n 1755 Lisbon was ruined by a massive earthquake, the
shock waves from which were felt as far away as Switzerland. When the rumbling stopped, a great fire ensued, followed by a tsunami that washed away coastal villages. As I awoke on Tuesday morning, I had good reason to believe that Portugal's capital was about to endure a second devastating tremor. On Lisbon's Avenida de Joao H, the walls of my tiny hotel room seemed to be swaying and I could hear a terrible banging. My hands were sweating, my heart was pounding. Inside my head, the pressure was so intense that I feared that my eyes would pop out like corks from over-fizzed champagne bottles. Semiconscious, I struggled to make sense of dreadful thoughts. Was this how it feels in the final moments before a catastrophic seismic event? Was I going to die? Er, not quite. There was, of course, no earthquake. Indeed, terra could not have been more firma. My shaking and rattling were the result of all the rocking and rolling in which we England supporters had indulged the night before. Yes, mine was the Zinedine Zidane of hangovers. After the agony of the last-second defeat by France. the ecstasy of a Sven-inspired revival against plucky Croatia merited proper celebration. This we did until the lights went out. When they came back on. I could say with hand on heart, 'Darling, the earth is definitely moving for me.'
T flew to Lisbon on Monday with a party of I pals, comprising some senior BBC executives, a handful of journalists and one or two people who actually work for a living. In addition to cheering on Becks and the boys, we had a supplementary mission: to demonstrate that it's possible to enjoy a little paddle in the European wine lake without turning into the kind of boneheaded, scurnbag, hooligan filth that has soiled this country's reputation overseas. On arrival, we had 11 hours to go before kick-off, so there was plenty of time for luncheon, Someone on the plane had recommended a Lisbon tavern that is famous for roast pork and exotic lagers. Tramping the streets in search of this culinary haven, it struck me that unlike Orwell we were on The Road to Pig 'n' Beer,
I n this column two weeks ago, Sir Max Hastings recalled that while helping the BBC to cover D-Day commemorations he met Michael Grade, the corporation's new chairman, who gave him a brace of Cuban cigars. Excellent, I thought. This is the kind of performance-related remuneration that some of us have been promoting for years, albeit to little effect. After the trauma of Hutton, the Beeb badly needs a fun injection and Grade appears to be the right man to apply the syringe. Yes, OK, call me a brown-nose if you like. Anyway, I spotted Himself on the first day at Royal Ascot wearing a fuchsia-pink waistcoat that would have stunned a police dog from 100 yards. 'How come you're handing out expensive stogies to freelancers?' I complained to Grade. 'What about your downtrodden staff?' At which point he whipped out a torpedo-shaped beauty — a Cohiba robust() — and told me not to smoke it all at once. If he carries on like this, Grade could yet make it big in television.
Talking of Royal Ascot, I also bumped into Sir Eddie George, the former governor of the Bank of England, who, having left the Old Lady (the Bank, not his wife), appears to be in the grip of rampant deflation. Soaking up the hospitality of the Duke of Devonshire, Sir Eddie looked tanned, fit and several stones lighter than only a few months ago, when he was one of the roundest men in the Square Mile. 'I've lost four inches from my waist,' he told me with a smile as wide as Broad Street. Though Sir Eddie no longer has to hoover up all those cholesterol-laden City lunches, I'm delighted to report that he's still smoking more than an Austin Allegro exhaust pipe. John Reid, I'm sure, would understand that pensioners in Cornwall deserve their little pleasures.
Saturday evening was spent at the Hon. Jeremy Deedes's place. Not his home. but Warwick racecourse where the Telegraph group's leader is chairman. For a track that sits incongruously next to a shabby council estate, the amenities are more salubrious than you might expect. Dinner in the restaurant was much better than fare I've suffered at courses of a similar category. It was reasonably priced, too, though I could have lived without the wide-ranging selection of very large, dead flies on the window sill. But why oh why do so many British racecourses locate their main
eating facilities in rooms that face brick walls rather than the runners and riders? Enlightened tracks such as Windsor, Nottingham and Lingfield worked out long ago that dining racegoers like to enjoy the action without having to jump up mid-meal to jostle for a space in the grandstand. Watching it on closed-circuit TV just isn't the same. The Honourable One was rightly delighted that top jockeys Frankie Dettori and Kieren Fallon had dashed from the last race of Royal Ascot to ride at proletarian Warwick, 'We've never had so many helicopters here,' he told me. 'Look, there are two.'
ather's Day marked another stage of my depressing journey from the Olympian heights of golfing mediocrity to the point where my swing resembles that of a tugboat's lavatory door in a howling gale. Along with my dad and an esteemed former colleague from the business section of the Sunday Times, I crashed my way round the Forest of Arden course near Birmingham, displaying a level of finesse more readily associated with Panzer tanks. Where did it all go wrong? I was never a brilliant golfer, but there was a time when could be pretty sure on which fairway my ball was going to land. These days, I have no idea if it's even going to end up in the same county. What has brought about this maddening decline? Perhaps it's a nasty side effect of working for the BBC. So imbued am I now with the Corporation's guidelines on political balance that once I've hit the ball miles left, I feel compelled to smack the next one way right. If only! could discover the Middle Way.
Just in case you're getting the impression that the BBC's business editor is a philistine who does nothing but watch football, go racing and play golf while under the influence of strong drink, let me set the record straight. One of my recent jobs was appearing on a new series of Grumpy Old Men. This TV show comprises blokes of a certain age moaning and groaning about stuff that annoys them and is pitched at viewers who find Big Brother a bit tricky to follow. When the producer asked me, 'What do you want to be grumpy about?' I barely knew where to begin. I mean, what don't I want to be grumpy about? Once filming started, they all but had to shove a bung in my mouth to halt the tide of vitriol. Raging out loud against political correctness, litter louts, our blameand-claim culture, the diminution of personal responsibility, lawyers, low-cost airlines, celebrity chefs, etc., was a cathartic experience. I strongly recommend it as an alternative to anger-management courses.
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