IT WAS a wonderful weekend, we are told, for sport in Britain.

For me, however, it merely confirmed that most of those who travel to watch sport, rather than rely on the telly, derive the greater part of their pleasure from the atmosphere rather than the action.

During my own travels last weekend I had the good fortune to be travelling freely in the opposite direction while a three-mile tailback awaited its escape from Silverstone, and this was two hours after Lewis Hamilton had secured pole position for the real event, which wasn't until the following day.

After spending the following day at The Oval, my escape route westwards took me past vast crowds descending on Twickenham. But I discovered this had nothing to do with rugby - it was a Genesis concert.

I wouldn't cross the street to watch Phil Collins, nor would I want to stand alongside one to watch the Tour de France cyclists whizzing by, yet over a million lined the 7.9-kilometre London route for the opening prologue.

Meanwhile there were no more than 1,000 at The Oval for the opening day of Durham's visit, whereas 20,000 had packed in for a Twenty20 match against Middlesex. Someone observed to me: "20,000 people can't be wrong."

The answer to that might be that many more voted for a party which had John Prescott as its deputy leader and allowed a neurotic narcissist to become sufficiently famous to publish diaries which are predicted to make him £1m following this week's publication.

At least the Wimbledon men's final produced some genuinely gripping action and elevated Roger Federer into the pantheon of sporting greats, and after a weekend which also saw the staging of Live Earth Mayor Livingstone announced that London had been stretched, but had delivered.

Had it failed to deliver, on the anniversary of securing the Olympics, it would merely have added to the growing furore surrounding the escalating costs of the 2012 event, even though they were entirely predictable.

The new man in charge of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport wrote an article in The Times four years ago urging the government not to back the Olympic bid. He is now putting a different spin on events, although he would be entirely justified in saying: "I told you so."

WHILE Federer's win was the undoubted highlight of the weekend, the great British triumph came from the unlikely source of Jamie Murray, providing some consolation for the absence of his brother Andy.

Among the many brickbats hurled at the Lawn Tennis Association was the younger Murray's assertion that they had held back his brother's development, but Jamie's doubles skill has provided Britain with its first Wimbledon winner since Jeremy Bates and Jo Durie in 1987.

So what if it's only the mixed doubles? It provided the added titillation of a hint of romance, although all we saw was a kiss on the cheek for Jamie after Jelena Jankovic had promised to kiss him all over if they won the final.

SUCH was the drama and excitement elsewhere that the cricket barely got a mention on the wireless last weekend, the 6pm sports news adding as an afterthought that England were on the way to defeat without giving any details.

Victory for the West Indies will hopefully remove one of the nails from the game's Caribbean coffin, but it is a setback for Paul Collingwood and I fail to see how naming people like Jeremy Snape in the England Twenty20 squad will benefit the new one-day captain.

Snape can't get into Leicestershire's decidedly moderate four-day team but has shown how it's possible to win Twenty20 games by bowling donkey drops, which proves it's a game for people to make asses of themselves.

CRAIG Bellamy has now had more clubs than Tiger Woods. He keeps getting passed around like a piece of bad meat, or a sow's ear, with each misguided purchaser presumably thinking he can turn it into a silk purse.

For all his wittering about why he has left Liverpool after one year, the reality must be that they realised they had made a mistake in signing him. His desire to play in the Champions League has fallen flat, either because he's not good enough, or more probably because he's a disruptive influence.

Now West Ham have taken up the challenge, as though they hadn't sullied their own reputation enough through the Carlos Tevez affair.