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I know most of you have little interest in the World Cup, so because this is a public service blog, free at the point of need, I have been surfing the Brazilian zeitgeist for you to spare you the ordeal. Don’t send thanks, send money.

The best thing I have seen so far is the banner carried by a bunch of England soccer supporters in the stands, reading ‘Please don’t put us on TV, our wives think we are fishing in West Wales’.

But that level of humour is unusual. The worst thing I have seen so far is the parade of cheats, dullards, bores, hysterics, pompous arses and millionaires given money by the TV companies to ‘cover’ the event. There are thousands of them, all in shiny expensive shirts and trousers sat awkwardly on expensively designed chairs, glowing orange in the glare of the TV lights. Almost everybody involved once played professional soccer. This should tell you something about the levels of wit, insight, spontaneity, excitement and entertainment on offer.

I watched part of England’s entertaining effort against Italy, and in the studio the extremely boring French player Thierry Henry and the usually excellent presenter Gary Lineker shared a joke about handballs – Henry being the man whose blatant handball cheat got France to a World Cup finals at the expense of Ireland. How hilarious, to have a jolly jape about cheating, with a famous cheat.

I suppose when you have as much money as these people, and when TV companies have given you even more money to spout vapid clichés, it’s very difficult to get excited. Or even accurate. The BBC studio enthused about the ‘outstanding’ Raheem Sterling, and the youngster did indeed have a great first half as far as I could see. But he virtually disappeared for the second half and nobody seemed to notice. The full backs Johnson and Baines were models of passion, commitment and movement, trying their hearts out, but nobody seemed to notice them other than to carp about Baines, who was left by the baffling and baffled Rooney to try to cope alone on the left.

I can never understand why TV companies throw money at former players in this way. I’m listening to Test Match Special from Lord’s at the moment and there are some excellent former players on it, but none compare with non-Test players like the great Henry Blofeld and his illustrious predecessors Arlott and Johnners for insight and entertainment and sheer joy in the proceedings. Rugby union offers us such as Jerry Guscott, a prince of a player but a pauper of a wordsmith, yet the sport, before it turned boringly professional, was loved for the laughs you could get from the enthusiasts in the stand and the passion personified by Bill McLaren.

I know I’m straying into old fart territory here – but damn it, I’m happy to embrace my inner fart. You should do it too. Embrace your inner fart. Because your inner fart is often right.

If TV companies can’t see beyond the big stars and insist on wasting their and our money, that’s a bad thing whether it’s an old fart saying it or not. They should come to this blog for a commentary team: if you could get Brother Badger and Sir Baldrick of Bonce turning RossyReid at a soccer match, you may get some passion, some real insight, some controversy and some genuine laughs. Sister Shine would be great at Wimbledon, though it is possible she might get carried away on occasion… but the last thing Wimbledon needs is all that twee politeness. Captain Kay and myself are the only choices for the rugby, of course, while Brother Hamster and Old Father Cullingham would fit in beautifully alongside Blowers at TMS. As for Brother Stents – he’d have something to say about everything. Real people, saying real things, unafraid of upsetting colleagues, sponsors or audiences.

Inside Tony Blair, inside George W Bush

Blame the Americans, that’s what I say.

Thatcher launched this country’s troops on an ill-advised military adventure thousands of miles from home that cost brave men their lives, but she didn’t have ‘help’ from the Americans and so We Won. Until she got re-elected on the back of her victory. Then We Lost.

Blair launched this country’s troops on an ill-advised military adventure thousands of miles from home that cost brave men their lives, but he did have ‘help’ from the Americans and so even though We Won, We Lost. Big time. We had lots of big bangs and some spectacular TV pictures and some colourful explosions, conveniently brief so the bloody deaths of thousands of dark-hued Iraqis didn’t impinge on the commercials, but we didn’t have a very great deal of thought.

Now Iraq is descending into terrible anarchy once more. And everybody’s queuing up to tell the waiting world what a terrible mistake it was to get involved in Iraq in the first place and how it’s All Our Fault.

Well, I certainly thought it was a terrible mistake to get involved in the dolt Bush’s crazy war in the first place, and was one of the millions who said so. But almost to a man, the people now loudly criticising Blair for ascending so far up George W Bush’s back passage that daylight was but a distant memory are the people who were braying like jackals on the floor of the House of Commons, and in the opinion pages of the broadsheets, cheering him on.

The people criticising Blair now were cowards then for not standing up to the Americans, and they’re cowards now for kicking an easy target when they’re just as much at fault. Iraq is everybody’s fault, including Iraq’s, and Tony Blair didn’t create the centuries-old conflict between Sunni and Shia’h.

Having said that, I’d love to be in Blair’s head, just once. It must be a place where all is bright and shiny – where all that lovely money is a great joy, where the audiences beef up the pleasure receptors. It may even be a place where, in quiet moments, there’s an armchair surrounded by all the good things he did, because there were good things. But somewhere in there will be the deepest, darkest, hauntedest cupboard, the cupboard containing the Iraq war, and I bet at dead of night the cupboard door opens and inside Blair’s head is just one long white-lipped screamed ‘Noooooo’ of guilt and remorse.