As soon as she walks into the room, it seems ridiculously easy to look up and say ”Oh, hi Delia” as if she’s just popped over for a coffee and a natter about football and a new recipe. I’m tempted, before we get down to the nitty-gritty of deciding whether her beloved Norwich City appear doomed after a mere four games in the Premiership, to offer up Marco Pierre White’s elegant fricassee of sea scallops with ginger and an inky sauce nero as a culinary equivalent of Arsenal.

The South African women’s national soccer team, Banyana Banyana, are aiming to win the fourth African Women’s championship, but with inept preparations, a coach that will not be at their opening game and a national body that does not take women’s soccer seriously, there is little chance of the side being crowned queens of Africa.

Cricketing Anglophobes have been struggling to disguise smiles of smug vindication this week. Indeed, even for those without an axe to grind it does seem extraordinary that the English press, having been handed a baking summer of spectacular victories, comic-book heroes and now a mini-World Cup, should be as lugubrious as it is.