THE payoff may be later than a Wesley Snipes credit card bill, but this week the Rugby World Cup finally produced some of the entertainment it had promised as the mole in the RFU delivered a funnier script featuring a dwarf than Ricky Gervais appears to have managed.

IN January 2003, Gerard Houllier invented the ‘blip’. With incredible nonchalance (it’s French for ‘couldn’t care less’) he came up with a word for turning an ignominious exit from Europe and 10 league games without a win into the merest trifle.