Does anyone really care about Tennis?

It is an early Summer's day in South-West London and Elena Baltacha has just won her first round match sparking countless interviews and back page tabloid spreads indicating how 'Our Girl' gone and done well.
Fast forward six months and its Elena Who? Baltacha load of Whose? I'll tell you who and what, Britains best female performer at the Australian Open is what. Making the third round for only the second time in her career, pride of Middlesex (place of residence), Scotland (place she first represented for UK) and er the Ukraine (Elena is of Kiev parentage!) is what.
Elena is currently enjoying her highest ever world ranking of 83, has almost reached half a million dollars in prize money and is more than twice as successful as any other current female tennis player in Britain. It's not groundbreaking stuff when compared to a Williams sister or any countless Eastern bloke clone but she is the best there is ourt there under the Union Jack. I had to look these facts up, because I don't really care about Tennis. Just like most people. Tennis, to me, is a complete waste of time and I find Wimbledon a pain in the backside. A tournament that involves as much hypocrisy and wasted pomp and ceremony as found on a trans-Atlantic cruise.
So why don't we care? Is it because we like to believe we are a nation of winners? Is it because other sports take up so much time and space that Tennis is on the backburner almost constantly? Do we have enough room for only one Scot? Or is it that we really don't give a Monkey's about the mostle fickle of national institutions?
Tennis, the game we love to think was invented here in lovely England but was really formed by the Egyptians and bastardized from the French to palaces such as Hampton Court with soft balls and sloping roofs (facts researched and not known once again, i'm afraid).
Tennis is the sport noone cares to follow and I know why.
It is because the beacon leading the way is a dour man who has no time for the press or being a happy hero and in doing so has often come across as surly, rude and uninterested. 
It is because the British public have a short attention span and in doing so show more affection for what is truly quintessentiality English - Strawberries, cream and queueing?
Well, yes and yes and yes. Andy Murray, unfortunately, doesn't care too much for the limelight and why should he when he's already earnt enough to retire, even at 23. Won enough to be proud, 14 atp titles to date and been the highest ranked Brit for, well, as long as memory serves.
He is also a proud Scot living in England, playing under the Lawn Tennis association's funded courts and facilites in London, but really doesn't like it and milking it for what it's worth to him, which happens to be millions. Now there's a young man knowing who butters his bread. If only he was born in the home counties, or not.
But that is it, the home counties middle classes have driven this apathy to Tennis more than the other way round or anything else. Or is it the want to be middle class and from the home counties that drives society on its back?
Because we have proof that it is all wrong. Every year we see them, the lowest of the low, camping on an SW18 backstreet overnight in their hundreds, in the most miserable of conditions. Overnight they queue! In pain from boredom but enjoyment from how stiff their upper lip is and then we, the viewer, grimace as prime time drive time tv interviews with the mad folk reveal they are there just to get grubby hands on tickets.
Two Centre court semi-final tickets to a match they have no idea about and no interest in. No knowledge of the records and form of the two players competing. No real credence as to why they are there excpet for the fact they believe they have to be. Now that sounds much more British to me. We should employ these people as negotiators in times of war as they would never give up, never back down. Just coax them with a few pieces of red fruit and a position at the front of the line.
It is likely that the love of being a luvvie overrides all other sentimental emotions when finally inside, chest pigeon puffed out in pride of making it. Anti-rain dance complete. Bank loan confirmed and finally bar hit. Oh, there's tennis?
An afternoon happily spent on what was once Henman Hill having just grabbed an overpriced (plastic) glass of bubbly amongst a scrum of other wanabee it girls and boys. Taken a seat on checked picnic blanket to enjoy scoffing some even more highly inflated non-organic strawberries and cream in a little outfit for 'the fortnight'. Now that is what Wimbledon is really about. Being completely uninterested in the Tennis. Pretending to care but failing to convince.
Oh, and did you know that Murray plays some bloke from Spain in the quarter of finals of some tournament in Australia tomorrow?
Thought not.
By the way. That bloke Federer.
He's Swiss.