THERE are some mornings I wake up and check the news and think that the whole world has gone stark staring mad.

We’ve got Trump in the White House – if it had been the Black House, he would have renamed it – and Johnson heading for No 10, about which I’ll say no more on account of good taste.

We have an utterly horrendous tragedy in Yemen and nobody in power is doing anything about it, and it’s just a matter of time before Iran/Israel/Palestine/Syria and a few others – choose as you think appropriate – really do start a war.

Sabre-rattling – willie-waving, actually – seems to be the only means of communication practised by power mad corrupt leaders everywhere, and democracy is all to Hell when 9000 Scottish Tories are the only Scots out of 5.4 million that gets to choose the next prime minister. As Nicola Sturgeon says, the choice is between a lorry and a bus running you over – one thing’s for sure, it will all end in a shunt of biblical proportions and hopefully the Tories will be the victims and not the rest of us.

And mentioning Nicola, it’s just crazy to call her out for not naming a date for the second indyref when we STILL don’t know what type of Brexit we’re going to have. Read the 2016 SNP manifesto, for goodness sake. Mark my words, if Johnson takes us out of the EU on a no deal by October 31, Nicola will call the referendum within a week, Section 30 or no Section 30 agreement, because until we know for certain what Brexit we’re getting, the mandate doesn’t apply.

So what’s all this got to do with sport? Well, as I have often said, sport is just a mere glorious triviality and shouldn’t be treated with any seriousness, certainly not when the world and just about every country in it, including the UK and Scotland, have such huge problems facing us. And I didn’t even mention climate change...

Yet for a few blissful hours last Sunday, sport showed us all what an inspirational, magnificent, incredible, exciting and supremely glorious triviality it can be. Yes, sport diverted our attention from the horrors around us, but didn’t we all need a break?

I cannot recall such a sequence of extraordinary events happening in such a short space of time across major sports.

I was glued to the Cricket World Cup final and then juggled television screen, laptop and smartphone to watch the British F1 Grand Prix and the men’s singles final from Wimbledon.

Even the most spaced-out, coke-headed lunatic Hollywood scriptwriter could not have concocted such drama as the conclusions to the cricket and tennis, and all that after Lewis Hamilton’s truly historic Grand Prix win.

My heart just about broke for Roger Federer at the end of that utterly astonishing match at Wimbledon. Both he and Novak Djokovic played out of their skins, and to go to the 25th game of the final set was just stunningly dramatic. It really was edge of the seat stuff, the longest and, I’ll say it, the best Wimbledon final ever.

The sportsmanship of both men after the final point was something to behold. The two greatest players of all time knew that they had created a completely memorable event, and their dignified and genuine reactions were a huge credit to them.

This may upset some Scots, but I was delighted when England pulled off that amazing win over New Zealand. All credit to the Black Caps for their huge contribution to the greatest one day international ever played.

I said I hoped England would win because at least they might shut up about 1966, though I also thought there would be big over-reaction by the English nationalists and the media would over-hype the victory so that we Scots would be mightily upset and think again about our place in this disUnion.

I was wrong. I have to say how impressed I have been about the lack of hype about the World Cup win. For instance the English Cricket Board did not organise an open-topped bus to parade the trophy. That’s good sense, because the real World Cup of cricket, the Ashes, starts next week.

There’s a serious point to be made here. We were only all able to watch the motor racing, cricket and tennis because they were free to air, and kudos to Channel 4 and Sky in particular for putting the public interest first. They and BT Sport, who made the European Champions League final available to all, have set a precedent for future events of this calibre – ways must be found to have world-class sport on free-to-air television.

It’s probably the only time in my life that I have agreed with Tory Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright who urged the sports governing bodies and broadcasters to “encourage as much live sport to be as accessible as possible, whether that’s on free-to-air or other public sources” without compromising sports’ income from Pay TV.

Sport as happened last Sunday is very rare, but we will see its likes again, so let’s make sure that everyone can see it on screen.