Brian Viner: A man born to wear Lycra does not look comfortable in a wing-collar

I wandered round the room pretending to be looking for close friends

My thanks to the Amateur Swimming Association, a venerable institution founded in 1869, whose guest I was at last Tuesday's Olympic Gold Ball at the Savoy Hotel. Unfortunately, and yet perhaps aptly, the traffic in central London had slowed to a crawl, so I arrived too late to meet my hosts – the ASA chief executive, David Sparkes, and their director of communications, Dee McIntosh – in the foyer at the appointed hour.

As I had not the slightest idea what either of them looked like, I spent most of the pre-dinner reception on my own, ostentatiously trying to avoid looking like Billy No-Mates, which I at first achieved by the time-honoured technique of wandering round the room pretending to be looking for close friends.

However, by the time I had completed seven circuits of the room, I had convinced myself that my fellow guests had me pegged, correctly, as a sad git with imaginary friends. Other strategies had to be adopted. So I loitered on the fringes of other people's blather in the hope that they might gather me into the fold. I didn't dive in, not even in honour of the ASA. I'm not a shrinking violet, but there are times when it's acceptable to butt into a conversational twosome and times when it's not, and when both conversationalists are roaring with laughter, and one of them is Audley Harrison, it's not.

In the end I contented myself with standing back and enjoying the spectacle of Harrison and other sports people wearing dinner dress. I have yet to see a male athlete, present or past, who looks entirely comfortable in a dinner jacket, while of the females last Tuesday only the excellent Mary Peters looked at ease, having grown into her rather matronly features and looking every inch the Dame that she now is.

The men, in particular, reminded me of the birds of prey you see in zoos, stuck in an unnatural habitat, unable to soar. A man born to wear Lycra just doesn't look right in a wing-collar. In fact, black-tie sporting dinners are the only occasions at which florid-faced administrators – not only born to wear velvet bow-ties and cummerbunds but very possibly born wearing them – look looser-limbed than the athletes they administer.

Anyway, I finally made contact with my hosts and a convivial evening ensued. One of the perks of writing a newspaper column is that one occasionally gets invited to these posh dinners, although there are times when it seems more of a punishment than a perk. The Olympic Gold Ball, however, was a splendid do, largely because I had the pleasure of sitting beside David Wilkie, who turned out to be a very fine fellow indeed.

No sooner had we finished the plum tomato carpaccio with goat's cheese timbale, in fact, than he confided that when he was commentating on the 1988 Olympics for ITV, he was completely taken unawares when Anthony Nesty, a rank outsider from Surinam, won the 100 metres butterfly. So off the top of his head (an area now rather less hirsute, I hope he will forgive me for saying, than when he became 200m breastroke champion at the 1976 Olympics), Wilkie invented all sorts of facts about the guy, for example that Nesty's father was a general in the Surinam army.

Wilkie no longer commentates, which is a shame, because swimming, and commentary in general, could do with a few more colourful fibs.

He is the managing director of a company called Health Perception UK, and judging from his air of affluence, business is good. The Savoy's enjoyable claret slightly impeded my understanding of exactly what it is that Health Perception does, but it has a lot to do with Glucosamine, a substance which helps maintain healthy joints, eases the pain of osteoarthritis and rebuilds cartilage.

Wilkie gave up television work, personal appearances, after-dinner speaking, and all that jazz, 10 years ago, to concentrate on developing his company. He doesn't court attention any more, and at the ball, as soon as the honey parfait in soft meringue with orange sauce had been demolished, he wished me a warm farewell and slipped away, muttering something about his wife being ill, although I think he just wanted to get out of his dinner jacket.

Whatever, he missed a treat. Sir Cliff Richard did the cabaret. And as for the treat, the former Bath rugby union winger David Trick, who conducted the auction, related several fine anecdotes, including one about Gareth Chilcott which has manifestly been honed to perfection at dozens of these black-tie dinners.

Apparently, Trick once played in a match against Newport in which Chilcott was thumped hard by the Newport prop. He was knocked out cold, but came round after two minutes to find the referee, Clive Norling, standing over him. "Do... not... send... him... off," were Chilcott's first words, whereupon the Newport prop, understandably concerned at the direction proceedings were taking, lumbered over to Norling and said: "Suppose I'm off then?" "Not yet," came the ref's ominous reply.

b.viner@independent.co.uk