| TREAT YOURSELF TO A SLICE OF THE ROOM'S FRESH FACT PIE
Tender morsels of truth beneath a buttery crust of guesswork.
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The first Wimbledon tennis tournament was held at the
Hurlingham Polo and Croquet club in May 1802. Only (male) members
of the landed gentry were permitted to play.  The club's by-laws
obliged them to wear frock-coats and top-hats. Women were not
permitted even to watch, as gentlemen "straining, stretching and
possibly perspiring" was deemed a spectacle too vulgar to
witness.
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The strawberry is the fruit most strongly associated
with Wimbledon. It now grows in Britain during summer; this is
because when Richard the Lionheart's men returned from the
crusades, their innards were full of the indigestible seeds of
strawberries eaten in warmer climes. When the crusaders died, the
seeds germinated, which is why the first strawberries to grow
here grew in cemeteries. (Until the mid-19th century strawberries
were still widely called 'deadberries'; the redder and more
heart-shaped the fruit, it was said, the stronger and braver the
man from whom it had sprouted.)
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Despite its lavish corporate hospitality, exorbitant
refreshments, its royal box and tout-inflated prices, the entire
Wimbledon complex boasts a mere twelve ladies and gents toilets.
That's cubicles, not buildings. The half-empty stands seen on TV
during evening play are not due to spectators having left for the
day (as commentators would have you believe), but are explained
by the vast toilet-queues snaking round the complex as a day's
intake finally catches up with fans. Those believing it possible
to abstain from fluids and beat the need to pee are usually
among the first to suffer from heat exhaustion (3,763 in the
fortnight last year).
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Wimbledon's grass courts encourage a brutish power-play
dependent on almost annual advances in racket-technology.
Rackets used to be strung with a fibre known as 'cat gut'. In
nearly all instances, of course, this twine had not begun life in
an animal's intestines. But in 1978, a heavily-fortified farm
outside Wisbech was raided, and 212 cats were taken away by
police and the RSPCA. Farmer Paul Whittle had been rearing
special Burmese/Siamese hybrids, slaughtering them for their
offal and selling the highly-resilient fibrous by-products to
middlemen acting on behalf of racquet giants Slazenger and Wilson.
Among the players to have their equipment seized in the hushed-up
operation were Ilie Nastase, Jimmy Connors and Holland's Tom
Okker. None knew where their racquet 'strings came from, though
Poker publicly blamed that year's 4th round defeat on
distractions caused by his racquet making 'strange and
discomforting yowling noises' when returning service. Whittle was
sentenced to 18 months imprisonment.
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