The BBC Sports Personality of the Year show is clearly more for the benefit of the BBC than the sports personality.

It has become an exercise in self-aggrandisement and self-congratulation, an example of the corporation’s desperate desire to be seen as the voice to whom the nation turns for a shared experience in these days of a fragmented society, certainly a fragmented sporting audience.

There is something insufferably smug about it, too, that makes you wince and want to change channels at those mawkish, cheesy, manufactured moments that have little to do with the spontaneity of sporting events that move you and everything to do with audience manipulation.

No wonder Gary Lineker – the man who quit his column on a Sunday newspaper that published some inopportune comments from former FA chairman Lord Triesman on a matter of principle as a World Cup bid ambassador but continues to take his BBC millions despite their Panorama programme – is a lead presenter.

The worst element of the show nowadays is the BBC’s hypocrisy. For a start, they have almost given up on sport apart from the listed events that Parliament awards them, believing that licence payers’ money should not be going to line the pockets of already rich professional footballers or well rewarded golfers.

Match of the Day is their institution (tired though its format and one or two of its contributors are) and that will suffice, along with a bit of the cheap and cheerful Football League. As for golf, as long as they have the Open and the Masters, little else matters to them.

Horse racing is all but ignored on a regular basis and professional boxing an offence to the luvvies at TV Centre. Darts? They can’t even pick the right World Championship to cover.

Yet here they are, lauding Tony McCoy – whose winning of the Grand National after all these successful years did make him a worthy winner – Phil Taylor and David Haye as if they care the rest of the year.

The BBC has tried to make the event glitzy with its celeb outreach and populist by filling provincial arenas. Lack of proper footage and old-style review simply produces tedium as we are constantly reminded of the 10 nominees and the numbers to vote for.

We now have eight awards on the night. (Coach of the Year Colin Montgomerie? Lifetime Achievement David Beckham?) The BBC certainly don’t deserve one.