Sport Relief: David James' entertaining meal made out of 'bite-sized' blunder

View From the Sofa: Sport Relief, BBC

Samantha Cameron and David James on The Great Sport Relief Bake Off 2016 (BBC)

The planning committee at Sport Relief have finally realised: it is far more entertaining to watch someone attempt a task they are patently useless at than watch someone mediocre muddle through.

It may mean that on the big night next month we will no longer be forced to sit through sportspeople attempting sport, as we have done in the past, like Andrew Flintoff falling off a track bike, Lawrence Dallaglio cycling across Europe or Dion Dublin playing rugby.

The signs look good, still six weeks from the event. We have had David James make a total hash of baking (while increasing the evidence that he’s a bloody nice bloke) by making canapes the size of Cornish pasties on The Great Sport Relief Bake Off.

He refused to be deterred, even when the judges accused him of failing to bake properly and making bite-sized pieces that take three chomps to eat. “That is bite-sized,” he said as he forced one of his giant chicken-filled pies into his mouth. As for his American football helmet cake, which looked like a petrified dinosaur skull – in all meanings of the word “petrified” – judge Paul Hollywood summed it up best when he said: “David. It wasn’t your day.”

Then it was the turn of Jo Brand, who appears to have made a career out of being a curmudgeonly middle-aged woman, as well as replacing the word “mother-in-law” with “husband” in Bernard Manning’s old jokes, to show us that even curmudgeonly middle-aged women can perform jaw-dropping feats, as she walked 135 miles in a week from one side of England to the other.

No doubt we’ll see the entire walk packaged into a programme around Sport Relief time – but the daily highlights on the BBC website of her “hell of a walk”, were genuinely inspiring, as we watched Brand grow grumpier by the day after being rained on and almost blown over. As Brand pretty much put it when she came to the end in Liverpool, if she can do it, there’s no excuse for the rest of us not to get off our backsides.

Speaking of being transformed by watching people travel on foot for long distances, Saturday’s live YouTube feed of Susie Chan’s successful attempt to break the 12-hour treadmill record was strangely watchable. It was devoid of sound and featured no more than one or two people running (Chan had support treadmillers along the way) in what looked like a science lab, but it was hypnotic. It was a little like Test cricket; you could leave the action for a few hours and discover on your return that very little had changed – but enough to keep you watching.

Even Paula Radcliffe was hooked as she tweeted: “I’ve never watched someone run on a treadmill on my computer until now – Susie Chan, you got me! Congrats on the new world record.”

Again, the feat was inspiring, as well as being entertaining. In a different way to Brand or James (of course Chan is far better at what she does than the two celebs were at baking and walking), but inspiring nonetheless.