The boy wonder

Fasten your ear-muffs for a deafening weekend — din and dissonance, vrooms and fumes. Around Silverstone, lock up your dogs and daughters while the leaning, leather-clad boy racers sort out the British leg of the world motorcycling championship. Down on the Riviera, the straw-bales and (what we used to call) the starlets are in place for Monaco’s round-the-houses Grand Prix on Sunday, while across the pond in Indiana the world’s largest annual sporting throng has gathered for the always hairy-scary Indianapolis 500. Brits ignore most all-American sports; at home, as well, motor-cycling coverage is pretty well blanked by the mainstream backpages, though it strikes me as a more genuine sport than fat-cat supremo Bernie Ecclestone’s narrow-eyed four-wheeled Formula One unmerry-go-round which the multinational sponsors continue to swamp in greenbacks by the zillion.