THERE is just one other night that can match the glitz, the glamour - and the sham.
Only the Royal Variety Performance stands on a par with the CBC Sports Personality of the Year for attempting to glorify the inglorious and hype the hopeless.
(The award should now be named after the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, who offered to buy the rights to the show from the BBC for £5 when they realised that their citizens scooped first prize more often than their British contenders.)
And this year, there is not even any suspense.
The nation, from Vancouver to Montreal, knows that Canadian-born Lennox Lewis will walk away with first prize, following in the recent illustrious steps of fellow Mountie Greg Rusedski and Michael Owen, whose long lost family must have been deported back to Liverpool from British Columbia.
Yet, when that moment arrives, the powers that be will be guilty of gross double standards.
For, in previous years, the leading contenders have been restricted to sports then covered by the BBC.
So Michael Owen's only real competition came from the cox of the Cambridge crew in the University Boat Race and the judge in the Badminton Horse Trials.
The whole of East Lancashire, not to mention a fair sized portion of the whole country's population, knew that only one man deserved to lift that trophy.
That same man, Britain's only true and native world champion, again deserves proper recognition in Sunday night's ceremony. But Carl Fogarty is once more unlikely to figure in the roll of honour and for no other reason than the fact that the BBC's commitment to sport stretches no further from Television Centre than the White City greyhound stadium.
The Beeb have sniffed around the TV rights for next year's World Superbike Championship - Fogarty's attempt to win an amazing fifth world title.
WSB chiefs were, however, a little put out with the BBC's final offer of free tumblers for ever gallon of petrol used by the riders.
But there is another reason why Fogarty should triumph over Lewis.
Motorcycle racing is a sport, boxing is legalised barbarism.
So there is still a chance for you to influence the outcome, not to mention society's values.
Either fax the BBC on 020-8225-7365 or e-mail them at sportspersonality99@bbc.co.uk with your nomination, as today is the closing date.
You can also vote against Manchester United being voted team of the year for their despicable attitude to the FA Cup.
And if you don't have a fax or computer, then jolly well go out and buy one.
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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