Afternoon:
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Capello succumbs to the sound of musicals
What is it with the most austere of our sporting heroes and musical theatre? Still reeling from Richie Benaud's 2005 confession that he had seen Cats 26 times, we learn that Fabio Capello shares the weakness.
In a "My London" feature, Fabio tells Gazetta dello Sport that musicals are one of the great joys about living here, and that his favourites are Billy Elliot and Mamma Mia.
Among other bombshells, Capello admits a fondness for Gilbert and George, and a newly discovered taste for Lebanese food. Nothing wrong there. Who doesn't appreciate the eccentric east London artists and a zingy fatoush salad?
But to those of us who had him pegged as a devotee of Strindbergian weltschmerz, this glimpse of campness must come as a savage blow.
General can't be made to wait for his tee time
If the vision of Fabio busting moves to Dancing Queen in row F of the stalls seems a sufficient affront to the natural order of things for one day, look away now.
Who knew that supporting the Tories now gets a chap blackballed from a golf club? General Sir Richard Dannatt's application to join the Royal West Norfolk will not be fast-tracked, as previously expected, now that he's an adviser on defence to David Cameron.
Apparently it is a convention there, if not an iron rule, that golf and politics must not mix. Utter madness, and I will be speaking to my old pal Peter Alliss about intervening on Sir Richard's behalf.
BDO's blast at PDC is OTT as far as I can see
Reuniting those split asunder by ancient conflict is never easy. Barack Obama has discovered this in the Middle East, and now it falls to Barry Hearn to learn the lesson on these shores.
Barry's efforts to reintegrate his own PDC (the proper, Phil Taylor darts body) with the BDO (the older, rubbish one) comes to grief. BDO world champion Ted “the Count” Hankey has dismissed Barry's £1m offer to re‑merge under his PDC umbrella as “stupid … he's trying to put a price on something money can't buy — tradition.”
A fair point. The BDO tradition is to gather the planet's least accurate arrowsmen each January for an event that is to the PDC version slightly less than what Queen's Club is to Wimbledon. And you cannot put a value on that.
Bernie's love life is back up to speed
The News of the World reports that Bernie Ecclestone is dating “a Brazilian firecracker nearly HALF A CENTURY younger”.
He sounds smitten. “She's gorgeous but forget everything else, she's a nice person,” says Little Bern, 78, of Fabiana Flosi, 30. “She has a good nature.”
That's a relief. She'll be needing one of those. It's all so touching that for once we will avoid the Mrs Merton route, and won't be asking Fabiana precisely what first attracted her to the billionaire Formula One supremo with all his own hair, albeit styled after an acrylic silver mop.
