Brian Viner: If Henman is English, why is Murray a Brit?

A couple of weeks ago, at a tennis tournament in Birmingham, I attended a press conference given by the defending champion (and former Wimbledon champ) Maria Sharapova. After a few formalities about her fitness and form, one of my media colleagues asked her whether she had been following the story of her near-contemporary Wayne Rooney's foot injury.

Happily she had, and gave us what is known in the trade as good copy, chatting away cheerfully about Rooney's troublesome metatarsal. The faintly surreal spectacle of the assembled hacks scribbling just that little bit harder as a Florida-accented Russian tennis player talked enthusiastically about a Scouser's toe offered an early indication that tennis this summer - even during Wimbledon fortnight, which begins today - must play second fiddle, or perhaps third triangle, to the World Cup.

That will suit the great white hope of British tennis, Andy Murray, who has expressed understandable reservations about becoming the new repository for a nation's hopes. Last year, as Henmania ebbed, Andymonium flowed. This year, though, some of Tim Henman's more ardent supporters might struggle to transfer their affections to Murray, if and when that time comes.

For Murray too was asked about the World Cup a few weeks ago, and said that for England's opening match against Paraguay, he would be sporting a Paraguay shirt. Perhaps advised that it was best not to be too overtly anti-English, he backtracked slightly, and suggested ahead of England's match against Ecuador yesterday that he would be supporting the referee. But the truth was out. Murray has become a standard-bearer for those Scots who love to see England lose. He is William Wallace with a topspin forehand.

As an Englishman who spent four years living in Scotland, I have encountered this streak of antagonism in all its forms, from the merely mischievous to the downright hate-filled. In a small whitewashed pub by a Highland sea loch I once struck up conversation with a pipe-smoking, bearded local, who regarded me with manifest suspicion. I asked him whether he had lived in the area all his life. "No," he said, "I lived abroad fae seven years." I asked him where. "Have y'ever heard," he said, "of a place called High Wycombe?" If there was an ironic twinkle, then his bushy eyebrows obscured it.

Then there was the time at some dinner or other when my friend Douglas Alexander, whose father comes from Scotland but whose accent comes from south-east England, was asked his name by an elderly chap from Edinburgh. Doug duly identified himself. "That's a damn silly accent," growled his neighbour, "for a man with such a damn fine name!" Banter like that is amusing and harmless, but those Scots who engage in anti-Englishness with genuine virulence do their splendid country a disservice, and it is compounded by pettiness from those who should know better, such as the Scottish Sunday newspaper which covered the England rugby union team's World Cup final victory in 2003 in a single paragraph on page nine.

I'm not saying Murray should know better. He's just a kid, after all. Indeed, he is himself an example of why the chippiness is sometimes justified. It must be infuriating that the media commentators who habitually described Henman as English now describe Murray as British. But I'm told that a Wayne Rooney effigy was burnt in one Scottish pub yesterday, and that, chaps, is taking things a bit too far.

Hollywood chutzpah writ large

All sorts of people have been described as the embodiment of the American Dream, but few fit the bill better than the television producer Aaron Spelling, left, creator of Dynasty, Starsky & Hutch and Beverly Hills 90210, who died on Saturday aged 83. I once joined one of those cheesy Los Angeles coach tours of stars' homes, and the home that really got us gawping was Spelling's, an ersatz French chateau said to contain a bowling alley and an ice rink. The Brits among us agreed that such extravagance was irredeemably naff. Yet here was an Jewish tailor's son born into poverty in Dallas, and bullied so badly at school that he suffered a nervous breakdown aged eight. Whatever you thought of Beverly Hills 90210, it's hard to suppress a burst of admiration.

LA might be the unassailable capital of showbiz extravagance, but it was pipped yesterday by Sydney, Australia, where Nicole Kidman was due to marry the country singer Keith Urban. Guests were expected to include Rupert Murdoch, Russell Crowe and Meryl Streep, and I'd like to think that they were all invited to a viewing of the pre-nuptial agreement.

Whatever, I am reminded of a story a friend of mine tells, that when staying in London's Grosvenor's House Hotel a few years back, he climbed into the health club jacuzzi, aware that there were already two women luxuriating in it, although it was not until he was alongside them that he realised they were Nicole Kidman and Demi Moore. He felt bound to say something, and tried to think of something witty, but in the end could do no better than: "Could you put the bubbles on, please?"

b.viner@independent.co.uk