Clearly Johnno was determined to take on Italy in the forwards, the one part of the game Italy is quite good at.

So today we had the ludicrous spectacle of England trying to grind down the Italian forwards (which didn’t happen) with the backs, who looked likely to score every time they handled the ball, stupidly kicking the ball away to the Italians at every opportunity.

It was a complete re-run over the narrow win over Argentina in the autumn internationals.

Any set of coaches who fix upon such a bovine game plan should be sacked immediately.

And as for all that crap that the England players have been coming out with about being given the freedom the play their own game - come on chaps, come on chaps we didn’t believe you the first time or even the second time.

And we certainly don’t believe you now.

It may have escaped Johnno’s attention but England doesn’t have anyone who can kick the ball particularly well, or even well at all.

So why do it?

This wasn’t just bad it was incredibly stupid.

Now it’s an opportunity for everyone from supermarkets to restaurants to online dating services to try to browbeat you into raiding your wallet, for one of their two and a bit courses, and a bottle of something we can’t sell at full price, for a tenner. Or the equivalent.

In the UK Asda seems to have won this particular battle over Tesco and Sainsbury’s. The other day all three had ads on consecutive spreads in the Daily Mail and Asda looked better and cheaper.

They do say that Mother’s Day and Father’s Day were the invention of Hallmark Cards, living the truth of the statement, ‘the business of America is business.’ And bugger romance no doubt.

In other words something else to torment us with.

Or it might be something else. Anyway Silvio’s agents are after her.

Well this is a bit of a shame as she’s the kind of girl who should be preserved.

Here’s Patrizia’s website. You can even give her a call.

It’s the least she deserves in these trying times.

(Down Serge).

Tony Blair’s former media manipulator Alastair Campbell was apparently on the brink of tears as he defended his old boss Tony Blair’s crazed decision to go to war in Iraq on the Andrew Marr Programme. Campbell was upset that people were impugning his and Blair’s motives, and saying that Blair had fibbed to Parliament.

But didn’t he? And didn’t the always loyal Alastair offer his complete support for this ignoble deed?

Gordon Brown, meanwhile, is said to have shed a tear or two in a forthcoming interview with Piers Morgan on ITV. This apparently happened when Piers asked him about his children, a baby daughter who died shortly after birth and one of his two sons who has cystic fibrosis, still a very nasty and life-shortening condition.

Gordon and Sarah Brown do indeed seem to have drawn the short straw in the parental stakes. But why did Brown choose to talk about this now? It was a two hour interview after all and he must have known what was coming from old tabloid hand Morgan.

Campbell, I think, realises he’s lost on Blair and Iraq.

As for Brown’s motivation I’m not sure.

She’s hired Max Clifford to represent her and Max has done a deal.

Anyway here she is.

Meanwhile poor old Fabio Capello, England manager, has re-emerged after knee surgery to face Her Majesty’s press hot on the trail of wags, roastings and all the other things that overpaid and under-educated young sportsmen busy their afternoons off with.

In the fine print of the Mail’s report it seems clear that there’s another injunction floating around, not the ’super injunction’ that Terry’s boorish lawyers Schillings tried to impose but a blank of someone else who may have enjoyed Ms Perroncel’s favours.

Mr Blatherskite’s legal budget doesn’t run to telling you who he thinks it might be.

But you won’t be surprised.

It’s not Wayne Bridge by the way.

The club has found takers for the bonds but one half of the issue at least is already trading at just 93 per cent of the issue price indicating that the market thinks the buyers are suckers, high interest or not.

Here’s what the FT’s Alphaville newsletter makes of it:

“The first bond issue by English football club Manchester United has become one of the market’s worst performers this year barely two weeks after its launch. While the club secured the £500m funding it needs to refinance its bank debt, the paper losses suffered by investors could affect its ability to return to bond markets, after the bid price of its £250m of sterling-denominated bonds tumbled to just 93% of their face value.”

So far not so good for the club’s American owners the Glazer family.

This is Hollywood doing what it’s best at but, as usual, forgetting that taste isn’t something you buy in a restaurant.

The gal actually deserves better than this because she’s a fantastic singer. But will people still think so when she’s too old for this kind of circus?

Well Ms Short may be volatile, and may have damaged her credibility in the first place by not resigning as the rather more senior Robin Cook did, but her account rings more true than that of former PM Tony Blair last week.

But it’s now clear that Blair fixed the war from the outset along with George Bush and that senior ministers including Jack Straw and Gordon Brown went along with it. Straw out of a sense of self importance and ‘loyalty’, Brown, cravenly, because he was frightened that Tony Blair would sack him as chancellor if he opposed it.

Blair is apparently due to be recalled to the Chilcot Inquiry, presumably because they had such a bad press for their feeble questioning the first time round. Brown has still to appear.

In the meantime Short may be depicted as a grandstanding politician of little consequence by Westminster insiders. But her testimony is the most damning verdict on the Government’s behaviour to date.

Blair appeared in front of the Chilcot inquiry into the war in Iraq and, according to most of the political hacks, came away unscathed because, after a nervous start, he proceeded to entrap the panel of pretty useless inquisitors in his own view of events, and his bizarre theocratic conviction that a terrorist strike on one of our allies meant a declaration of war against everybody on civilised terms with, in the case of 9/11, the United States.

So why haven’t there been terrorist atrocities in France and Germany? Or Canada or Poland?

It’s complete rubbish, Blair is a bigger threat to peace in the Middle East than Iran will ever be. And the public, who we can trust, seem less impressed by his self-serving performance than the so-called professionals, the writers and broadcasters.

As for Dr Brooke Magnanti, the author of Belle de Jour, she may or may not have undertaken all these sexual gymnastics in the course of bumping up her student grant.

But, whether or not she did, she’s proved adept at promoting whatever it was in the media marketplace.

And the end result is entertainment for the masses with not many dead.

So it’s Dr Brooke for president of the European Union, or whatever, and Blair consigned to well-earned oblivion.

Dr Brooke Magnanti, a research scientist at Bristol University, recently confessed to being the happy hooker of the Belle de Jour blog.

She even chatted cosily on ITV to Billie Piper, the actress who plays her in the dramatisation of her exploits.

But has Dr Brooke been fooling us, and the sainted Billie, all along?

I think we should be told. Brooke, we await your comments!