ON THE EVE OF Wimbledon, a furious row has broken out between John McEnroe and Britain’s science-fiction community. This all stems from the debate that is guaranteed to surface at this time of year, the one when someone points out that tennis today is bereft of personalities, that the players don’t tell jokes, abuse umpires or do as much sex, drugs and rock’n’roll as we fondly believe they used to.
This week it was McEnroe, that standard-bearer of on-court etiquette, who waded in. Except his mistake was to use a Star Wars analogy. “Who wants to watch robots?” he asked. “A lot of the players are Darth Vader types.”
Such a slight on the good name of Darth Vader, however, has not been allowed to rest. Craig Anderson, head of Star Wars merchandise at Forbidden Planet, the sci-fi retailers, has leapt keenly to Mr Vader’s defence, telling Magic Sponge that “Darth Vader is not dull, he is the embodiment of evil, menacing, forbidding. I think this is a slur on Darth Vader. Any of today’s tennis players should be pleased to be referred to as Darth Vader.”
But it is not just the geeks who are up in arms — indeed they have found support from a grandee of the tennis community, Vijay Amritraj. “I don’t know if McEnroe has seen Star Wars because Darth Vader had a lot of personality,” he said. “When Darth Vader walked down the spaceship, it felt like he was walking on to Centre Court. Darth Vader had more personality than Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and certainly more than Princess Leia. As for McEnroe, only in his dreams does he have the personality of Darth Vader.”