Off, then, to QPR, for the first time in over a year. Draw your own conclusions.
Things have changed here. As recently as last year, the QPR press room was stewarded by a gang of horrible old gits, barely able or willing to string a civil sentence together. At first I was intimidated by their sheer unpleasantness, but I quickly perfected the art of swanning in, bellowing a cheery "good afternoon" to them and then winking. It didn't make a jot of difference to their grunting demeanour, but it made me feel a lot better. What their problem was I'll never know - they're as old and as bitter at Crystal Palace too, although I haven't been there for a wee while either - but I always wondered how they fared on the mean streets of White City when they slunk into the night.
Anyway, that was then but this is now. Jesus. Since the moneymen arrived, the old gits have gone; fired I'd like to think. They've been replaced by a naturally pleasant, eyebrow-raisingly appealing (even in marigolds) woman who sashays through the room as if gliding on her own glamour. My blood pressure soars a little, but one youngish hack props himself up against the bar like he's in a Slovak Hilton and starts making small talk like she was for hire. She ignores him, but not in the same hairy-earred manner in which the vile pensioners ignored everyone. He's a tit.
If that wasn't enough (and, believe me, in a world when I'm pathetically grateful to get a cup of tea with a milk option, it is), the coffee is genuinely Italian and tastes like velvet and there's pasta: not just any old pasta, but Cipriani's pasta. It's restaurant (good restaurants that is) quality. If only I hadn't stuffed my fat face before-hand, fearing the usual culinary desert...
Alas, the press box is still a dump built for midgets, but you can't have everything. However, it is above the directors' box and the new regime is in full flow. It's not like any other directors' box, even the stewards are gorgeous and the smell of proper money is overwhelming. There's Bernie Ecclestone looking really really small, there's Flavio Briatore in leather jacket and faded jeans and there's Reading's Sir John Madejski looking like the poor relation in all this, which, for once in his life, he is.
But there's also people I don't recognise. Supermodel-esque women who haven't dressed for the London freeze, their certiainly male, presumably Italian companions, air kissing and often wearing little leather caps that make them look like Bronski Beat backing singers. No wonder my gaydar fails once I'm over the English channel. The glmaourati spend the game zipping in and out of hospitality and waving their mobile phones. I suspect none of them know who Mick Leach is and I have a horrible feeling Terry Venables would feel at home if he came back here, but it's OK. There's a buzz around QPR and that's not something anyone's said for a while
I don't know many people, but Graham from the NOTW, Neil from The People are on fine form and Nick from the Telegraph is passing time in gainful employment before flying out to the West Indies in the week to do the cricket.
The game? Well, um, it finished 0-0, there was nothing to report, Steve Coppell made us laugh in the press conference by saying he was going to a pub with no mobile reception to avoid losing someone in the transfer deadline and Paulo Sousa rambled intensely. Ho hum.