BBC SPOTY 2015: Tyson Fury nowhere as voters decide Andy Murray is the most deserving

Tom Peck on how a Sports Personality of the Year award mired in controversy ended in victory for a true tennis hero

LGBT supporters protest in Belfast after Tyson Fury’s inclusion on the list of nominees for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year (Getty)

Heavyweight boxing champion of the world, and not even among the country’s top three sports people of the year. Unreconstructed homophobia is a powerful thing, and last night it sucker-punched Tyson Fury full in the face.

While Fury ended up an also-ran, it was Andy Murray who won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award, which after his victory in 2013, the year he won Wimbledon, made him one of only a tiny number of people to have won the award twice. It was a fitting prize for the overwhelming part he played last month in delivering Great Britain’s first Davis Cup victory in 79 years, with Murray and the rest of the squad winning the Team of the Year award too. In the individual event, rugby league’s Kevin Sinfield came second, with the athlete Jessica Ennis-Hill third.

It was never going to be an easy night for Fury from the moment his name was first mentioned. That all the brightest stars in the British sporting firmament should conspire, with the aid of a Northern Irish arena crowd, to boo a world heavyweight boxing champion with Irish Traveller roots, paid awkward testament to just how foolish Fury had been following his arrival at the centre of the world’s attention, with his comments about women and gay people. The atmosphere when Gary Lineker called Fury on to the stage to discuss what should have been the single greatest moment of a great year for British sport was curious indeed – muted applause, punctuated by a small but determined outbreak of booing. “I’m not a serious person,” Fury told Lineker. “I’ve said a lot of stuff in the past. None of it is with the intention to hurt anybody. If I say anything that’s hurt anyone, I apologise. It’s not my intention to do that.”

It was a textbook non-apology, and not very well delivered, but a lot of the crowd forgave him, then. “There’s seven billion people in the world,” he said. “There’s only one world heavyweight champion.” And until Fury’s rematch with the man he beat, Wladimir Klitschko, it’s him.

It is the inclusion of the word “personality” in what is no more than a public vote for the nation’s highest-achieving sportsperson of the year that sustains the show’s near mythical power to provoke debate.

The prize, remember, is a replica of a 1950s-era TV camera, and “personality” was only ever meant to mean that the deeds of the person in question had made their impact purely by being transposed into our lives in audiovisual form. That was no small achievement back in the early years of an award that started life in 1954.

Now it must exist in the age of X Factor. That Britain’s finest sports stars are compelled to make video inserts, talking about their “journey”, reveals far more about the journey of the show itself.

No shortage of lengths had been gone to for the purposes of burnishing the evening’s Northern Irish credentials. Niall Horan of One Direction was Rory McIlroy’s guest for the night. Jockey AP McCoy won the Lifetime Achievement Award. Northern Ireland’s football coach Michael O’Neill won Coach of The Year.

Murray duly thanked his wife Kim, who is seven months’ pregnant and was unable to travel. After a night when no opportunity was missed to feature nominees’ offspring, we can look forward to Murray junior enjoying a starring role in a year’s time.