Sport can repay its debt and prove its worth at a time of gloom and fear

As the world turned dark this week, with that sudden, seasick sideways lurch into subs and silos and nuclear threat, it became necessary to stop listening to sports radio, watching sports news TV and following online sports feeds, mainly to avoid the very real prospect of accidentally hearing about the end of the world from Ray Parlour.

This is by no means a criticism of Ray, who seems like a lovely bloke and who would probably be excellent company as the sky flashes white and fire storms consume the horizon. There’s never really a bad time for an anecdote about being dropped for calling Gareth Southgate “big nose” in a team meeting. Hold my hand, Ray. Now do the one about Robert Pires smoking.

It is a common phenomenon these days to hear about major news events from the most random of digital sources. I mentioned this on social media a couple of days ago and the replies were predictably good. The Twitter user who heard about the shooting of Osama bin Laden from Phil Neville. The moment TalkSport radio broke the news of the death of Keith Flint (“they went to Danny Murphy for reaction”). Another person who discovered the result of the Brexit referendum from Greggs the baker admin.

This is the way of things now. The end of world will arrive not with a bang or a whimper, but with a cat meme, a shocked face emoji and an argument about Nadine Dorries.

The main problem, at this point, is that the end of the world is big. It feels like a genuine story, deserving of a proper buildup. I suppose I’d always imagined a Maitlis, an Alagiah, a final Dimbleby.

As opposed to a segment where Danny Mills discusses pre-emptive multicity thermonuclear assault (“not for me”) or Alan Brazil tries to rationalise the detonation of a