TV VIEW:TRULY, THESE are bleak days for football-phobes, and it is, of course, only going to get worse once the World Cup actually gets around to starting.

For now it’s wall-to-wall coverage of fractured elbows, cruciate ligament strains, banjaxed hamstrings and assorted build-up developments.

Whooosh, Breaking News!

BP Oil Leak Plugged?

No: Wayne Rooney Scratches Left Ear.

And, without the rights to show the World Cup, Sky will have to remain focused on such off-the-field matters until the tournament is done and dusted.

The football-phobes, then, are in for a very, very long summer. Our hearts kind of went out to them on Saturday when, we guessed, they might have tuned in to the Derby to get away from World Cup mania.

And who was there to greet them? Geoff Hurst. Chatting to Clare Balding about BP’s top kill effort to slow the flow of oil. Kidding. 1966, of course.

If they’d hung around, though, they’d have been treated to an interesting report on Sea The Stars’ love life, one that, at times, was, frankly, a little too graphic for anyone in the middle of their lunch.

The speedy lad has been living at Gilltown Stud in Kildare since retiring and the BBC’s Rishi Persad paid him a visit to see how he’s doing.

It turns out that he’s doing grand, charging women horses €85,000 for a minute of his time. There are names for men like that, but the Gilltown Gigolo seemed unrepentant about it all.

“From the day that it was announced we’d have him here we had over 200 people hoping to use him,” explained Pat Downes, manager at the stud.

That, though, was too many, said Pat, a suggestion that drew an indignant grunt from Sea The Stars as he winked into the camera.

Rishi then felt it was a good idea to ask Pat to explain “a little bit about the routine before he gets in to action, so to speak”, a question he soon very much regretted posing.

Details of the process certainly won’t be repeated here, let’s just say it’s as romantic as taking your Fiat Punto to the garage for a servicing.

“What a life he’s got,” sighed Willie Carson back at Epsom.

“Yes, he’s looking very happy, but obviously very busy,” agreed Clare.

“£80,000 for a minute’s work is very good pay.”

Willie sighed again, heavily.

We wondered if Usain Bolt had heard about Sea The Stars’ current lifestyle.

"The first thing he asked me about when we met was retirement," said Michael Johnson in the BBC's rather splendid documentary, The Fastest Man Who Has Ever Lived.

The two-legged speed king is a source of wonder for Johnson, the American always having assumed that “efficiency and economy of movement is what makes you faster”.

And with that he began analysing slow-motion footage of Bolt’s running style back in his Performance Centre in Texas, along with sprint coach Lance Walker. Both men were left scratching their heads as the inefficient Bolt rock ‘n’ rolled his way to yet another world record.

Johnson argued that while running fast is a God-given talent it’s also a skill “that can be perfected by coaching and the application of good technique”. Bolt agreed with a third of that formula.

“It’s just a talent God gave me, I guess it’s my way of giving back to the world,” he smiled.

Johnson smiled too, waving a white flag in his efforts to understand how this fella can possibly run as fast as he does.

“What he achieves defies logic, he has something you cannot teach.

“Like other gifted individuals in sport, the arts or science, you just have to accept this man for what he is – unique.”

Back in Texas, Paula Radcliffe was toiling away in Johnson’s Performance Centre, a place he says “is as much a lab as a gym”, trying to find that extra fraction of a per cent that would give her the edge.

Over in Jamaica, Bolt was taking it easy, DJing at a club. Johnson wondered how much faster he could run “with greater determination and hunger for the sport”, but conceded he was just “running for the fun of it”.

Apart from anything, if Bolt applied himself and found a way of running faster he’d meet himself coming back.

“I just want to be a normal guy, chill out with my friends,” he said, telling Johnson he enjoys travelling but not sight-seeing.

“I’d rather stay in – just watch TV, play my PlayStation, listen to my iPod, or whatever. People going to China might want to see the Great Wall, I’m not like that.”

As the eighth wonder of the world why would he be impressed by the Great Wall any way?

As Ron Atkinson once put it, “I’ve bent free-kicks round bigger walls than this.”