Sonny? Sonny? That you Sonny? Can't be you, can it? Oh my. Sonny Liston. Back to haunt us I don't doubt. Let's look at you. You ain't put on a pick. It's 35 years this month since Ali put you on the seat of your pants and the world said it was a good thing because you were just a Philadelphia hoodlum. Thirty-five years to the month, ain't it Sonny. You reckon on that?

Twenty-nine years since they lowered you into that Nevada grave, still at last and clamped under the earth beneath that simple tombstone: Sonny Liston, A Man.

What is it Sonny? Come back to look around at the world that said you weren't good enough for it, checkin' out the old places where you're face didn't fit because you were a stain on sports nobility? Don't go hard on us, Sonny. Listen, the world is a little out of kilter just now Sonny, we have some people working on it and we'll call you when it's ready. Maybe it's best if you just go back, lie down, and when it's all over you will be notified.

C'mon Sonny, there are things here you shouldn't be seeing. Yes, that's him alright. Over there on your left in the leg irons, that is Mike Tyson.

No, you heard it right, you are not imagining it. He really did partake in a major sporting event three weeks ago as a convicted rapist and established ear biter. Got paid more than you ever dreamed of and then some. People offered up their admission money to the spectacle more entranced by his threat to kill his opponent than repulsed by his soiled history of incoherent crime and modern slavery. Don't worry, he's going back to prison now so you won't be able to see him fight till the autumn probably, maybe next spring.

The guy with the grey hair, standing up? That's Don King. Look, we don't have time for that.

Yeah yeah, the guy over there pointing the finger at everyone else, yes it's him, the chap who used to manage England, the English soccer team. Strangest thing. While you were sleeping, the routinely arrogant nuttiness of this Mr Glenn Hoddle got enlarged into scenes from Salem at the prompting of our new in-house organ of thoughtful political correctness, the Sun newspaper.

You might wonder if disabled people lightly bruised by Mr Hoddle's well-preened ignorance feel a little bemused at being used as battering rams for other people's agendas. But don't worry disabled brethren, long after Hoddle is reduced to barking at passers-by in a corner of Hyde Park we in the sports world will be looking out for your needs and sensibilities.

Sure we will Sonny, sure we will. Most people figured long ago that interviews with Glenn Hoddle weren't exactly going to be My Dinner With Andre, and his views on religion have long been held to that Thomas Aquinas sophistication. He might have been just another caller to Liveline - you get Liveline in hell Sonny? Oh. I thought it was just flames - but instead he may end up being given his own show and permitted to explore issues like what sins from a previous life League of Ireland fans are paying for.

The old guys? Well Sonny, they're the International Olympic Committee. Remember them? Well, there's more of them now, lots more, and they travel the world like kings. And that meeting they are coming out of? Well, that's the World Conference on Doping.

Now Sonny don't take on. Cool it. When I explain it to you that way, well, sure, I can see that it sounds like they've spent the week figuring out how to protect themselves from the cheats with the good lawyers. But listen, maybe a lot of sex and booze does make a man doped. These are people under pressure Sonny, they have bigger things to be worrying about than sport dying in their arms. See it their way, Sonny, c'mon.

What a time it's been here in Ireland, Sonny. The National Stadium building drive is underway and we have a slogan for it: One for Everyone in the Audience. Good, isn't it?

Over there, those blue and red people? Them's the rugby folk, celebrating another narrow loss. Strange folk.

I remember in the early days when, subject to quarantine clearance, I was allowed to cover rugby games, I got invited to a pre-game lunch in Lansdowne RFC. Free lunch Sonny. On the appointed day, myself and a colleague arrived bearing, of course, the charmingly disheveled aspect of freelance journalists. Our hosts took one look at us and shoved us in some sort of closet with a beef roll each and the club's most geriatric member for company. Hard times Sonny.

Many is the night's sleep I have lost in the interim seething about that slight. The chip on my shoulder has prospered splendidly ever since. Indeed it was I who abseiled down the slimy walls of the Liffey to write that inspired graffito which you can observe from the south side of the river "Tax D Horsey Set Pigs." So there.

Rugby hasn't caused me to smile since then, but on Saturday I could scarcely suppress a chuckle. Flicking through the channels I came across a Nissan advertisement with a game of rugby being played on it. Symbolically, all the players appeared to have been bathed or anointed in the Nissan ad, humble supplicants to the new god of rugby.

How strange. Lansdowne Road is a dowdy old dear of a ground and rugby is a middle class plot against me personally. But since when did the pitches start getting made up like elderly trollops? The old field looked pitiful, but, seizing the moment, I called the IRFU commercial division and, for the price of remortaging the house, the slogan "Tax D Horsey Set Pigs" will fill the whole area inside the 22 at the Havelock end next time out. Splendid.

There's lots more to see though, Sonny. We haven't shown you the Whiskey in the Bottle Woman, the bearded ladies of athletics, the striking millionaires of basketball and the Stan Collymore corner.

C'mon Sonny, I'll show it all to you, the works. Don't be like that now, you've got forever to lie in the grave. Take another look at the sporting world you weren't good enough for, you'll rest easy. Yeah, that's Ali they're putting on the Wheaties box.

Back in 1964, when that picture was taken, he was too controversial to be on the Wheaties box. Now he's too disabled so they use the old picture. I told you about that awful Hoddle, didn't I?