August at last and we can forget about the monotony of the "nae fitba" spell and all get down to Easter Road and worship at the shrine of Saint Zitelli and his faithful disciples. I was so desperate for the beautiful game I found myself watching women's football on Eurosport. Women playing football indeed, has the world gone mad? I sat through the whole of Sweden v England (supporting Sweden, obviously) in the hope that the players would swap shirts in the time-honoured tradition but it was not to be. While I was happy to see a fair number of blondes in the Swedish team I have to say, without being too unkind, that they were a tad on the manly side for my taste.

Thankfully our hero, Alex McLeish, has decided to be a bit cleverer than he has in the past as he has actually given contracts to his new signings rather than let the Evil Empire steal them for a pittance after a trial period. The player who looks to be the most exciting goes by the spectacular name of Useless de la Cruz and is rumoured to be even better than that disloyal wee toerag, Russell Latapy. I guess it is only to be expected that someone like Latapy who has displayed a staggering lack of integrity should want to sign for Rangers. I read an interview where he described himself as an "offensive player" and I thought "offensive?" yeah, I would agree with that. I'm sure he will fit in well as a squad player and can compare career notes with Kenny Miller as they both languish in the Huns' reserves remembering the grand old days of yore when they played regular first team football.

Meanwhile, over at Tynecastle there has been uproar as the fans believed that the name of their team had been changed to Hearts FC while nobody was looking. Personally I think they should change their name to the highly appropriate Hearts Nil. It seems that the gorgeous Steve Fulton has been given another chance to play his way back into the team if he can lose about twenty stone. Why don't Hearts employ a top surgeon type bloke to carve Steve up into three separate players and then string him across the midfield. A regular reader pointed out to me that I had not mentioned the glorious Jambos in the past couple of columns so I did some sociological research around the environs of Gorgie. I discovered a number of startling tell-tale signs that you should look out for to let you know that you are living too close to Tynecastle.

1 You let your twelve-year old daughter smoke in front of her kids.
2 You've been married three times and still have the same in-laws.
3 You wish your toilet at home was as nice as the one at Ardmillan Terrace.
4 Your wife's hairdo was once ruined by a ceiling fan.
5 You didn't marry your childhood sweetheart in case social work found out.
6 The soundtrack of your wedding video ends with the loudhailer message:

I heard a fantastically funny joke recently that unfortunately is too rude for this paper to publish in full so I will tell you as much as I can. Barry Ferguson and Henrik Larsson go for a night out. After lots of drink they end up in a massage parlour. Barry approaches the counter and asks "How much for a......." Sadly that's where decency makes me stop however, if you would like to hear how it turned out you should send me a stamped addressed envelope and I guarantee you will not be disappointed. Cheerio for now and let's all look forward to Hibs playing at least one European game and doing as well as they did last season.