TV View:We'd set the alarm for 6am, but you know yourself: hammer that snooze button so many times and eventually it abandons all hope of you rising and buzzes no more. So, by the time we tuned in to the Chinese Grand Prix the race was half over and Martin Brundle was hollering: "I think he's got some delamination on his right-rear tyre!"

And to be perfectly honest, we didn't know if this was a good or a bad thing for Lewis Hamilton.

We even looked up "delamination" there and then, in an attempt to educate ourselves in F1-speak, but the definition we found - "one of the methods by which the various blastodermic layers of the ovum are differentiated" - left us worrying about a whole lot more than Lewis's title prospects.

In the end we half guessed that Martin was talking about a different kind of delamination, because soon Lewis's race ended when he got stuck in the gravel and there was nothing blastodermic about it.

We blamed Martin's ITV colleague James Allen for this calamitous outcome. When we played back the tape to see the bits we'd missed while we were having nightmares about staking our home on an Australia/New Zealand double on Saturday - we heard him address England thus: "This is certainly one of those days that unites a nation in anticipation. They say sport doesn't build characters, it reveals them, and that's certainly very true this season of Lewis Hamilton. He has revealed himself to be a man with the spirit of Bobby Moore, Steve Redgrave, Martin Johnson and Jackie Stewart, an elite group of British-born winners."

Fine men, Bobby, Steve, Martin and Jackie, but an elite group? What about, to name but one, Jocky Wilson? He was a British world champion too.

Granted, "he has revealed himself to be a man with the spirit of Jocky Wilson" mightn't have been quite as rousing, but James, we felt, was being far too narrow in his citing of former British world-title-winning sporting legends.

Any way, pre-race ITV was giddy with excitement over the prospects of F1's answer to Jocky Wilson - and Steve Rider and Mark Blundell, in particular, were positively purring.

"I think Fernando may be a beaten man at this point, I really do," said Blundell of the Alonso fella, the reigning champion.

And then they spoke admiringly about Lewis's pre-race calm and confidence, but when Martin went to have a chat with him on the grid Lewis was missing. "He's having a comfort break," said Martin, "a panic pee, I suspect." This, we feared, did not augur well.

But everything went grand until Lewis tried to drop in to the garage to change the rubbery things on his wheels - forgive the techy F1-speak - and missed the turn and ended up in gravelly stuff. And that was that.

"All is not lost," said Steve.

"It's still possible," said Mark, before joining Steve for an ITV-sponsored panic pee.

Brazil in a fortnight will tell us whether Lewis can reveal himself to be a man with the spirit of Jocky Wilson.

Speaking of spirit. "Pommie Granite" read the headline in an English newspaper yesterday, in reference to England's defeat of Australia on Saturday. We liked it. Very much.

"It doesn't matter whether it's cricket, rugby union, rugby league - we all hate England," Australian chief executive John O'Neill had said in the build-up to the game. Jim Rosenthal, our ITV host, dismissed this claim as "idiotic", and we could only agree, as did the cuddly Wallaby we had seated on top of the telly for the game.

Anyway, let's cut to the chase, England won.

ITV man: "Tell me, how do you feel?"

Nick Easter: "Good. To quote Nick Faldo, after winning one of his Opens, I'd like to thank the press from the heart of my bottom for all the support they've given us over the last few weeks . . . it was a bit of an insult to be the underdogs in this game, to be perfectly honest . . . but I suppose if you go by results, maybe."

Well, yeah, results, curiously enough, tend to determine the rating of most teams, but you'd have to wonder why the English press opted out of supporting the team when they lost 36-0 to South Africa in the group phase.

All the same, you couldn't help thinking . . . if only our lads responded thus to press vilification.

As for France later that evening. "C'est incroyable," said Trevor Brennan over on TV3, in that Barnhall-meets-Toulouse accent we have come to love.

"New Zealand better get the lifejackets on cos I'd say a few of those boys are going to be swimmin' home - there'll be no first class," he giggled.

"Oh the bar's going to be sooooooo busy tonight," added the Toulouse publican.

Blastodermically busy, we suspect.