dose of sick company syndrome.

BA's planes are the last outposts of Empire, and flying on one is like entering a social pressure cooker.

The staff are haughty and their idea of First Class treatment is to get the VIPs drunk on duty-free champagne as rapidly as possible (a sure sign of vulgarity).

They never allow passengers to forget their place in the hierarchy, and they even deliberately leave the partition curtains open, to remind those of us in the cheap seats that we're rabble.

That's why nowadays - whether I'm travelling Upper Class or Economy - I prefer to fly with Virgin, an airline that's classy yet classless.

Sure, the food is better in the expensive section (as you'd expect), but their crews treat everyone with the same common courtesy, irrespective of how much you paid for your ticket.

BA, meanwhile, remains obsessed with class, yet lacks class itself, and I'm appalled that such a company should represent this country throughout the world.

Nowadays, whenever I see its flagship, Concorde, I feel I know why it dips its nose the moment it hits the tarmac.

Nothing to do with aerodynamics. It's lowering its head in shame.

TONI TAKES THE KNOCKS

Thanks to Mr Taylor of Diss, Norfolk, for this week's How Are The Mighty Fallen?

He gets a bottle of bubbly for spotting Toni Warne (the child songstress who won Opportunity Knocks week after week in the mid-Eighties with her version of Bright Eyes) in the Pick 'n' Mix section of Woolworths in Ipswich.

He claims to have approached her and asked her what she did with the money. "What money?" asked Toni, bemused. "The money your mother gave you for singing lessons," he replied.

You're a cruel man, Mr Taylor - after all, the poor girl once had to sit on Bob Monkhouse's knee. Hasn't she suffered enough?