Mo Farah has long seemed destined to be remembered as one of the best loved British sportsmen, but the poster boy for the battle against nationalistic insularity risks that status if he continues to keep objecting to legitimate scrutiny while simultaneously indulging in publicity seeking when it suits him.

After all these years at the centre of attention, a more magnanimous man might have stood aside to allow the 4x100 metre relay team their moment in the spotlight, but Farah is by no means the only athlete to have admitted that selfishness is a requirement of the job and so, on Sunday morning, the previous day's silver medallist stood atop the London Eye, in fairness, it had clearly long been planned as a stunt for the day after his final track race.

Of more serious concern, however, was his latest protest to the media that same morning that no one writes the facts about him when his success is all down to hard work and pain.

It is a deeply disingenuous message since the vast majority of the coverage he receives is incurious adulation and he seems unwilling to grasp the fact that in this post-Armstrong era the requirement of those in the media who are willing to forsake cheer-leading for investigation and analysis are only going to have their concerns fed by his apparent unwillingness to be exposed to difficult questions and the devices he seems to have used to avoid them.

Ahead of two recent events in the home city of which he is so proud and for which all tickets have not been sold, this local boy has refused to undertake any promotional work in the build-up, apparently for fear of what he might be asked.

When there has been no other option than to speak to the media he has limited any risk of interrogation in a variety of ways while, in seeking to distinguish between the supposed agenda of the media who are doing their jobs and an adoring public who acclaim his every triumph and are similarly resentful of any concern being raised, he too often adopts Trump-style tactics of effectively dismissing every inconvenient revelation as to what the US president would call "fake news".

In the mixed zone at the Muller Anniversary Games, when asked about the recently revealed matter of the Russian "Fancy Bears" claims that something was amiss in his dope testing history, Farah complained about the unfairness of such questioning. He did not quite seem to understand the implications, either, when it was pointed out to him that his observation that he had never failed a dope test was uncomfortably reminiscent of the language routinely used by the discredited cyclist who has caused there to be seven empty years in the list of Tour de France winners.

At these championships he then arrived for his first obligatory press conference very late at night after winning his 10,000 metres gold medal, leg wrapped in bloodied bandages, a knee looking hugely swollen and took just the standard gentle, introductory couple of questions before insisting that he had to leave to go and get treatment.

Having made what amounted, on that evidence, a quite amazing recovery by the following Wednesday to be fit for the heats of the 5000 metres on what was admittedly the most unpleasant night of the championships, he turned up in the media area chittering with cold, which again permitted him to take only the minimum of questions.

After his final appearance in the stadium, the man who has made such play of the sacrifice he has made in having to be away from his family as much as he has, then undertook his post-race interview with one of his children in his arms, the rest of his loved ones at his side as the little lad played with the microphone, his mother’s offer to take him resisted. It was a cute moment but a situation which would have made it all but impossible for even the most heartless to ask anything remotely awkward.

Finally, on the day after the championships, as the relay team that had won gold seized their opportunity to promote themselves and their sport by agreeing to a full array of interviews for different platforms, we were told that Sir Mo Farah would be doing a "top table" press conference only, at which, when asked the inevitable questions about Salazar, he lashed out.

In doing so he sought to suggest that he has had little contact with Salazar in recent years and has essentially achieved his success on his own, which only makes it all the more bizarre that he has refused to cut ties with the man who has been his mentor.

Perhaps that, too, is a harsh judgment and he has felt that to do so would be to cast further doubt on someone of whose innocence he is convinced, in which case there would be something misguidedly commendable about that.

However, with his own behaviour having caused some ripples of concern in the past, while he has chosen to train regularly in Ethiopia, a country in which the approach to anti-doping has been a major issue, this has not been a time for misplaced loyalty.

Such is the cloud that doping has cast over this sport that every clean athlete should be coming forward with every scrap of evidence they have to help clear matters up.

Farah has been in all the right places to collate information that would be helpful to that inquiry. Perhaps he has been extremely co-operative with those in law enforcement and anti-doping agencies in terms of sharing that, but rather than take umbrage with others who want to know what he knows, the best interests of his sport will be served by more in the way of transparency for a man who so badly wants to be loved.