The Wimbledon Tennis Final.

Roger Federer - tennis player supreme.

The whole of Britain stopped on Sunday to watch the Wimbledon tennis final; I had to nip to the shop to pick something up half way through and there was nobody about; they were all glued to the TV sets.

The reason?

There was a British man in the final for the first time since about 1936 or so. The fact that this British man was a Scot was no matter – it didn't matter a jot, to use the vernacular.

Andy Murray his name is and unfortunately he played, who is arguably, the best player tennis has ever seen; a man from Switzerland call Roger Federer.

The man from Switzerland didn't start too well so the hope of the locals went up; he played a few unforced errors, sending the ball skywards on a few occasions and Murray won the first set but gradually Federer's skill and flair paid off.

There was a slight break for rain and they put the roof over the playing area, filled it with air conditioning and suddenly it was an indoor match.

Murray was winning outdoors but Federer is an indoor specialist – no excuses he was brilliant.

The problem here is that so much pressure is put on to British players at Wimbledon; it is the make up of Britain. There are kind of local capitals but they're more like regional centres. The counties have county towns – York in Yorkshire, Lancaster in Lancashire etc but those places are not the biggest towns or cities in those counties.

Britain is more parochial than America – if Switzerland held the biggest of the grand slam tennis tournaments how would Federer manage?

We nearly didn't watch it as an announcer came on to the BBC and announced, as his job description is described, that the men's final would be at 3:30 pm; I thought this might have been for the west coast American audience but no – it was a mistake.

Then on the day the two-o-clock news on the BBC said - Andy Murray is now on the Centre Court; so the sandwich we were about to eat was scoffed in front of the set.

In American terms the national figures for watching the event was okay at seventeen million which is nearly one third of the total population here but it's like one hundred million compared to America so you can imagine the impact it had.

There were certain omens working – when it was the Queen's Silver Jubilee Virginia Wade, an English girl, won the women's singles at Wimbledon and it seemed that the luck was with Murray in the year of the jubilee this year; but no – Federer won three sets to one.

I am getting my play ready for this Saturday so I will have to cut this short; if you're in London come and see it; the details are below.