IT'S enough to make Blind Date fans poke their own eyes out. In response to ITV showing Premiership highlights at 7pm on Saturdays the BBC are threatening to offer EastEnders as the alternative.

Lord help us. It's a clash which highlights how television people will foster national obsessions and stretch them to their limits, irrespective of the impact on society.

Do they want to turn us into a nation of Vinnie Joneses? The sort of snarling faces you see on football pitches - Roy Keane for starters - is mirrored by the snarling faces on EastEnders.

If people are watching in their millions, you don't need a degree in sociology to tell you why there's increasing nastiness on our streets.

Everything has to be dumbed down these days, even to the extent of getting Gary Lineker to present the Open golf highlights, with a sudden, utterly irrelevant contribution from Alan Hansen.

At least ITV are making a conscious effort to brighten our lives with their choice of personnel to front their 75-minute Saturday evening programme.

That well-known East End wide boy Terry Venables usually has a smile on his face, while Ally McCoist is funnier than most modern comedians and they will have the masterful Des Lynam at the helm.

Given a choice between them and the warring residents of Albert Square it's not really a contest. Or perhaps I'll just go to the pub earlier on Saturday nights.

YES, the summer's gone and football's upon us again. Not that it ever really goes away.

But even before a ball's been kicked in the Premiership there's talk of the dreaded fixture congestion.

Newcastle had to ask for the second leg of the Intertoto final to be delayed because it was scheduled for Tuesday week, two days after their Premiership opener against Chelsea.

Liverpool are also worried, but Gerard Houllier has promised to release his men for England's friendly against Holland next Wednesday after assurances they will play 45 minutes at the most.

Mid-August and we're talking footballers being over-played. It's even dafter than Darren Gough and Mike Atherton being ordered to miss the Roses match following their exertions in a Test match which was all over inside three days.

WHICH brings me on to the Ashes debacle, which has suffered the inevitable toothcomb analysis without throwing up anything which wasn't apparent two years ago.

The England team has made great strides since then, but facing the world's best with an injury-ravaged side merely underlined the lack of depth.

If Ian Ward hadn't previously hinted at international quality, why should he suddenly do it at 28?

The problem is that those with obvious talent like Marcus Trescothick and Alex Tudor are hampered by the county system and take far longer to flower than they would in Australia.

When Durham's Graeme Bridge won the Man of the Match award in the C & G Trophy win at Bristol he said he'd noticed that a lot of England Under 19 players got lost in second team cricket.

The County Championship has far too many passengers over the age of 30. They are restricting the opportunities for talented youngsters and the time has come to insist that at least six members of every team are under 25.

IT'S OK to compete at 35 if you're the best in the world and bring prestige to your country, like Jonathan Edwards.

Hopefully youngsters will be triple jumping all over the North-East in the wake of his efforts.

What really showed his mettle was not the winning leap but the one which got him into the final when he was in real danger of failing to qualify.

Apart from Dean Macey's bronze in the declathon, there has been little else to set British pulses racing in Edmonton.

We didn't even have an entrant in the 800 metres, which is amazing when you consider that in the mid-80s Coe, Ovett and Cram were looking over their shoulders at Tom McKean and Peter Elliott coming up behind them.

Coe believes today's youngsters will not commit themselves to the necessary physical and mental intensity. He's probably right. Most of them prefer to watch The Premiership or EastEnders, or Big Brother. That's when they're not surfing the Net.

STILL, we're not as badly off as Canada. At Montreal in 1976 they became the only country to host a modern Olympics not to win a gold medal. Now at Edmonton those few locals bothering to support the event went wild when Stephanie McCann set a Canadian record in the women's pole vault. That she failed to qualify for the final was irrelevant.

Sadly for Canada, greater prominence went to Venolyn Clarke, a female sprinter who tested positive for stanozol metabolite, the same substance used by Ben Johnson. Wasn't he Canadian as well?