We tried the Middle England route with Tim Henman: Oxfordshire, please and excuse me, not too much emotion, press-conference platitudes, never straying too far from strawberries and Miss Joan Hunter-Dunn. And at the highest level, we failed.

Now we have gone a step beyond anything Henman achieved: and done it with a stripling of 21 who has got where he wanted by consistently telling the right people to get stuffed at the right time. Andy Murray is the first British player to reach the final of a grand-slam tournament for 11 years. No Brit man has actually won a major singles title since Fred Perry in 1936. Last night Murray was due to play the final of the US Open in New York against Roger Federer, the man many believe to be the greatest player to lift up a racket. But Murray went in on a roll, having played the best tennis of his life to beat the world No 1, Rafael Nadal.

Murray is not your polite public schoolboy, no. He’s a ferocious stand-up-and-be-counted Scot who was at one stage prone to vomiting on court, has been fined for effing and blinding at a Davis Cup umpire and swerved Davis Cup duties. He greets triumph and disaster with heaven-splitting roars. He’s not an easily digestible person.

Who knows how much of this is because he is a child of Dunblane? He knew Thomas Hamilton, the man who massacred 17 people at his school. Murray won’t talk about it, beyond saying that he was in another classroom and that he was too young to understand, but no one can be untouched by such events.

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Murray is not your polite public schoolboy. He’s a ferocious stand up and be counted Scot

Simon Barnes

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Murray is eternally combative. It’s the way he understands the world. The first person he told to get stuffed was his older brother, Jamie. He started playing tennis at 2, and by 5 his teachers were shocked by his competitive attitude. Eventually, he beat Jamie in an under12 tournament. Andy still bears the scar, a damaged nail on his left hand, from the subsequent fight, his brother’s response to his gloating. Andy was undaunted: he wanted to win things, and do it on his own. Jamie took the less lonely way, and became a fine doubles player. At the age of 15 Andy told the entire England-based tennis establishment to get stuffed. He learnt that Nadal, then a breathtakingly promising junior, was practising with the world No 1 then, Carlos Moya. Murray only had his brother. How was he to improve? The Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) and every one else had let him down. So he went to Barcelona, training relentlessly at a tennis academy. On his own, nursing a resentment: that’s how Murray grew up.

It took him a while to grow into his body. He was a gawky and awkward teenager: prone to mid-match exhaustion and cramping as he pushed his growing frame too far. But he was still getting intermittently spectacular results, and now the LTA was all over him.

So it paid megabucks for Brad Gilbert, of the United States, author of the book Winning Ugly, the former coach of Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick. After a little more than a year, Murray told him to get stuffed. That also involved telling the LTA to get stuffed (again).

For much of the past year, Murray had a wrist injury and was reluctant to push it. Gilbert thought otherwise. Gilbert was always in his ear. Murray missed Wimbledon and his ranking slipped, but he stuck to his view and dispensed with Gilbert. He then built up an eclectic team of advisers, none of whom outranks Murray.

It is a decision that has manifestly worked. It has all coincided with Murray’s physical maturation. He has worked with staggering commitment at his physical development: strength for power hitting, and stamina to avoid those vomity moments. These days he can play five sets of his best tennis one after the other. It is not just his body that has matured. Telling Gilbert to get stuffed freed his competitive spirit. After a couple of years of oscillating around the teens in the rankings, he will finish this tournament as world No 4.

Nothing of this triumph is surprising, at least not for Murray. It is something he has long been working for, long been planning for. And it doesn’t stop there, not in Murray’s view. He is driven by a belly full of fire, and anybody who doesn’t like it can get stuffed.