Tottenham Hotspur

Of all the moronic decisions made by cultural organisations over the past 50 years, probably the most insulting and retrograde is the decision, in 2021, by Unesco to strip Liverpool of its world heritage status. Unesco said the development of the docks amounted to an ‘irreversible loss’. The regeneration of the waterfront, including the building of Everton’s new £500 million stadium, was blamed for destroying Liverpool’s ‘outstanding universal value’.  I walked up Liverpool’s Regent Road for half an hour to see for myself. Doing so took me through one of the most derelict wards in the country, the old docklands. I didn’t pass another human being for a good 20 minutes, only cars screaming. There was some majesty in the buildings. The Tobacco Warehouse is beautiful.

The vision of Jude Law filming The New Pope at the beach has been acclaimed as a miracle — the washboard abs, the white trunks sticking closer than the Swiss Guard. As followers of the heretical TV series will know, the first series of The Young Pope featured another sporting vision, nuns playing soccer in slow motion. The soccer theme, if not the sporting nuns and the sex scene, is believed to derive from the real Pope Francis’s enthusiasm for the ‘beautiful game’. Any soccer fan wishing to understand the nature of faith will understand what Francis, a juvenile goalkeeper and fan of Argentinian league side San Lorenzo, sacrificed when, in 1990, he forswore watching soccer on television.