It’s another of Lennon’s tracks from that same album which is playing in my head, however, after a week, yet another week, of relentless sporting spin and/or obfuscation. Gimme Some Truth.

"All I want is the truth. Just give me some truth…"

But what is the truth?

Bradley Wiggins, we have learned thanks to our hacking friends at Fancy Bears, had three therapeutic use exemptions before key races including the 2012 Tour de France which allowed him to take a powerful corticosteroid anti-inflammatory drug, triamcinolone, to counter his allergies and respiratory issues.

Britain’s Chris Froome, who has won the Tour de France on three of the four occasions since Wiggins earned his breakthrough victory in 2012, has also had TUEs for prednisolone in May 2013 and April 2014.

These rivals both went entirely by the book for their treatments, gaining the appropriate medical approval and then registering them with the official channels.

They patently haven’t cheated. However, was the decision to fortify them against their medical problems at these key times best practice, or sharp practice? If it is within the rules, it is the duty of any elite sportsman or woman to push the envelope as far as they can in order to maximise effectiveness. But are the rules by which they, and many others, have abided, just?

"It was not being used to enhance performance," Sir Dave Brailsford, Team Sky principal, told BBC Sport's editor Dan Roan.

"I have known Bradley a long time and he is an asthma sufferer and he has struggled with allergies for as long as I have known him.

"I know that at the time there was a recommendation to see a specialist, he went to see a specialist and was then given permission by the authorities.

"I trust and believe in the integrity of that process."

Froome also added his comments into the mix, and the result was a further wash of grey as he maintained "it is clear that the TUE system is open to abuse…I am not looking to push the boundaries of the rules…"

Was that a general comment? Or was that a crafty crack at his old rival?

In this same broad category, TUEs are far from being the only grey area in the elite sporting landscape between rectitude and wrongitude. Michele Verroken, formerly Director of Ethics and Anti-Doping at UK Sport and, since 2004, founding director of sports business consultancy Sporting Integrity, has pointed out that there is a far larger area of ambiguity around efforts to produce sporting excellence.

She sees the increasing production of sports supplements and drinks to enhance performance as "a sort of grey area", adding: "There is an inconsistency about the fact that we are marketing sports foods and drink to athletes - there is a level of hypocrisy going on. They are taken to improve performance, and yet other substances are ruled out."

There has been fervent speculation this week over the substance within the pint glass of now ex-England manager Sam Allardyce as he was covertly filmed by reporters from the Daily Telegraph telling what he took to be foreign businessmen seeking to buy players how it was "not a problem" to get around rules on third-party player ownership, banned by FIFA in 2008 and described by former UEFA President Michel Platini as a form of "slavery".

Allardyce, who was being paid £3 million ($3.9 million/€3.4 million) per year for the job he had taken up in July, also entertained the idea of earning at least £400,000 ($521,000/€464,000) to represent the fictional Far East company as a keynote speaker at four events.

It was a grubby and depressing conversation to be sure, and symptomatic of much that is corrupt in the money-laden world of football. But as Daniel Taylor pointed out in an acute piece in The Guardian, "not a problem" referred to the fact that Allardyce felt he had signed Enner Valencia for West Ham in 2014 in similar circumstances. According to Taylor, the ownership agreement ended when the transfer went through and West Ham signed the player "whole".

As for the keynote speaking, Allardyce said any commitments on his part would first have to be "run by" the Football Association (FA).

"It is difficult to find the killer line, no matter how many times you read it," Taylor concludes.

Clearly the FA felt that the whole conversation had brought them and the game into disrepute, and decided to make what must have been a hard and awkward decision.

But foolish and greedy as Allardyce’s behaviour was, you can’t help feeling that he was simply calling things as they were in a game which is pretty much permanently in disrepute all by itself, and has been for many years.

So, truthfully, he had to go.

But that wasn’t the whole truth.