Let's have an England boss on a modest crust

Clearly former manager Fabio Capello decided to bow out on principle - over his captain John Terry being sacked without his consent - thus enabling him to leave the field with his head held high. The alternative was to face the prospect of being humiliated in the competition over the summer by minnows such as the Ukraine and end his career on an embarrassing low. Now the likes of Wayne Rooney have weighed in on Twitter saying whom they would like to succeed the Italian maestro. What mayhem. It's like one of those proverbial punch-ups. Where is the decorum in all this?

For the past few months bankers have had to endure public opprobrium over their eye-watering salaries and rampant bonus culture. Yet there is no greater chronic disjunction between performance and pay than in the world of football. Capello was paid £6million a year by the Football Association to be manager of our boys and where did the £24million squandered get us? Not very far. If bankers are being compelled to waive their bonuses, why can't the national football manager's salary be docked if his team performs so abjectly on the field? At least that would be a level playing field.

David Cameron has sensibly refrained from saying whether Harry Redknapp is the best man for the job but earlier in the week he called for more women in the boardroom to save our economy. Why can't we have more women in sport, too, especially at board level? My root-and-branch reform of the FA would extend to appointing a woman national football coach as well.

The world of sport, which can never refrain from a cliché, always loves to talk about thinking outside the box. Appointing a female coach would certainly make them all think outside the box and ideally shoot within it. And it would shake up the dressing room. A woman couldn't do much worse than the turnip-heads we have had in charge in the past few years.

What's more, I don't see why we can't give the England job to someone who is prepared to do it for less money. Perhaps it could become an auction with the job going to the candidate who is prepared to do it for the least cash. Then at least they would earn our respect. Which is in short supply for football, the FA and our national team.

Bring on the gynocracy. It's the only way to save the game.

Could Freud have done justice to these lustrous locks?

The Duchess of Cambridge looked as pretty as a picture on her solo mission to the National Portrait Gallery this week. But is it really true that she spent four hours having her hair primped in top salon Richard Ward?

Four hours? How boring is that? Apparently she maintains her lustrous locks by weekly visits to the hairdresser. Talk about dedication to your job. Even the most diehard republican must feel a smidgen of sympathy for the royal consort. How many more functions and trips to the salon is she going to have to endure over the next 50 years?

I don't envy one hair on her royal head - nor do I envy the royal portrait painter who has to capture her glossy tresses on canvas without making her look like a Dynasty throwback. If only Lucian Freud was around to paint Her Royal Highness. He painted the Girl with Fuzzy Hair and the Girl with Fair Hair, but the Girl with Lustrous Locks eluded him.

The E20 route to purgatory

Olympic naysayers have another cause for complaint. Church leaders and funeral directors have warned East Enders not to die during the Games this summer because of the chaotic traffic restrictions and inevitable gridlock.

There may be Olympic lanes for VIPS but coffins, let alone congregants, might not get to the church on time, especially if it's a horse-drawn funeral.

Canon John Williams, rector of St Saviour's Church in Forest Gate, says: "People want to be buried in the place where they worship - we can't just send them to another church." It's a restriction of people's civil liberties, he argues - the freedom to worship.

So there you have it. Die before or after the Games and you will go straight to heaven. Die during the Games and you will be condemned to purgatory, circumnavigating the infernal ring roads. Death, where is thy sting? Now we know - it's in an Olympic ring.

Should northerners be banned from moving to the south of England in order to solve our housing crisis? That was the outlandish suggestion of a Cheltenham councillor this week. Well, we could build more affordable housing, which might solve the crisis, but clearly that is too obvious a solution. But such a ban on northerners might have positive repercussions. If northerners had to pretend to be southerners to qualify for housing, maybe they would learn to speak more proper, like, and us southerners could understand what the hell they were on about. You never know, it might be the best way to bridge the north-south divide.