Rioting, rowing and runways

But here, here in London, everything’s so metropolitan that huge marches and boat races can happen on the same day. I’ve even got friends who were hoping to take part in both: in the morning, support the intellectually and morally brilliant institution of the State — after 50,000 years of civilisation, still the only invention that gives normal people a chance of semi-parity with the wealthy when it comes to education, medical provision, housing, justice and access to the entire works of Catherine Cookson in a local library — then in the afternoon head over to Hammersmith to drink beer in the sun, watching a 182-year-old boat race between two of the most privileged and glorious institutions in the world.

That’s a pretty British day, all told — principle and history, in the time it takes to walk from Embankment to Hammersmith. The only way it could be more British was to be my friend, who planned to pop into Peter Jones in Chelsea on the way, and buy “four polycotton pillowcases and an Easter egg while I’m in the area”. The march kicks off at 11am — news helicopters buzzing the event like vultures, trying hard to look casual about the animals they follow below; attempting to project an air of, “Personally, we, the vultures, wish your journey well! We are here for no other reason than wind current! We certainly don’t want a massive scrap kicking off, with all fires and riots and stuff; like the Monopoly board, but with bombs — maybe bombs! Bombs are exciting! Not us! Stroll on in peace!”

The protesters start the march in the groups they travelled down with: youth project workers from Kent, charity workers from Chester, teachers and nurses and students, all rigged out in matching sweaters or tabards. “It’s colour co-ordinated!” my sister texts, from Embankment. “It looks loooooveley. It feels like Glastonbury down here. Everyone’s really energyish.”

Being able to watch a protest live on television seems impossibly civilised. I think how much I would have enjoyed a constant live stream from Greenham Common, Big Brother-style; or Nelson Mandela on Twitter. “Day 948: not much up. Still being horrifically oppressed, LOL.” As the march starts, slowly — at the speed of a child pushing off from the side of a pool — it allows you to look at each and every person marching past. There’s a lot of straight-backed, grey-haired OAP chicks who learnt their marching licks at Aldermaston; families with buggies whose presence seems like a plea for future mercy; strapping firemen looking unwilling to swap “walking into burning buildings” for “showing some entrepreneurial spirit and launching an internet-based credit service in Portishead.”

At about 1pm “news” “breaks”. It seems something’s kicked off. The concept of peaceful protest has run into trouble, like a weakened antelope. The helicopters cluster, delightedly, over Oxford Circus. “What’s happening?” my sister texts, from Piccadilly. “Everyone down here’s saying it’s turned into a riot.”

“Twelve men in balaclavas are throwing sticks at Topshop,” I reply, watching it on Sky. “I’ve been in there during the sales and it’s endured much worse, to be honest. I once watched a woman with no pants on try on wet-look jeggings next to the Wall of Uggs. Now that was harsh.”

Within ten minutes Sky is showing the incident on an endless loop — so it looks as if Topshop is undergoing wave after wave of sustained attack, rather than something that is long finished. Indeed, even as the BBC begins to show its repeats, I think I can recognise one of the anarchist balaclavas (Thinsulate, £7.99, impractical for such a mild day) moving on and breaking into the Santander on Charing Cross Road — opposite Priscilla, Queen of the Desert — on Sky News.

As the camera charges in after them, it is, as far as I’m aware, the world’s first live coverage of anarchists smashing their way into a branch of a multinational bank. In the event it turns out that what anarchists do when they smash their way into a branch of a multinational bank is to run around the perimeter of the room in an oddly jerky way, then knock over a small display stand of leaflets with a triumphant “Yargh! F*** your bureau de change facilities!” motion. It looks very much like the way that Alan Partridge would attempt “anarchy” after falling in with “a bad lot”.

By the time the same handful of shagless idiots have thrown sticks at Fortnum & Mason and the Ritz, and smashed up a couple of prime West End windows, the story is that 250,000 people walking peacefully through London have been “hijacked” by a few hundred violent anarchists. But of course, the protesters were not “hijacked” at all. They walked, as they intended to, to Hyde Park, listened to the speeches of Ed Miliband and the TUC, and then went home. It was the news broadcasters who were hijacked. And willingly. Like boats tarting around pirates.

3.45pm and The Boat Race on BBC One — ostensibly a million miles away from the heartfelt intent of a civilian protest march, but not really. However much you might claim that you’re into the history and glory of the race, there’s still a quiet, vulture voice inside going: “I hope its one of those years where they sink. A sinking year. Or one when they smack their poncey canoe into a quayside and end up making it look like a banana, like in 2003. I don’t want them to drown. I don’t want death. I just want to see ... live bloopers.”

That’s the problem with unfolding events, really. We want them to really unfold. Right down to the ground.

The BBC’s coverage — broadcast live to 150 countries — was long, but, man, was it comprehensive. Steered by the redoubtable and ever-fizzing Clare Balding — today swishing around in a floor-length military coat, like a Captain Jack Harkness with in-depth knowledge of the history of ping-pong — the BBC’s message about the 2011 race was clear. It was a competition between the differing coaching methods of Cambridge and Oxford. Cambridge were the laid-back, fun-lovin’, Hair Bear Bunch of a crew — when Balding rocked up to one of their training sessions it seemed to consist of a room full of young men laughing light-heartedly at each other’s jokes and throwing back isotonic drinks with all the ribald glee of dwarfs hitting the tavern after a hard day in the mines of Moria. Cambridge’s coach, Steve Trapmore, was a merry-eyed fellow, who answered Balding’s question of “Where will you be on the day?” with a laugh, and the confession, “Probably on the toilet”.

Over in Oxford, however, the mood was considerably more dour. The coach, Sean Bowden, was explaining his methods over footage of the whole team using rowing machines in terrible sinew-straining silence. “If a cow touches an electric fence, it will never touch it again,” he said, with the air of a man who had considered using electric fences during training. “[Bowden’s] ice cold and ruthless,” a former pupil, the TV presenter Dan Snow, explained. “He never said ‘Well done’ to anyone. Never said it to me. Mind you, I wasn’t a very good rower.”

The only threat to Oxford’s terrifying, Terminator-like approach to the race came from the Cambridge cox, Liz Box. A diminutive cox, Box, who hunched over in the stern like a heron eyeing goldfish in a pond, looking formidable — but nonetheless, held back her secret weapon until ten seconds into the race. “Hook! Flooooow! Hook! Flooow!” Box suddenly shouted, in the most extraordinary voice heard on television for many years. If you can imagine the Jamaican ragga artist Buju Banton doing an impression of Linda Blair in The Exorcist, it was like that, but with added growliness.

“Leeeeegs! Leeeeegs! Leeeeegs! Leeeeeegs!” Box roared, in a voice more commonly associated with the phrase “Your mother sucks c***s in hell”. “Leeeeeeegs!”

Alas, despite Box channelling all the declaratory powers of the satanically possessed into her thorax, Oxford pulled ahead and won the 157th Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. Cambridge mounted the podium in oddly inglorious Cambridge-blue gumboots — all seemingly too large; all seemingly just the kind of thing that someone who had just lost a boat race would wear.

By way of contrast, when Oxford rocked up to collect their medals, half of them were in socks — the casual deshabille allowed the winner.

Ice-cold Sean Bowden might have banned fun for the year, but tonight Oxford were taking off their boots and partying.

Finally, Martina Cole’s The Runaway, on Sky One. For many women of my acquaintance, Sky’s adaptation of Cole’s The Take is one of the pivotal TV dramas of the past few years — primarily for its use of the actor/oestrogen bomb Tom Hardy. Hardy is the kind of luxurious hot animal one can happily base a week’s worth of TV viewing around: first watch, repeat, have hyperventilating Skype conversation with friends, repeat again.

Alas, Sky’s latest Cole adaptation, The Runaway, has no Hardy — he’s off to Hollywood now, the next Batman film and global hotness. It does, however, have Keith Allen as a local gangster, in a wig that could be best described as “a knitted Hitler”, and the kind of pitch-perfect 1960s melodrama (brassy tart mum, hot working-class teen hero, rock-hard teen heroine adept at snapping “Go shit in yer hat”) that has you going, as the heroine gets dragged off by social workers, “Don’t worry — the Beatles will come and rescue you in a minute! The Beatles!” Ace.