The Daily Telegraph from London, Greater London, England • 213

SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 2012 REVIEW TV Radio Sunday 40-43 Wednesday Monday 44-47 Thursday Tuesday 18-51 Friday Hidden pain of sporting stars left, Ricky Hatton, Andrew Flintoff, Serena this nature, that is the point. Even he, happy-go-lucky, upand-at-em Freddie, who seemingly bounded about the place with uncomplicated delight, the Labrador puppy of international cricket, recently admitted he'd succumbed to feelings of desperation, loneliness and inertia during his career. Looking back on it now, you can see it in the pictures of this most photogenic sportsman. At his lowest ebb, as a failed captain of his country, self-medicating on alcohol, there was a haunted, ghostly look in his eyes. At the time we all thought it was the inevitable corollary of too many bad results, not to mention a few too many late nights.

So did Williams and Vinnie Jones have all struggled with despair and self-doubt he. Looking back he now realises there was something more. And how he wishes he had sought help. But Flintoff also finds that sport has changed in recent years, and is now willing to provide such help. In the past, to admit to mental frailty was to confess to weakness.

A carapace of invincibility was part of the sportsman's makeup. To show the slightest crack to colleagues and opponents alike was to falter. As Vinnie Jones puts it, had one of his team mates said he was feeling a bit depressed, he would have got a clip round the ear. But admissions by figures such as Harmison, the rugby player Jonny Wilkinson and Two BBC complete classic spy award-winning and dramas political from the BBC dramas on DVD BEC DVD TINKER SOLDIER. TAILOR 5 HE BBCOVD SPY A dark tale of greet, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and 11 hours on four DVDs, stay there, in this drama which burning Amletion.

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R33 Films on TV 34 Sport on TV 35 Saturday 36-39 52-55 56-59 60-63 Jim White on Andrew Flintoff's documentary about depression among athletes a up that elevision with wobble occasionally can to bring moments the comes stiffest, tungsten-lined upper lip. And one such comes early in Freddie Flintoff: Hidden Side of Sport, the former cricketer's new BBC One documentary about the rising tide of depression among leading sports practitioners. Flintoff is studying a wall-full of pictures with his former England team mate Steve Harmison. Ostensibly they depict scenes of unalloyed joy. Certainly Flintoff can only see happiness in them.

He points to two snaps, both of which feature him and Harmison, arms wrapped around one another in the aftermath of Ashes victory. One is taken in 2005, the other in 2009. "Those are my favourite two pictures of all," says Flintoff, smiling at the sense of ease and satisfaction oozing from the frames. Harmison is less enthused. A man who hauled depression around in his carry-on baggage through a dozen cricket tours, he see things differently.

"I look at that," he says, pointing at the 2009 picture. "And all I see is the end." Watch that and suddenly you feel ashamed at all those times you shouted at the TV screen when Harmison bowled a rubbish ball: the poor chap was dying inside. The question Flintoff attempts to address in the documentary is how much sport itself contributes to the sense of depression that afflicts so many like Harmison. NE MUM GRAND GRAND Personal battles: clockwise from top He discovers as he canvasses a who's who of the sporting world that even the most apparently impregnable such as the boxer Ricky Hatton or the hardman footballer Vinnie Jones have toyed with thoughts of selfdestruction. Is it the unyielding pressure to produce results that unnerves? Or is the prevalence of fear, shame and feelings of pointlessness in so many a sportsman's psyche merely a reflection of the statistic that 10 per cent of us are susceptible to depression? As Flintoff puts it, if that stat is correct, one player in every team in the country could suffer from the condition.

If Flintoff seems an unlikely guide for a documentary of While exercise, with its release of positive endorphins into the system, is undoubtedly beneficial, sport at the pinnacle might be seen to create as many problems as it resolves. Because the fact is, sport operates at a different rhythm from normal life. Its frontiers are more clearly defined by the simple, primary diktats of victory or defeat. Its chronology is more condensed, its ephemeral nature emphasised by the speed at which a career is over. Plus it is an entirely selfabsorbed pursuit: all that matters is how well you are doing.

When self-esteem is so uncompromisingly connected to performance, it can quickly and easily be fractured. All this is conducted against a backdrop of envy: how we ordinary civilians covet the ability of the successful. In the most intriguing exchange in his programme, Flintoff confronts the former tabloid editor Piers Morgan. He excoriates Morgan for the callous manner in which his profession criticises performance without knowing the real circumstances. Do journalists care about the pain they might cause? And Morgan frankly tells him no they share with the fans an unyielding jealousy of the great sportsman.

"I would put up with any number of negative tabloid headlines to walk out just once at Lord's," says Morgan. How happy must be the man who can do that, is the implication. As the writer and ex-table tennis international Matthew Syed tells Flintoff, we fans assume our heroes live in "some sort of emotional The truth, as Flintoff discovers in his programme, is at odds with such a shallow assumption. Our heroes, it seems, are as prone to crushing self-doubt as the rest of us. the footballer Stan Collymore, plus the awful death of the German goalkeeper Robert Enke who committed suicide three years ago, have alerted those in control of the need to address mental issues.

As Neil Lennon, the manager of Celtic and himself a sufferer of depression, tells Flintoff, these days most coaches are enlightened enough to recognise that the brain is the sportsman's most important muscle. They appreciate the need to treat problems within it as they might any form of physical injury. No-one is clipped round the ear for feeling down these days. Yet still the question remains: does top level sport depress its participants? Freddie Flintoff: Hidden Side of Sport is on BBC One on Wednesday at 10.45pm.