What is it? The quintessential English sporting event - combining two great obsessions, bad weather and class structure.

So who can attend? Tickets for "The Championships" at Wimbledon are famously difficult to acquire. While the rich and famous have their executive boxes and members of the Royal Family occupy the premier box, the ordinary fans can gain entry if they are prepared to queue for hours alongside what often appears to be crime scene tape. If they're lucky, they'll get to pay a small fortune to eat strawberries and cream in the pelting rain.

Weather that poor? Wimbledon is solely responsible for the two weeks of bad weather London experiences at the end of June and start of July each year. "We haven't had any more rain since it stopped raining," Harry Carpenter once said during his commentary for the BBC. But this year is slightly different, with a temporary roof in place over Centre Court (a new retractable roof structure is scheduled to be in place for next year). It means TV coverage won't be as affected as in previous years, though the wind and rain is sure to batter the other 18 courts.

And, anyway, many of the spectator seats around Centre Court are not covered. The organisers actually include the following sentence in their advice to fans - which tells you everything you need to know about the conditions: "If you have tickets for Centre Court this year then it is recommended you bring an umbrella as well as sunglasses, hat and sunscreen."

At least spectators won't have to be nervously eyeing Cliff Richard, in case he reaches for a microphone during a break in play, at this year's tournament.

So what do I need to know? In the tournament where you can wear any colour you like, so long as it's white, world number one Roger Federer is odds on to win his sixth Wimbledon singles title in a row - though Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic are expected to make him earn the title. It's more open in the women's competition, with either Maria Sharapova, Ana Ivanovic or one of the Williams sisters expected to claim the crown.

The winner almost certainly won't be British - no matter what the people on Murray Hill (the hill formerly known as Henman Hill) want to believe. And in the game where to err is human, to put the blame on someone else is called doubles; livingroom viewers have a front-row seat to all the action, with TG4 and BBC having blanket coverage of the event. There is something cool, though, to listening to Mac Dara Mac Donncha and Brian Tyers talking about a smísteáil rather than a smash and saying eitleog for volley. BBC are covering the championships as if they have no other sporting event to look forward to for the rest of the year, which isn't far off the mark. They're throwing both BBC 1 and BBC 2 at the tournament, as well as their interactive service and the new must-have fad, HD TV.