BBC broadcaster John Inverdale received more than 700 complaints during Wimbledon last year when he said that Marion Bartoli “was never going to be a looker” ahead of last year's Wimbledon final. He may receive a few more complaints this week, after he told his side of the story during a joint interview with Bartoli for the Radio Times, saying “"I was feeling so ill that day, I had terrible hay fever and all I could think of was that I wanted to go home to bed. I had Andy Murray in the final the next day. I knew I had to be on form. Your mind is going all over the place, we're on air from 12 noon till 7pm with not a single word written and you've got to fill the time."

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Excuses, surely, are the last thing any of Inverdale's critics—or his bosses who have resisted pleas to fire him—want to hear from the 56-year-old, but even so, Inverdale seems to have a key ally in Marion Bartoli herself.

Bartoli, who won Wimbledon last year and has since retired, says there are no hard feelings whatsoever between herself and Inverdale. "I'd known John a long time,” she said, “and I knew what he was trying to say. At the end of the day I am a tennis player, I know I'm not 6 ft tall, I'm not the same long, lean shape as Maria Sharapova, but the beauty of tennis is that anyone can win, tall or short. Something the press took to be negative to me was a positive.”

Bartoli and Inverdale will form an unlikely broadcast pairing this spring, when they'll team up on ITV to commentate the French Open.

Inverdale said he knew he had committed a no-no when it happened, but his past teachings told him not to apologise on the air. "It was drummed into us over and again. Never explain, never apologise, because if you do you'll dig an even bigger hole. So I thought: 'I'll just keep going and hope nobody heard it,'" he said.