LAST week the organisers, this week the viewers.

The BBC Sports Personality of the Year has kept my blood simmering at boiling point.

Forgetting the relative merits of the candidates, I felt Sunday's show provided a sad indictment of Britain entering the new millennium.

Is our society in such a sorry state that the hero of the present-day, Lennox Lewis, not to mention the whole century, Muhammad Ali, are men who have made a living out of brutality?

Do we really want today's youth to look up to men who glamorise violence in the name of sport?

The noble art? There is nothing noble in my book about trying to inflict lasting injury on another athlete.

I think the overwhelming vote for Muhammed Ali was, in effect, a way of relieving a mass guilty conscience.

For almost all sports fans, myself included, cannot resist the spectacle of watching two men in combat, especially when the consequences are potentially tragic.

It is, without doubt, gripping theatre.

That's fine, as long as we can accept the consequences of our support for these acts.

The unanimous conclusion was that it was a terrible shame to see Ali in such a pathetic state.

The truth is that Ali is one of the lucky ones, to have made it through his boxing career without permanent physical or mental injury. And even if his current state of health has no bearing on the number of blows to his head - which is open to debate - the possibility still creates a sense of acute discomfort.

It is all very well cheering every blow, every wound inflicted, every skull against canvas, as long as we can also stomach the sight of the long-term damage that is a direct consequence.

Ali, of course, was an exception. Not for his lip, because Chris Eubank and that Naseem idiot, have proved how easy it is to make a fool of yourself through extrovertism without intellect.

And Ali's stances on American war policy, racism and civil rights were truly noble. His exploits in the ring probably did merit the award of Sportsman of the Century, although there is an equally strong case for Jesse Owens.

I just feel that the sentimentality was misplaced.

Ironically, a play on the Beeb this week starring Martin Clunes, Sex 'n Death, addressed the issue brilliantly and shockingly.

We are all happy to watch trashy and demeaning television, but do not want to accept the responsibility that the very act of watching plays a significant part in the widespread acceptance of the resulting eroded moral values.

It's the same with boxing.

The more we pay to watch monsters like Mike Tyson in action, and glorify his visit to these shores, the more attractive it becomes for youngsters to follow that example and gamble with their health.

There will be a widespread outcry the next time a boxer dies in the ring.

And that death will have been in the pursuit of the kind of misguided adulation received by Ali on Sunday night.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.