Football

I’ve been a regular runner for 40 years, pounding my way across Hampstead Heath to Kenwood House and back. This year, thanks to a combination of heart surgery and coronavirus, I’ve become a walker, and my perspective has changed. Walking is a genial activity, requiring you to open yourself up to the world around you. Running is the opposite, a private battle with personal pain. You can see it etched on runners’ faces. They don’t smile until it’s over. I don’t think I shall take it up again. The pain of running once conditioned my life. Now I’m a walker it’s a great relief to experience, and convey, pleasure. One

A rare illness has broken out in Westminster. Last week a case of what was known before Brexit as ‘consensus’ was spreading. After two years of dithering, ministers published the ‘Magnitsky’ legislation, named for a lawyer tortured and killed after uncovering corruption by Russian officials. Finally, the UK can impose sanctions and close the door to human-rights abusers and their dirty money. Top of the list are those who targeted Sergei Magnitsky, who prop up a regime that oppresses LGBT people, Muslims and other minorities and that used chemical weapons on the streets of the UK. This is long overdue. It is equally welcome to hear that Saudi officials complicit

Where were we? Oh yes, Liverpool were running away with the Premier League and a mere three months later have sealed the deal. For Liverpool fans it must have seemed like the longest drum roll in history. A week ago the drum roll ended in an explosion of joy — too literal an explosion for some tastes — for those who worship at the temple of Anfield. Liverpool were champions of England for the first time in 30 years — and the wait for the first English manager to win the Premier League was extended for another year. That last fact must be one of the sorriest statistics in English

Last week I was put on furlough from my job, which was – in a way – quite exciting, invoking images of sturdy sailors on shore leave (my grandfather, who was a sailor, had his own approach to this; jump ship from a vessel in port if he fancied a change). Anyway, the largest bit of my present work is to review art exhibitions and since there aren’t any exhibitions to review, and there’s a limit to the number of times you can exhort people to have a look at the Hermitage online, I could kind of see the point. But now I’m thinking that I was actually dreadfully short

Sadly it looks as though the 2020 Six Nations may have to go down with an asterisk and an explanation that might baffle future scholars — ‘Aborted due to the coronavirus’. Still, after the Wales game we can look back with affection on Owen Farrell at his horribly gobby worst, endlessly getting at Kiwi referee Ben O’Keeffe while dishing out a series of nasty niggly fouls: why does he do it? Then there was Eddie Jones in inimitable fashion blasting away at the laws and of course the ref. You lost a couple of men to foul play, Eddie, I’d keep quiet while the going’s good. I had my ref

Thankfully, Tyson Fury is as good at boxing as he is terrible at singing. But he really should pick on someone his own size: he’s a colossal 6ft 9in tall and 19st 7lb in weight. And he can punch. And he can weave. And he can feint and dip. And he is unbelievably fast. A three-stone advantage is just not on when the bigger man can fight. Quite often exceptionally big men can’t though. The Russian Nikolai Valuev, now a politician, was known as the Beast from the East when he boxed. He was 7ft tall and weighed more than 23st, the tallest and heaviest world boxing champion there has

We don’t half take a lot for granted. We may look up to the Aussies, kowtow to the Americans and look on in awe at the Chinese, but we’re not doing too badly ourselves. To judge from the papers, we’re a nation of fatties who when not pigging out on Pringles on the sofa are waddling down the high street looking for drugs. But it turns out we’re pretty good at sport: cricket World Cup winners, rugby World Cup finalists, women’s football World Cup semi-finalists. It was English teams who contested the Champions League final, after two mesmerising semis when Liverpool thumped Barcelona and Spurs defeated Ajax in the last

I hate football. Wait, that’s a bit strong, I’ll rephrase: I have no interest in watching a bunch of grown men chase a piece of leather around a pitch while fans either wallow in devastation, or smugly taunt the opposition with their triumph: “we won!” You had nothing to do with it, mate. You were sat on the sofa. Perhaps my distaste comes from this weird tribalism. Perhaps it’s because, when I do watch these globally-revered footballers, they just don’t seem that good. I mean, if you’re paid that much and train that much, surely, when you take a penalty, you should never actually miss the target? But maybe there