Elliot v Joyce: third set and all is not well on centre court ...

Courtside, the fans are getting edgy. Super Tom, TS Elliot himself, has refused to serve to James Joyce for some minutes now.

“Could you try and keep the interior monologue down, please?” he hisses. “… Do you have any idea what constitutes acceptable on-court language?”

Joyce knows he’s got Super Tom rattled now, and smiles laconically. Super Tom reaches down and rolls the bottoms of his trousers, but still refuses to serve.

“Mr Elliot,” says the umpire. “Hurry up please, it’s time.”

John Clarke, my favourite Australian comedian has written what sounds like a gem. I caught him reading the above, loosely paraphrased, scene on Radio National yesterday. As he puts it, everyone in the modernist project occupies the same place in your head – but many never actually met. Now they do, in “The Tournament” the imaginary chronicle of the greatest tennis tournament that never was. Einstein is seeded fourth, and Salvador Dali is a wildcard more interested in misbehaving at press conferences – who still scrapes through to the finals. Competitors include Freud, Chaplin, Louis Armstrong, HG Wells and many others. Full of pastiche, parody and insight dressed up as satire, I think this is going to be a fantastic book.

I haven’t read it yet, but given my extraordinary love of Clarke’s TV satire on the preparations for the 2000 Sydney Olympics, “The Games”, I may have to be forcibly restrained from buying the enitre print run for gifts.