I really don't.

I hate football anyway, it's a bloody stupid game. I don't know why you all get so excited about it.

I'm staring at the BBC football home page, and I'm looking for an article, but it's not there. Steve McClaren hurls himself from Wembley arch, it might have been called.  His final words, 'Thus I atone for my grave error', echoed around the stadium as his body lay crumpled across the centre circle. Meanwhile, with a banzai shout, Scott Carson fell on his own sword, and missed. But no. McClaren defiant after England defeat. Well, he's had plenty of practice. It also says FA to meet over McClaren future, which shouldn't detain them long enough to need a tea break. I bet James I had a meeting to discuss Guy Fawkes' future as well. A good racking, that's the answer. And fire. Lots of fire.

I remember the last time this happened. 1994 it was, when Graham Taylor was in charge. They compared him with a turnip. Which root vegetable is McClaren? I'm not sure, but it's definitely the last one in the shop.

Because that's how we got him, if you recall. We wanted Scolari, but he ran away as fast as his dumpy little legs would carry him. And there was nobody else. Just between friends, it came down to a straight choice - him or me. And I turned it down flat.

For who would want such an accursed job? Imagine what it's like being a top manager, with the pick of Europe's great teams. Not me, fool, that was poetic license. But if you really did have the opportunity to manage Barcelona, or Juventus, or Arsenal, why would you want to run England? Look how much we had to pay Eriksson to do it.

It actually physically hurts. My chest feels like it's being crushed. Oh, I'm not suggesting that women who have been through childbirth should be falling over themselves to feel sorry for me. It's not like I've got a cold. But it does hurt.

You know the scene in A Bridge too Far, when Dirk Bogarde, Michael Caine and Elliot Gould are stood on a high building, watching the battle through their binoculars and trying to work out why they've fallen just short, having come so far? It was Nijmegen. It was Eindhoven. It was the weather. It was the one road. That's how I feel. It was Macedonia. It was Israel. It was Carson. It was the penalty in Moscow. And the truth is, it was all of it. The whole thing. It's been like a Restoration farce, but stretched out to Wagnerian lengths.

Well, at least we get the misery over with now. Come next summer, we'll be over it, and we can laugh at all the other countries as they all get knocked out, one after the other. All except one, obviously, but that was never going to be us.

The other countries. That's Poland, Portugal, Italy, France, Greece, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Germany, Croatia, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Romania and Holland. Plus Austria and Switzerland, the hosts. Not us. We stay at home with the other comedy teams.

I'm really not talking about it.