YOU may not have heard of Sport Relief as it has not been as widely publicised as it deserves to be.

A spin-off from Comic Relief, it aims to raise money for children whose lives are impossibly hard, and the BBC are devoting a special night to it on July 13.

Sir Steve Redgrave is one of the many top sporting heroes who are getting involved, and apart from taking part in a Superstars competition he has written a letter pleading with us all to do our bit.

The letter appears in the Sport Relief Fundraising Pack, which you can obtain by ringing 09068 10 10 10 as long as you don't object to paying £1.50 to listen to the voice of John Motson.

I have set myself the challenge of playing four rounds of golf in one day at Barnard Castle on July 8, teeing off at 5am and hopefully staggering off the 72nd green before the bar closes.

I am not in the first flush of youth and when I played 36 holes one day last summer it took me several days to recover. So I'm not doing this just for kicks. I'm doing it because it's for a good cause, both in terms of where the money will go and in encouraging people to get off their backsides and do something which might even benefit their own health.

It doesn't matter if you're overweight and even older than me. There are things you can do, and the Sport Relief pack will give you plenty of ideas. Alternatively, you can log on to www.sportrelief.com.

If anyone wants to sponsor me in my little venture they can make out a cheque to Sport Relief and send it to me at The Northern Echo, PO Box 14, Priestgate, Darlington DL1 1NF. Or if you want to offer so much per Stableford point, or so much per birdie, write in with the offer or e-mail it to the address at the foot of the column and I'll contact you when I've got my breath back.

SPORT Relief was not designed to encourage people to stop watching the event which is dominating so many lives, but it will almost certainly suffer from lack of exposure caused partly by World Cup overkill.

I watched the first half hour of England's match against Sweden in the Lord's media centre before turning to the more pressing matter of Durham's attempts to beat Middlesex. I gather England got worse after that, in which case God help us.

So much hype for so little return. If there was a World Cup for building up hopes, only to have them dashed we'd be in a class of our own.

Now we must brace ourselves for a weekend of Argie Bargy, first from the football then from Lennox Lewis's scrap with the mad man Tyson.

Yet again we are told the Argies are out to get us because of what happened in the Falkland Islands 20 years ago, so our boys will have to make sure they don't retaliate as petulantly as David Beckham did four years ago.

What an amazing transformation he has undergone as a result of that moment of madness. As the national villain he realised he had to grow up, and now he's the national hero. His halo slipped a little against Sweden, but that was only because too much was expected of him after his metatarsal misery.

Now is the time for him to bend it like never before and send one of his predecessors on the pedestal, Gazza, into eloquent raptures in his role as an ITV pundit.

At least Gazza turned up, unlike George Best when the BBC signed him up for the 1986 World Cup. But to admit that he'd never heard of Senegal did not do a great deal for his credibility.

Still, most people love him precisely because he's "as daft as a brush", as Bobby Robson once said, and Robson hasn't changed his mind.

Apparently during a break from their punditry, Gazza was telling his old England boss that he's considering taking a player-manager's job in Dubai and Robson told him just to enjoy playing.

When some journalists later asked Robson if he didn't think a maturing Gazza, with all his experiences, would make a good manager, the Newcastle boss replied: "To be frank, no."

AND so to Memphis, where my fear is that someone other than Lewis or Tyson could get seriously hurt.

Lewis says he has been training to counter his deranged opponent's dirty tactics, and if Tyson hits him after the bell he'll hit back.

This conjures up the possibility that the first round will not end until there are enough bodies in the ring to prise apart the main contestants, and who knows what part of someone's anatomy Tyson might bite off in the process.

To sponsor Tim contact us at echosport

Published: 07/06/2002