Obviously, we all spent tonight huddled round the television in families watching the awards ceremony for the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year competition, excited for the result. Who would it be? Would Andrew Strauss’s gurn be deemed more characterful than Mo Farah’s significant medal? It is now known.

And of course they also run a competition parallel to the adult sports personality of the year competition for Young People. Mostly, Tom Daley wins. I think this year he didn’t? But anyway, the great thing about this competition is that members of the public can nominate just about anything.

So I nominated my best friend, Tristan, who in real life neither fits in the age category nor is a world Parkour champion, but I was convinced this wouldn’t be too much of a setback. Anyway, it started out with downloading the form from the BBC’s website and filling it in: the Tristan of the form lived in Ilkley (the irl Tristan is actually from there), and was a member of the West Yorkshire Parkour & Free Running Association. Here is the bit which doesn’t contain either his contact details or those of my friend Laura, who was the person officially ‘nominating’ him:

I sent this form off under a pseudonymous email account that I’d previously used to submit articles to the student paper when I was at university, which was attached to the name ‘Alex Meinong’, but to be honest I didn’t really expect them to reply. So imagine my surprise when Laura texted telling me that they’d sent her and someone she didn’t know named Alex this:

(Hello Alex/Laura.

Thanks for nominating Tristan for the BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year award.

Would it be possible for you to send me two photos of Tristan, to use in the information pack that we use in our judging sessions? If Tristan made the Top 10, these pics would be used subsequently for publicity, eg BBC Sport Website.

Ideally, we need a head and shoulders shot, and a photo of Tristan in action.)

Now, obviously after having received this from them, I had to reply with pics, but this presented me with a problem: Tristan does not do Parkour. I therefore have no pictures of him doing Parkour. So I had to make some. Here is what I came up with:

I sent the second one (genuinely because I thought it was the more convincing: at this point I really did think he was in with a chance), along with a picture of him from when he was about 17. A couple of days later, I received this back (‘Thomas’ is I think someone else at the BBC):

(Hi Alex,

To me, the ‘action’ shot look [sic] like it’s been Photoshopped on. Do you have a proper picture because there’s no way we could use that one in any publicity etc.

We will also be researching Tristan’s achievements, so any other details you can add would be gratefully received.

Andy)

“Oh shit,” I thought. “What will I do now? They have found me out. They can’t really punish me, probably, because this is only a fake email address, but I gave them Laura’s real contact details, even used her university address. What if they kick her out because of me? If I persist with this, I will just be digging myself further into the same hole, but if I admit it’s been a prank… what hell will the BBC unleash on us?” I turned it over and over in my mind, hoping against hope that I could think of a way out of this impasse… and, a few days later, I sent them this:

(Thankyou for bringing this matter to my attention. I can’t pretend, however, that it hasn’t been a tough day-and-a-bit here at the West Yorkshire Parkour & Free Running Association since you did.

This action shot was one Tristan’s parkour coach (who lives abroad and we don’t actually know that well), sent us, ostensibly of him practising his moves on an off-day in Coimbra, where (we thought) he took the Silver Medal at an event earlier this year. It had not occurred to either myself or my colleague Ms [removed] that it might have been tampered with in any way. When you pointed out that it might have been, I called Tristan’s coach to double-check, but he was very evasive, and did not answer clearly. This fired up my suspicions. Inspecting the photo again, it seemed to me that you might have been onto something.

We were able to get Tristan himself into the club this morning in order to discuss the photograph. The full details of what emerged in that meeting we would prefer to keep private, however I can confirm that, as it turns out, the photograph was indeed photoshopped, and, further to this, I cannot secure for you a photograph of Tristan performing parkour that has not been. A full internal enquiry will be carried out at the club, in which we will be assessing the precise nature/credibility of the achievements that Tristan, we thought, has racked up over the past few years, but we are not at present optimistic that he (or rather, his coach) has been telling us the exact truth. This is very difficult for all of us at the club, as Tristan has been our star performer, and his success has in fact been integral to getting lots of other young men and women involved in our activities.

Until such time, I have no choice but to ask that Tristan’s name be withdrawn from consideration for the Young Sports Personality of the Year, and both myself and Laura are deeply sorry for (and embarrassed about) having wasted any of your time.

Yours,

Alex Meinong)

To which they replied with this:

(Perhaps ‘West Yorkshire Parkour Exponent of the Year’ is more within Tristan’s grasp?

Make sure he doesn’t break his specs doing all those crazy jumps.)

It seems that after all that I had escaped without punishment. But, believe me: I will not be so quick to prank the BBC, ever again.