If one good thing has come out of the whole wretched Ched Evans affair, it's that we now know what happened to Dave Berry.   Berry had a few hits in the mid-1960s, one of which, The Crying Game, was later used in the film of the same title. But it's been years since he was on telly, until he cropped up on Sky Sports News the other night announcing his resignation as a Sheffield United patron in protest at their decision to allow the convicted rapist Evans to train at the club.

You rarely even see Dave on vintage Top of The Pops these days, either because all his stuff's in black and white, or because whoever's editing the Yewtree people out of the footage has been a little profligate with the razor blade.  

The Beighton troubadour, whose other hits included Memphis Tennessee, Little Things, and Mama (god, I've been busy on that Internet), used to wear black leather and wind the microphone lead around himself in a vaguely suggestive fashion, an act that would be considered slightly suspect these days, which is ironic given the singer's blameless personal life and his politically correct stance on the Evans issue.   Even more so, as some of the much-loved family entertainers with whom Berry performed have turned out to be not as advertised.

Trouble with looking at this stuff on You Tube, though, is that two hours later, after enjoying clips of The Beatles, President Kennedy, and a cat that looks like Hitler, you remember you have a column to write.   It's a real time-waster, and I blame the BBC.

Specifically, I blame them for directing me towards my devices.   The Corporation is sharing rights to the F.A. Cup this year, and is either inordinately proud of its coverage, or desperate to get anyone watching it, especially in these early stages when the teams involved are, with the best will in the world, not exactly household names.

So when Martin Keown, performing the 2^nd round draw on BBC2, pulled out such plum ties as Scunthorpe v Worcester City and Portsmouth or Aldershot v Northampton or Rochdale, we were breathlessly assured we could follow the progress of these matches on our computers, lap-tops, tablets, iPhones, digital radios, and various other electronic devices yet to be invented.

I don't like to quote from my own books (especially when there's nothing in it for me, the volume in question having been pulped with extreme prejudice after selling a handful of copies, and now doing fine work at the bottom of a concrete pillar holding up the elevated section of the M4) but around ten years ago my paperback about small-time club acts noted that the success of a turn was in inverse proportion to the length of his or her entry in Spotlight, the entertainers' bible.

For someone like Ken Dodd, for instance, there would simply be a name, a picture, and one 'phone number, his agent's.   But the more shall we say available performer, say Northampton's Number One 'complete comedy entertainer and after-dinner speaker,' would offer home, mobile, fax numbers, email addresses, mum's mobile, plus Mrs Winstanley in the fish shop, who will take a message if you can't get through.  

It's a little like that with the BBC's relentless plugging of the F.A. Cup - or "this famous old trophy," as I think commentators may be contractually obliged to say.   Coverage is shared with BT Sport, and I expect we will see more deals like that, especially with BT.

Maybe not so much with Sky in the future, though.   There is a theory that the unassailable primacy of sport at Sky may be threatened. For another book I wrote, about sport on TV - which remarkably at time of going to press has not yet been pulped - I interviewed some of Sky Sports' pioneering executives, who explained that in the early days Sky paid fortunes to get sports rights in order to sell the dishes and embed its service.  

But now those dishes have all been sold, and given the attention Sky is paying to its on-demand services, movie downloads and the like, one wonders whether it now sees its main competition as people like Netflix and YouTube, and consequently may scale down its sports operation.

For the time being, though, Sky is offering extensive coverage of the end-of-season tennis championships at the O2, shared with the BBC.   Sky's been showing the more significant evening matches, and can boast pundit Annabel Croft perched daintily on a bar stool for male viewers of a certain vintage, whereas the BBC has a typically cosy daytime TV line-up of Sue Barker, Tim Henman, and Andrew Castle.

Tennis can't support too much analysis, I've always felt, but Castle made a good point about tennis coaching, drawing attention to the fact that the PTA tour now takes in so many countries that it's about much more than coach and player being compatible on court.  

"It's not just about the tennis," said Castle, "They've got to be in hotels together, in restaurants, on the road."   This almost permanent road trip explains why tennis players seem to change coaches so often.   It's the sporting equivalent of "musical differences," and could simply be because the incumbent is a messy eater, puts his arms all over your side of the armrest on the 'plane, or is one of those annoying people who spends whole evenings on the internet downloading Dave Berry and the Cruisers' back catalogue.