LEE Westwood, Graeme Swann, Amy Williams and Graeme McDowell aren’t personalities.

Sepp Blatter – now that’s a personality.

And the only way the Sports Personality of the Year award could have less credibility would be if the controversial head of FIFA won it.

The programme, which has its 56th annual airing on Sunday night, is about as much to do with sport as It’s A Knockout.

It’s sad watching the BBC desperately clutching to the idea that Sports Personality (let’s call it SP for short) should appeal to sports fans.

In reality, the only people who are interested are the same ones who tune in to watch football once every four years when In-Ger-Land play in the World Cup.

When it’s on I’ll be following my annual routine of finding anything else to do.

I stomached a few minutes of a preview show the other night which, in true SP style, focused on emotion rather than action.

They captured Mark Cavendish (who? I hear you ask) talking about how he cries a lot, then his dad (yes, his dad) looking into the camera and saying how proud he was to call his son his friend.

This typical SP tosh reminded me of The X Factor where all the contestants are doing it for their recently dead granny or are coming to terms with their sex change.

But this is what SP is all about – light on the actual sport and heavy on emotion. In short, bog-standard weekend light entertainment.

The BBC should drop the pretence that SP is anything else. In fact, they should go the whole hog and give it the full X Factor treatment.

How much better would it be if Gary or Gabby (Lineker/Logan) were replaced by Simon Cowell?

He’d get rid of all the luvvy flannel and tell it as it is. He’d take one look at the 10 contenders and tell them no one’s ever heard of Williams, McDowell or Cavendish; that Swann hasn’t won anything to be proud of, ditto Lee Westwood; that David Haye ought to shut up and fight someone who can box; and tell Phil Taylor darts isn’t a sport, Tom Daley that the only diving worth watching is on a football field, and Jessica Ennis that she’s only famous because she looks nice. He’d also come straight out with the obvious fact that if AP McCoy doesn’t win this year the whole show might as well pack up its cameras and sycophantic scripts and throw the whole lot in the river.

Then he’d turn the show into a nine-week series with the public voting for their favourites and the bottom two having a sport-off where they compete against each other in a hybrid of their sports, like Williams and Taylor throwing darts at a dartboard while flying past in a one-man bob – closest to the bull comes back next week.

Now, that’s entertainment.