Diary – 21 February 2013

Waiting for a match to begin at the gloriously situated Recreation Ground — home of Bath Rugby — I take a moment from shouting ‘Come on you Bath’ at the top of my voice, to consider wider issues. Rugby Union, for instance: the game is a civilising influence like literacy or clean drinking water. When it is played and appreciated, so is toughness of body and spirit, generosity and camaraderie. Some ugliness has accompanied its transition into the world of professional sport — that was unavoidable I suppose — but in the city of Bath the game is still played with a smile. It is also a better game than it was: cleaner, sharper, more exciting to watch. I bumped into John Horton at Bath last week (he played at ten for England a few times in the 1970s) and he told me — I think rightly — that modern professional players are no more skilful than they were back when they would have been solicitors or bricklayers or policemen with a night a week to train. But, he said ruefully, they are fitter, and much stronger. Horton said he was 11 and a half stone when he played for England.

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Rod Liddle

Sack the judges

I have become a heart patient. I have a stent inside me — a tube keeping an artery open. It is little bother. But one of the side-effects is that people are constantly expecting you to die, suddenly, on their carpet. They kick away obstructions lest you should bump into them and motion you towards chairs on even the shortest visit. A BBC boss (not mine I should say) with a sense of humour tells me he knows exactly what I am going through. When he got a sudden promotion — during the recent Savile événements — he said friends would grip his arm and ask with pained solicitousness, ‘Are you all right? How are your family taking it?’

As a nightworker (virtually) and a traveller on public transport, I have real sympathy for David Miliband, who was photographed the other day on the London Underground apparently asleep, with some of his clothing unbuttoned.