RICHARD Caborn, our esteemed Sports Minister, sounds like Ray Illingworth talking political gobbledegook, yet it seems we are increasingly being asked to take him seriously.

He sensibly kept a fairly low profile after his hugely embarrassing start in the role, when he showed his total ignorance of his subject with his answers to five simple questions on the radio.

Asked who was the England cricket coach, he replied: "The Aussie", apparently unaware that Duncan Fletcher is Zimbabwean.

But in the wake of the tremendous Commonwealth Games success, Caborn is now a frontline spokesman on the subject of a British Olympic bid, and his growing profile has also pitched him into the debate about struggling football clubs.

He is adamant that any Olympic bid for 2012 will have to come from London because the International Olympic Committee say so, and as he is a Yorkshireman and would presumably champion the North there is no reason to disbelieve him.

In which case we should forget it as London has had quite enough farces for one decade with the Dome, Wembley and Pickett's Lock.

Caborn tries to have us take the potential bid seriously by saying things like: "We will be strategy-led and not events-led," whatever that may mean.

Manchester was magnificent, right down to the wonderful closing ceremony. But that doesn't mean London can emulate it, gridlocked as it is by traffic chaos and the need to consult people like Ken Livingstone.

It was said after the Olympics, and it is being repeated now, that sporting success lifts the national mood more than anything else. Yet Sport England have announced a cutback in funds available to athletes and the government thinks Dick Caborn is a suitable man to act as Sports Minister. Still, no doubt the Royal Opera House will have all the funding it needs.

SHE wasn't even in the running last year, but Paula Radcliffe will again get my vote as Sports Personality of the Year and this time it will be a very sad reflection on the sporting public if she isn't in the first three.

Coming just out of the first three in major races has long been Paula's fate, but now she's a winner and it couldn't happen to a better person.

The only female to have run a faster 10,000 metres is Chinese, but Paula is so virulently anti-doping that we can be sure she does not benefit from drinking turtle's blood or taking any of those other potions which allegedly helped China produce such a clutch of female distance runners a few years ago.

World cross-country champion, London marathon winner, and now Commonwealth and European gold medal winner, Paula's big remaining target for this year is the marathon world record in Chicago in October. After that I propose she is appointed Sports Minister.

BEFORE Ashington lad Stephen Harmison, who was the last Northumberland-born cricketer to play for England? My guess would be Tom Graveney, but he was from the posh area of Riding Mill and was soon whisked south to be educated at Bristol Grammar School.

I must confess I had my doubts that Harmison would make it because his last involvement with the England squad, early in the 2000 season, seemed to affect his accuracy.

His first spell for England yesterday was typical of how he has bowled for Durham in the last two years, but his second spell showed why Duncan Fletcher rates him highly.

We never knew exactly how quick he was before, but the speed gun had him constantly at 88-89 mph, which is sharp without being in the top bracket alongside Brett Lee and Shoaib Akhtar.

The bounce he gains from his 6ft 4in frame is what makes Harmison awkward, and there's no doubt he is now in the running for an Ashes tour.

Yorkshire's Chris Silverwood admitted after his blistering match-winning spell in the floodlit match against Durham on Monday that he was upset that Harmison had been preferred by England.

Perhaps that's Silverwood's problem - it takes something like that to fire him up, when Yorkshire desperately need him to be fired up the whole time.