Lewis Hamilton admits that he sometimes thinks he’s pulled into the pits when he visits a petrol station. The almost-but-not-quite World Champion admitted recently to the Daily Sport that he once sat in a Shell garage for 15 minutes wondering why no one was changing his tyres. “I prefer petrol stations to the pits on formula 1 tracks,” he confided. “You can’t buy wine gums and a paper during a pit-stop. There simply isn’t time.” Lewis also admitted a penchant for Poppets.

World number one tennis champion Roger Federer has learned how to levitate. The three-times Wimbledon champion hired David Blaine 6 months ago to help him take his game to ‘the next level’. Speaking to GMTV’s sofa, Federer said “People said to me ‘Once you’re best in the world, there’s only one direction you can go, and that’s down.’ Now I won’t put a foot wrong, mainly because neither of them will be on the court.”

The Oxford and Cambridge boat-race will take a different form in 2008. The event, which has seen a decline in popularity in recent years, will for the first time take place in pedalos. Organiser Bertie Wooster, in an interview with The Times, explained the reasons for the change: “We felt that rowing boats were becoming a bit old hat to be honest. So we experimented with a few alternatives – kayaks, canoes, the Swan-boats from Alton Towers – before settling on pedalos. We think they’ll add some fun to the proceedings and increase our profile. It certainly worked for Freddie Flintoff.” It is also rumoured that each team will field a team of celebrity rowers for 2009.