Wanted a nose job. The surgeon was ambivalent. Apparently, he can operate with either hand.

"Big Nose," he said with the bedside manner that has caused patients to form a waiting list for MRSA, "I would do the job. But the downside is that next time it rains your feet will get wet for the first time."

Taking this on the chin, a beautifully shaded area under a magnificent awning ripe for redevelopment, I reflected that life is always a case of good news, bad news. Or the reverse: swen doog, swen dab.

This highly original philosophy is the watchword of the television sports scheduler. With no Olympics, football World Cup, European Championships, or Commonwealth Games this year, the fare for some of our broadcasters is as thin as Posh Spice after three days on a treadmill and a dose of Auld Maw's Original Enema: The Best and Only Start to the Day.

There are, of course, the staples. And very handy they are too at keeping things together. Sorry.

There are the regulars: The Open, Wimbledon, the Tour De France, the South Carolina Truck-Pulling Championships. But less fortunate broadcasters have to fill the hours with a creativity that makes William Burroughs on acid seem positively dull.

It is great to watch great sport on television. It is even better to watch duff sport on television.

Duff sport is not be confused with boring sport. The schedules will be filled with a variety of cars and bikes rushing around various tracks as an excited commentator screams at you. It is similar to watching CCTV of the Kingston Bridge while the sports editor briefs you. This is boring sport. There will also be interminable under 20, under 21, under 22 and half football tournaments. They are sometimes good, sometimes bad. They are never duff.

Duff sport is a wonderful, elite niche. In winter, it consists solely of skiers slowly tracking across mountains with rifles on their backs. Occasionally, they stop and fire said rifle at a target which they have somehow found in the wilderness. These targets must be peculiarly indigenous to Scandinavian countries and the skiers take a very dim view of them. After they have peppered them with gunshot, they glide down a hill and over a finishing line while assembled mountain rescue teams dance with joy and ring cow bells. There are no cows. Personally, I believe the poor animals were hiding behind the targets.

This is a truly duff sport. But I think it needs updated for the new, friendly millennium. The bods can ski as much as they want, and the cow bells can be wielded like a chib in Possil, but the competitors must lay down their guns and instead shake as many of their rivals' hands as they can. This will save a lot of unnecessary noise and the cows will be pleased.

This skiing extravaganza, though, is a winter duff sport.

The summer duff sports mainly concern sand. Some genius has just looked through a guide to sport and said: "Let's put this on sand."

It started with beach volleyball.

It has its attractions but there seems to be a huge disparity in the interest in the women's' game and that of the men. Then came beach football. This was never true to its roots. Veterans of holidays in Spain know that beach football must consist of a team of local waiters, a group of holidaymakers from Glasgow wearing the obligatory strip of bright red with scabs, and a psychopath who seems a nice guy by the pool but has suddenly decided his mission in life is to rid the world of all serving staff.

Then there is beach rugby. This is splendidly daft. The only point of rugby is to hurt someone and not get charged. Like being a policeman in Los Angeles. In beach rugby, the tackles are as harmless as the winner of Any Dream Will Do in a tizz.

I would like to see beach golf, though my mate Tam would win because he spends more time in bunkers than Josef Goebbels' remains. But I would just love to see Monty putt across six feet of rutted sand as a donkey with a drunk Glaswegian on board makes both a deposit and a commentary on the sport. Or how about Tiger forced to play over a sand castle as an ice-cream van wails and the psychopath chases poor Manuel with murderous intent.

It would be a perfect marriage of great summer sport and great duff summer sport. And it would put a few noses out of joint. But, as my surgeon has just said, who am I to talk.