SPORT ON TELEVISION:With a spare letter "k" and an eraser to hand, it wouldn't take anyone long to make their preferred adjustment to Naseem Hamed's latest title, "The Little Prince".

At 27, unbeaten in his 35 professional fights and worth around £30 million sterling, the featherweight obviously felt his dominion was secure enough to permit a film crew unlimited access to his training camp as he prepared for last spring's fight against Marco Antonio Barrerra.

Although surrounded by an entourage of advisers and gofers which made Mike Tyson's travelling party seem quaint, the best piece of advice communicated to "Naz" over the hour came from an American girl in a restaurant who explained: "You'd have a lot more fans if you weren't such an asshole."

Palm Springs - or to be precise Bing Crosby's old home in Palm Springs - was the chosen destination by Naz and the popular people.

"It's a boring place for young people - there are no night clubs as far as I know," explained the Prince's brother, Nabel Hamed, who, it must be remembered, spent his formative years in Sheffield.

Solitude - and the dead crooner's ample swimming pool - was what was required for the apparently hyperactive Naz, who was unable to stay in the same room as the film crew without performing an exhaustive series of feints and jabs and steps in front of the camera, all the time talking an indecipherable stream of psychobabble. When not pondering the will of Allah, the devout Muslim was mostly interested in the art of rendering a fellow unconscious.

"Any living soul with a chin - all it takes is three-and-a-half pounds of pressure," he explained, bobbing for all he was worth.

But what Naz was most interested in was, of course, Naz. He adored himself with a fervour that was hard not to enjoy, and at least he was embracing the true west coast spirit of excess, unlike his gloomy brothers who wandered around Palm Springs and Vegas trying to overcome their unfortunately low boredom threshold.

"For someone who doesn't drink or gamble or fornicate, it is a very boring existence," grumbled the inconsolable Nabel.

In retrospect, it was as well that they had the demanding Naz to keep them preoccupied, and it wasn't long before we learned of the complications of the top class fight game.

For instance, Naz, prior to being transported by Lear jet from Bing's pad to the MGM Grand in Vegas, was forced to re-arrange his accommodation. Upon hearing that the MGM president kept a reserve suite for exclusive A-list celebrities with a market value that extended beyond greater Sheffield, Naz was straight on the phone to the top brass.

"I've heard you've got a mansion - with a pool. Will you give it up for da Prince?" he demanded. As it turned out, MGM wouldn't.

The Prince's prescribed apparatus was also proving problematic. Naz happens to favour a pugilistic glove fashioned from goatskin, and so one of his herd was dispatched to Mexico to verify that the fabric was genuine. Several goats and a return flight later, Naz decided that he wouldn't be boxing with those gloves after all.

The night before the fight, Theus, an LA-based barber, was flown in to tend to the Prince's tresses.

"Working with Naz," whispered Theus as he tidied up the Prince's buzz cut, "it's like a work of art - there is no room for mistakes." That much was probably true.

The worst mistake the entourage made was allowing Chris Eubank in for a visit the night before the fight. It is well known that Eubank would crawl naked across the Serengeti on the promise of a TV appearance at the end of it, and when he caught sight of Naz's documentary crew, he almost wept.

"This could wreck the last six weeks of training camp," confided Nabel as Eubank gleefully embarked on a monologue of lispy madness.

The final act was the choreography of Naz's stadium entrance, which involved his trademark leopard-skin, pyrotechnics and an airborne mode of transport.

"I don't want confetti on my body," he warned at one stage, obviously alive to the bigger issues of the day.

All the time, Barrerra was quietly training away in a public gym, and when the big night arrived he ended up, of course, pounding the lard out of the astonished Prince.

It was hardly surprising, given the extraordinary energy Hamed had channelled towards the cameras for the previous six weeks. Afterwards he was, to his credit, surprisingly magnanimous about it all, philosophising that "if that is the way, then it is written by Allah". Naz's assembled troops nodded in vigorous agreement, clearly relieved that the maiden defeat was attributed to divine will as opposed to inept management.

There was nothing much to glean from what was a tremendously comic examination of the lunacy of big-time sport stars, other than that the rise of the Prince must have meant a great boon for the leopard-skin industry.

It was another great coup for Channel 4, a station that turns to sport rarely but always with great panache, somehow managing to air most of the classic sports documentaries of recent times.

Watching it, though, it was hard not to think of Brendan Ingle, who saw Hamed's lightning reflexes and bravery and attitude through the scrawny body nearly two decades ago and nurtured his gift. Would he even have recognised his former protégé for all the hedonistic pursuit of material details? It is likely that he would not have been very impressed.

Then, the poor old goat that ended life as the Prince's unused gloves was probably none too happy with the venture either. But as his brother Nabel concluded, in a rare moment's respite from miserable introspection, "whatever Prince wants, Prince will get".

MONDAY

EUROSPORT (8.0 am) - Tennis: First day of comprehensive coverage of the Australian Open, where Venus Williams will be hoping to continue her astonishing form in the women's event while Lleyton Hewitt is expected to star in front of a home crowd.

BBC 2 (2.15) - Bowls: The world indoor championships from Potters Indoor Resort in Norfolk.

WEDNESDAY

SKY SPORTS 2 (7.30) - Football: Third round FA up replay between Chelsea and Norwich City.

SATURDAY

NETWORK TWO (7.0) - The Premiership: Eamon Dunphy presents another round-up of what is emerging as the best title chase in years.

CHANNEL 4 (9.0 pm) - 100 Greatest Sporting Moments: Concluding part of a two-leg marathon trawling through the most memorable moments of all time, as chosen by the British viewers.

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