The football season lurches into its final week, with Arsenal, the newly-crowned champions of England, trying to win their first Champions League trophy. But there will be no summer-long reprieve from the round ball game. A World Cup begins next month in North America, and dozy folk who fail to pay attention may hear a knock on the door at midnight. Only 48 teams this time. What fun.

If there’s a World Cup you can bet your last farthing there will be a ‘conversation’ about ‘national identity’. The BBC have already cleared their throats, with a four-hour adaptation of James Graham’s stage play, Dear England. That’s three hours too many.

Meanwhile David Baddiel, the comedian-philosopher, has launched a six-parter on Radio 4 called Sixty Years of Hurt – 60 years, that is, since England won their only World Cup. Baddiel co-wrote a song for the 1996 European Championship which measured ‘30 years of hurt’, so only one word requires revision.

Fingers on the buzzers, therefore, to spot the jargon and self-congratulatory twaddle favoured by the faux-patriots of television. In the realm of replica shirts and twirling scarves the game is always ‘beautiful’, and ‘Ingerland’ always ‘we’.

In the realm of replica shirts........

© The Spectator