Observations on sport
It was 6 July 2005, a momentous day for British sport. London had just won the 2012 Olympics bid and I was coming up for air after filing my story for the first editions. Entering the still-crowded foyer of the Singapore hotel where the announcement was made, I noticed a hubbub on the other side of the room. Then I realised that the voice at the core of the hubbub was shouting my name. "Fucking Owen. Fucking FT. Fucking wrong again." (I had thought London's chief rival, Paris, would squeak it.) Fortunately, Richard Caborn, the sports minister, was beaming through his beard.
This is the down-to-earth charm that has enabled the 63-year-old Sheffield Central MP to recover from a comically inept start and become a highly successful sports minister. This month, he marks five years and eight months in office, becoming Britain's longest-serving sports minister ever. (Denis Howell served more than ten years in all, but in two bursts.)
His comically inept start came in 2001 when he spectacularly failed an impromptu sports general knowledge test on national radio. He is thus living proof that you don't need to be an expert - still less a spin-doctored automaton - to be an effective minister.
There may be a lesson here for other governmental appointments: if junior ministers were left to grow into their jobs, rather than being reshuffled every few months, there would be a decent chance that a few would settle down and start to do a good job.
Certainly, Caborn's less-than-encyclopaedic knowledge of sport (although he is a genuinely keen Sheffield United fan) has not stopped him from making a success of the job. Instead, he has relied on his irrepressible buoyancy and a knack for deal-making.
With a trade-union background at a Sheffield steelworks, he has a talent for identifying when to compromise and when to tough things out. On his watch, Britain has largely avoided the sporting fiascos (Wembley and the like) that marked Labour's first term.
And, though others have taken the credit, Caborn did a lot to snare the Olympics: his early support for the World Anti-Doping Agency bolstered the UK's credibility in Olympic circles; and his friendship with the South African IOC member Sam Ramsamy helped secure Nelson Mandela's endorsement of London's bid.
Unusually for a Labour minister, he can laugh at himself. Before the Olympic vote, he revealed sheepishly that he had promised his boxer shorts to a female Australian journalist if London won. The makings of a scandal? Hardly: the garment in question had never been worn. It was official London 2012 attire which, Caborn was delighted to discover, came with the bid team's uniform. And here is another lesson for aspirant ministers: few things go down better with the media, or the public, than the sense that you do not take yourself too seriously.
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