2010′s got off to a pretty awful start all things considered- Britain’s been paralysed by some frozen water, those bankers who sent us to the brink of financial oblivion last year are getting gut-fuckingly huge bonuses for doing it, the Carribean has been ripped in two by an earthquake and Teddy Pendergrass has died.

So, I’m glad to report that I’ve got something pleasant and uplifting to tell you all. Finally, this year has something good going for it other than the fact than everyone ignoring Celebrity Big Brother.

The Doomsday Clock has gone back by a minute.

A quick sidebar for those who need it: The Doomsday Clock was set up in 1947 by a bunch of atomic scientists to both demonstrate how close they felt humanity was to smearing itself out of existence via auto-inflicted armageddon and to provide a neat narrative framing device for Alan Moore’s ‘Watchmen’. It was originally set at 7 minutes to midnight and has got as close as two minutes to when Russia and the US were indulging in one of their periodic Cold War atomic dick-swinging contests. By 1991 it had fallen back to 17 minutes to midnight but slowly crept up as close as 5 minutes to in 2007 thanks to the antics of North Korea’s enjoyably unhinged Kim Jong Il.

However, owing to “leaders of nuclear weapons states cooperating to vastly reduce their arsenals and secure all nuclear bomb-making material and for the first time ever, industrialized and developing countries alike pledging to limit climate-changing gas emissions that could render our planet nearly uninhabitable” it’s been decided by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago- the chaps and ladies who run the clock- that we can all sleep a little easier, breathe deeper and get back to the noble pursuit of drinking till the screaming in our head stops- rather than because the planet outside the window is going to hell in a hovercraft. Accordingly the Doomsday Clock now reads 11:54.

With the threat of fiery nuclear destruction on the wane the World has needed something else to get all serious about and it seems that sport has decided to take up the mantle.

When you think about it, sport is very, very silly and we really shouldn’t get all that bothered about it. Sport is of no real consequence. Sport should be a distraction. Sport shouldn’t matter.

So why did the Togo football team find themselves staring down the barrel of a gun? Why do we care what Tiger Woods and John Terry do with their privates? Why is a 21 year old Georgian dead for misjudging a corner? Why have Canada, previously everyone’s 2nd favourite nation, become so vilified for a few organisational issues at the Winter Olympics? Why am I sat up at 1am watching some women fling themselves face-first down an ice chute?

Clearly, sport is of some real consequence. Clearly, sport is more than a distraction. Clearly, sport matters.

Even curling- a activity which lies somewhere between bowls, shuffle-board, ice-skating and spring-cleaning. A game takes anything up to 2 and a half hours and, thanks to the BBC’s brilliant compendium of delights on the Red Button, has filled most of my afternoons this week with more drama and tension than ‘Diagnosis: Murder’ and ‘Doctors’ could ever dream of. Quite an achievement for a sport which is, uniquely as far as I can figure out, mostly played with brushes.

Maybe, it’s the fact that humans like a story and a competition; after all reality television works on the exact same principles and mechanisms as television sport coverage- only without the necessity for people who are actually good at something. In both we get to know competitors, we see them develop, we employ experts to analyse their performances and we dismantle them ourselves with forensic intensity. We shamelessly take sides and hope our favourites achieve the glory of a gold medal or winning the public vote.

And, for those sports or reality TV stars who survive in our conscience, we wait with relish for them to make the cock-up that proves their falability- such as being caught in a tawdry episode of adultery that threatens to detonate their career; or, even worse, recording and releasing ’3 Words’ featuring Will.I.Am.

Mind you, at least something which is genuinely serious such as causing the Doomsday Clock to move hasn’t become the subject of a sport or a reality TV show.

Yet, that is. Yet.