An amusing incident during Wimbledon.

The BBC has found a very simple mechanism to engage with its viewers. It organises a ‘who was the greatest poll’.

During Wimbledon it asked the tennis commentators who they believed was the best male champion. John McEnroe picked Rod Laver, but he received only 5% of the votes. This lead the BBC‘s Sue Barker to comment that he was probably too old for most of the computer literate viewers to remember and that this would distort the polling results. Not a good comment Sue.

This generated a surge of e-mail votes and text messages from the over 50s to prove her wrong.

Not enough votes to change the poll order but enough to make Sue Barker think again.

If you are interested this was the result.

Greatest men's champ vote
Pete Sampras - 36.21%
Bjorn Borg - 30.55%
John McEnroe - 12.01%
Boris Becker - 8.35%
Rod Laver - 5.43%
Andre Agassi - 4.71%
Jimmy Connors - 1.63%
Pat Cash - 1.11%

On a more serious note, this incident has prompted me to contact the BBC to find out the demographics of their Web site users. I will let you know how I get on in getting the data.