A compulsive weekend’s viewing culminated in a pretty resounding defeat for the fancied Europeans in the Ryder Cup. Much to my boys’ disgust, I rather monopolised the television for the duration, thereby denying them endless repeats of “Friends” (although they can probably struggle through to maturity without seeing the 19th repeat of “the one in which a bloke whines annoyingly while his flatmate gets the wrong end of the stick again and a couple of unhealthily thin women flick their hair“).

The quality of the golf was, at times, quite incredible, and America thoroughly deserved to win, even though we could have done without some of their rather ungentlemanly behaviour. Lee Westwood complained that somebody said something especially unpleasant about his mother (though we haven’t learned exactly what), I got very bored of the crowd booing loudly in support of the rather buffoonish Boo Weekley, and Anthony Kim really shouldn’t have done the fist pumping thing when the halved hole he’d just won was courtesy of a generously conceded putt. But we’ll forgive them.

Nick Faldo’s coming in for a fair bit of stick after the defeat, people saying that he shouldn’t have saved his star players for so late in the day – although since two of them lost anyway, one could argue that “we” were doomed from the start. My own main criticism of Faldo is that he should have removed his sunglasses from time to time – even at the end, when dispensing consoling hugs for his own team and congratulatory handshakes for the opposition, he remained inscrutable behind the shades, like some sort of international man of mystery, which I thought was rather rude.

And talking of rudeness, I was delighted to see Ronaldo the Arrogant get booked for wagging his finger at the referee in yesterday’s game against Chelsea. He really does deserve a slap sometimes.