Parade of Builders' Bums Exposes Cracks at Sky

In the same way as the mountainous and formerly heavy-drinking darts player Andy Fordham said he was entitled to call himself an athlete because "I wear trainers and I have been on Grandstand," I suppose we must accept that bodybuilding is a sport, since its British grand prix was broadcast on Sky Sports 2 last week.

But really, in the pantheon of pointlessness is there any activity that ranks higher? Is there a living soul not popped up to the eyeballs on "food supplements" able to watch a bodybuilding contest without asking, "Why?"

Once, maybe, there was a reason for it. If the adverts for Charles Atlas's bodybuilding courses in the 1950s are to be believed, it was necessary back then to build some muscle in the chest and upper-arm area if you were planning to spend time at a coastal resort and wished to avoid having sand kicked in your face.

It seems there was a real epidemic of sand kicking in the 1950s; whether because of an excess of dairy products in the diet, cold war tension, or prolonged exposure to Rosemary Clooney records, I do not know, but the point was that a tanned, well-developed torso, according to Charlie, would enable you to be the kicker rather than the kickee.

Nowadays, though, with more people opting for city breaks or spending vacations in theme parks, it is possible to be as pale and wasted as you like on holiday - heroin chic, as the look is sometimes described - without a single grain of sand landing in your face.

And the suggestion in Atlas's ads, which usually featured a young female shooting admiring glances at a powerful male upper chest, that a muscular body might help you have more sex - which was, of course, strictly rationed in the immediate post-war years - is really not relevant today. Even the unlikeliest of candidates - Richard Madeley, Norman Lamont - apparently find it in plentiful supply.

As far as I can see, in today's world of bodybuilding, sex runs a poor second to narcissism. The only suggestion of anything sexual in the grand prix came when the commentators Kerry Kayes and Jean-Marc Poulton departed from the technical aspects of the business - hamstring/glute tie-ins, side triceps, and so on - and spoke about the contestants in, shall we say, more personal terms.

"I like his physique a hell of a lot," Jean-Marc said of Harold Marillier, one of the posers, and Kayes spoke admiringly of the eventual winner Ronnie Coleman's bottom. "When you've not got fat on your bottom, it just shows what condition these guys are in," cooed Kerry.

Now I am sure talk of chaps' tight bottoms and pleasingly symmetrical physiques is perfectly valid punditry in the parallel universe of bodybuilding - the equivalent perhaps of Motty and Lawro commenting on a midfielder's incisive passing - but, to an old-fashioned lad from working-class north Manchester, two guys sitting in a commentary box having a conversation about another chap's thighs sounds pretty damned gay (not that there's anything wrong with that) in every possible sense of the word; except maybe in the sense it was intended in The Flintstones theme song which, you may recall, held out the promise of a "gay old time" in the town of Bedrock.

(Over 100 words, by the way, that last sentence. I am rather proud of it. It does not read very well, and it is not particularly nice to look at, but no guy from the Telegraph is going to be round here kicking sand in my keyboard).

In fairness to Kerry and Jean-Marc, they did acknowledge the possibility of my interpretation. In the section of the contest called "free posing", for instance, one contender, Tommi Thorvildsen, appeared in cape and mask, "to liven up the show a little", which Jean-Marc considered a "little bit camp for me".

However, as he then vouchsafed that if he were to pose in costume it would be as "an American policeman with mirror shades", and Kerry said he would dress "as a nurse, a very butch one", they appeared to be going some way towards reinforcing the prejudices of unreconstructed Mancunians like me. I half expected them to break into a "Hello, I'm Julian, and this is my friend Sandy," routine.

It would have been a welcome relief, because for the most part commentators and competitors alike seemed to take the business of building unfeasible muscles deadly seriously.

Take the front lat spread, which turns out not to be a low-calorie substitute for margarine or butter, but a mandatory pose requiring the body builder to display the muscles in the rib cage area, for which purpose he must stand with shoulders thrust back, hands on hips and one foot slightly forward. Remarkably, no one deemed it worthy of note that this is the exact pose Graham Norton strikes after a particularly cheeky one-liner.

On the subject of one-liners, I was telephoned by Radio Ulster last week and asked to comment on Rodney Marsh's sacking by Sky Sports. When they quoted to me his terminally weak pun, which most wags had spotted and rejected a month ago, I assumed Marsh's dismissal was for not being funny, which I had to tell the good people of Northern Ireland I considered a little harsh. After all, if not being funny is a sacking offence, how come A Question of Sport has lasted 700 editions?