The Gardeners' World Blog

Saturday's Football Focus contained two items which grabbed my attention: firstly, there was a superb piece with Paul Canoville, the first black player to play for Chelsea; and secondly, they interviewed Michel Platini who's putting himself forward for the presidency of Uefa.

I'll return to Paul Canoville in due course, because I'd like to offer a personal perspective on his story, but first to the great Michel (Watch the interview with Platini).

He was one of the all-time great players, and could well be in charge of European football in the near future, so his rejection of video technology in favour of having four assistant referees was particularly interesting.

Perhaps we should send him tapes of the weekend's two Match Of The Days, to see whether he'd like to reconsider his stance!

I was really pleased that the tickets for this year's Sports Personality of the Year show sold out so quickly - inside an hour in fact!

We probably could have sold enough to have filled to capacity St Andrews and Villa Park such has been the interest in this year's event moving to Birmingham's NEC.

The downside of not having enough tickets to satisfy demand is that some Sports Personality tickets have appeared on eBay at vastly increased prices. We're really very disappointed about this.