Reasons to be cheerful
The evenings are getting darker, someone called Libor has nicked all our money, and Scarlett Johansson’s got married. There’s little to smile about. So in a spirit of pro bono here are some reasons to be cheerful.
For starters, rugby is becoming absolutely fantastic. Not quite the new football, but I wish. With a packed crowd in the purpose-built stadiums at Worcester, Leicester or Northampton you get a better atmosphere than at Old Trafford with a quarter of the numbers. The standard of the top games is awesome, and with someone like Dan Carter at Perpignan you can see the best players in the world on tap. And this weekend the superlative Heineken Cup gets going. On Sunday alone you can watch the Ospreys, which is more or less last season’s Six Nations-winning Welsh side, play Leicester; there’s Toulouse against Bath; and Wasps, starring Mr Kelly Brook, against Castres.
Danny Cipriani is quite a guy: it turns out he once talked drop-goal techniques with a sensational model called Danielle Bux, shortly to become the new Mrs Gary Lineker, allegedly, so he gets around. He was lovingly interviewed the other day by the equally gorgeous Gabby Logan, in a miraculous meeting of fabulous bone structures, for her show Inside Sport, the best sports programme on TV, and tragically relegated by the bloated BBC to a ludicrously late night slot on Mondays. And take a look at French table-toppers Stade Français’s new strip. It’s the pinnacle of rugby fashion: multi- coloured Warhol-style images of someone called Blanche de Castille, wife of Louis VIII. It makes even their own pink floral kit look as dated as Wavell Wakefield’s scrum-cap. Simply sensational, and shame on those carping spirits who can’t see it.
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