Plumbing even greater depths

It shows, of course, how far out of touch with popular culture this blog (or this blogger, maybe) is. However, I have only just become aware of the spat between British and German tabloids about the battle of Angela's bum. That is, the rather tasteless publication by the Scum (I'm not going to link them) of paparazzi pictures of German Chancellor Angela Merkel getting changed into her swimsuit when on holiday at Easter. I mean, really. Whatever next? TB in the altogether? Perhaps he would be pleased. You may recall Sir Christopher Meyer's memoirs referred to ball-crushingly tight trousers, so we can only show that unlike Merkel (on whose behalf the German tabloids are getting rampant), Blair likes showing what he's got in that department...

But in reality, as this much more sobre assessment by the German weekly Der Spiegel shows, what are seeing is the beginnings of the phoney war running up to, and probably running through, the FIFA World Cup in Germany in June. Don't get me wrong. I will be supporting England. But I just cannot stand all the jingoistic and sometimes frankly racist crap that goes with it. Can we not have football without the tribalism? RoadRunner...over to you...