Maradona the media master as World Cup rivals struggle to keep rebel players and braying fans onside The World Cup has suddenly become interesting for all the wrong reasons. I still haven't watched a match but intend to very soon just to put faces (and legs) to all the disgruntled, disloyal, dysfunctional so-called stars. Sacre bleu! France's cosseted millionaire superstars limped back to Paris, reportedly in economy class seats, with their tails between their legs after their humiliating defeat by South Africa and the words of their sports minister Roselyne Bachelot ringing in their ears. She reportedly reduced many of them to tears with a scorching ticking off about their mutinous refusal to train after the star player Nicolas Anelka was fired for saying something unprintable in a family newspaper about the French coach and stormed off home in a huff.
They needn't expect a ticker tape parade on the Champs Élysées from a furious President Sarkozy. Their departure may have been a reality check for their England counterparts - whose fate will be known by the time you read this, after last night's match against Slovenia. Their World Cup soap opera has seen insults flying right, left and centre with the former captain John Terry trying to undermine the England coach Fabio Capello and their supposed star attraction Wayne Rooney attempting sarcasm about the loyal fans who dared to boo their team.
The poor soul who was arrested after wandering into the England dressing room and giving these highly-paid and indulged superstars a free character reading was just saying what everyone else was feeling about these graceless footballers who seem to believe they are entitled to utter loyalty and devotion from their followers no matter how lacklustre their performance. These fans have spent fortunes travelling to South Africa and they deserve better.
Meanwhile, the star of the whole show is that old rogue Diego Maradona, who looks like some crazy old bearded bandit with his diamond earrings and Mafiosa shades. Maradona is cackling with laughter at the discomfort of other managers and is making pointed cracks about the Brazilian player Luis Fabiano controlling the ball with his arm during Brazil's match against the Ivory Coast. His press conferences are the most entertaining events I've seen in football.
What is so marvellous about the Argentina manager is that he is so utterly unrepentant about his controversial goal against England in 1986 and couldn't seem to care less what people think when he says exactly what he's thinking about other managers and players in such a hilarious fashion. It's so refreshing in an age when the stars of the game churn out meaningless platitudes after every match. Maradona was portrayed as some sort of circus act by many sports writers but it seems to me that he's having the last laugh. Never mind the football, the off-pitch antics, tantrums, back-biting and show-boating is much more fun and I'm off to the Big Top to buy myself a ringside seat.
Like all Northern Irish golfing fans I'm bursting with pride at the achievement of Graeme McDowell from Portrush in winning the US Open. We knew he was on form after he won the Welsh Open a few weeks ago and when he shot into the lead at Pebble Beach our hearts were in our mouths and all fingers and toes were crossed. You can't imagine what it means in Northern Ireland to have not just one but two sporting heroes striding the fairways. We're still celebrating young Rory McIlroy's wins in Dubai and Quail Hollow. McDowell is planning a party at his old golf club Rathmore where as a junior he could be seen hitting balls well past dusk every evening. It will be a joyous occasion that will go on for hours if not weeks. He won his first major on Father's Day and his father Kenny McDowell summed up his feelings in one word: "Happiness."
Spotting the left-behind-for-the-summer husbands in supermarkets is my new sport. You don't know whether to laugh out loud or lean across and wag an admonishing finger at them as they pile all the stuff that their wives won't normally let them eat, into their trolley.
You see them at odd hours wandering around, slightly bewildered, picking things up and trying to read the labels or ringing their wives back home in Europe and the States asking where to find the pasta section. Most of them buy enormous packets of everything, unlike their womenfolk who know that giant packets of cornflakes don't fit in most kitchen cupboards. Standing behind one obviously abandoned husband in Spinneys yesterday I peeked into his trolley to see two big packets of buns, a huge pot of mayonnaise, two giant packets of thick, frozen chips, a big bottle of ketchup, Sugar Puffs, a large full cream carton of milk, crisps, half a dozen bottles of anchovy stuffed olives, two tubs of Häagen-Dazs ice-cream plus half a dozen mixed boxes of Weight Watchers ready meals. Bless him!
As an unashamed lover of the singing, dancing, "holi" throwing antics of the Bollywood movie industry, I was interested to read that the acclaimed Stella Adler Studio of Acting is setting up shop in Mumbai. The famous American drama school pioneered "method" acting, churning out such brooding and mumbling stars as Marlon Brando, Robert de Niro and Harvey Keitel, whereas Mumbai film schools have always concentrated on teaching their young stars in the making to wield a sword, ride a horse, sing, dance and look gorgeous with actual acting skills fairly low down the list of priorities.
The Bollywood director Rahul Rawail who will be setting up the new school, is quoted this week as saying how young actors tell him first what good dancers they are and what a fantastic six-pack they have. Until recently that's pretty much all that was required. That's all beginning to change however with some sections of the audience now looking for more demanding performances from their movie stars.
There will, however, always be a desire for the fantasy world of Bollywood where the hero quashes the villains and wins the heart of the beautiful girl and where everybody bursts into song at the drop of a hat. The veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan, who was in Dubai last year for the film festival, is sure of that. He's a great defender of the Bollywood illusion factory and told me that it's because so many Indian workers are poorly paid and have tough working lives. The last thing they want to see when they go to the cinema is grim reality up there on the screen. They want two hours of sheer escapism, pretty actors, lots of singing and dancing and colourful sets. Broody would-be Brandos take note.
The Madinat Souk was alive with The sound of music on Monday night with the annual Fête de la Musique where an assortment of amateur musicians and singers including yours truly gave impromptu performances for the benefit of tourists and shoppers.
I was singing with my women's barber shop chorus Dubai Harmony (www.dubai-harmony.com) and we managed to stop a few people in their tracks who very kindly stayed to listen to our a capella rendering of When I'm Sixty-Four, With a Little Help From My Friends and Zippity Doo Dah. The music festival, founded in France in 1982, was part of one of the biggest musical events in the world held on the Northern Hemisphere's summer solstice (June 21) and now takes place in more than 340 cities in 100 countries. In Dubai it's run by the cultural organisation Alliance Française. Its organiser Dominique Chevalier-Wixler said: "It was a terrific atmosphere in the souk."
There were rock bands, soul bands, a one-man band, fantastic bongo-style drummers, girl bands and mini-orchestras. At times it became a bit of a competition as to who could sing loudest but it was fun all the same even if I did feel a bit like a street busker minus the hat. Tennis stars in off-court trauma over Queen's visit The British queen is visiting Wimbledon on Thursday for the first time since 1977 and tennis stars are all of a flutter about whether to bow, curtsey or not to do anything at all in the royal presence.
Her Majesty is not known for her love of the sport, she much prefers the turf. I was there on her last visit when Virginia Wade won and it struck me then how athletic girls in short tennis dresses or tracksuits looked silly dropping into awkward curtseys. Curtseys were meant for formal occasions in ballrooms with women resplendent in evening gowns and dripping in diamonds. A respectful bob of the head should be the order of the day.
It seems the beleagured BP boss Tony Hayward can't put a foot right these days and people keep asking why he hasn't been fired yet. It clearly did not cross his mind that relaxing on his 52ft yacht, curiously named Bob, might not go down too well on the oil-drenched coastline of Louisiana. My theory about why he is still hanging on to his £1million-a-year job as the chief executive is that no one else is prepared to take on what must now be perceived as such a poisoned chalice and that he will be left where he is to take the blame until the crisis is resolved, publicly flayed and then pensioned off to make way for a new boss when it's all over.
Otherwise, it's hard for me to believe that the boss of a such a large multinational operation could be allowed to make one public relations blunder after another.