Torres 1 Tevez 0: The ugly truth about the footballers that nature neglected

Men who take their football seriously are strongly advised to read no further. Likewise all those male chauvinists who feel women have no right to comment on sport.

Hopefully the only fans left are those who, like me, prefer the game to be a bit of fun as well as a great adrenalin kick at weekends or whenever your team is in action.

Anyway, I’ve just been having a giggle at players’ looks (or occasional lack of them) rather than their onfield skills (or usual lack of them). And I’ve come up with two teams - the Donna Uglies and the Donna Dreamboats.

My sincere apologies to the Uglies - I know only too well that you can’t help the way you look and that, unlike us girls, don't have the benefit of being able to wear makeup to hide the hideous bits. (Well, not unless you want to get kicked all around the dressing room and branded a fairy).

But I do question why men blessed with masses of money but few natural attributes other than twinkling feet don’t invest a few thousand in improving their appearance. At least they've only ust got round to it.

Tevez - improvement

Carlos Tevez and Ronaldinho, for example - they took years to find a good dentist and I'm not sure whether Ronaldinho has got it right even now. Perhaps he should ask Nottingham Forest striker Robert Earnshaw, who looked like a modern-day Bugs Bunny until he had his gnashers seen to a couple of seasons ago. Either that or the Wales hitman found a miracle cure for unattractiveness.

Poor Rio Ferdinand doesn’t so much need a tooth job - even a ton of collagen couldn’t help the lipless one. Not that the Manchester United captain is bothered, I’m sure. He could probably bed half the women in the city should he wish to - though I suspect the vast majority would have their eyes tightly shut throughout the ordeal.

Before you start telling me I’m no oil painting myself, I’d like to put you right on that one because a young guy told me last week ‘‘Your looks grate.’’ As he’s a Geordie I took that as a compliment.

As for footballers taking stick about their looks, well, not all of them can look like former Spur and Newcastle pin-up boy David Ginola. But at least they can hide their deficiencies by plastering £100 notes all over their faces.

Anyway, this is my squad for the Ugly XI , based on players who have featured in European football over the last 20 years.

Fabien Barthez (was he Donald Pleasance reincarnated?), Gary Neville, Rio Ferdinand, Anton Ferdinand, Carlton Palmer, Yossi Benayoun, Ronaldinho, Ivan Campo, Peter Beardsley, Jason Koumas, Iain Dowie and Franck Ribery. The chairman would be Eggert ‘The Vulkan’ Magnusson (former chairman of West Ham) and the manager Harry Redknapp.

Harry’s no oil painting for sure but he must have the world’s most beautiful wife. Otherwise how did his son Jamie get his good looks?

Now for the best-looking team (are you reading, girls?). I apologise for most of them being forwards, but my Dreamboat lineup would be Kasper Schmeichel (or David James if you fancy a more experienced man), Warren Barton, David Beckham, Gary Speed, Kaka, Cristiano Ronaldo, Eidur Gudjohnsen, Michael Owen, Fernando Torres, Harry Kewell and David Ginola. Oh, and the manager has to be a special one, namely Jose Mourinho.

As for the chairman, are there any good-looking ones? So as a lifelong Cardiff City fan I’ll go for the Bluebirds’ Malaysian chief Dato Chan Tien Ghee. He’s not good looking – but he might just give me some complimentary tickets!

So there you have it, a team of Uglies against a team of Dreamboats (even if the good lookers would have no chance of beating anyone with only one specialist defender in Barton).

So much for the important stuff. Now I'll get back to cooking the roast...

Arsenal 1 Birmingham 2: Why football clubs are buying the wrong players

I used to hate Birmingham City when the club was owned by the seedy David Sullivan.  But their Carling Cup Final victory over Arsenal had me cheering.

That’s because Alex McLeish’s glory boys proved at Wembley that British footballers can compete with the best in the business. And also that Premier League clubs do NOT need to spend a fortune on continental imports rather than buy the finest young talent from England’s lower divisions.

Anyway, as a lifelong footy fan I thought  Birmingham fully deserved their win, even if I could have scored Obafemi Martins’ winning goal myself. I said could have, not would have!

To me it was a special occasion as the British bulldog spirit conquered supposedly one of the best club teams in the world. The experts predicted an easy win for Arsenal – and instead saw them sunk by a Churchillian effort from the boys from the Midlands.

The Wembley war was won by the true grit of a Birmingham team whose starting line-up included EIGHT players from the UK and Ireland. And that is rare indeed for a Premier League team, the majority of which are packed with megabucks signings from overseas.

Please don’t label me a racist, because that is the last thing I  am. But while I love the way Arsenal play - indeed I think they are the best side in the Premier League -  they are not an English team. They are a World XI that just happen to be based in London.

Sometimes Arsene Wenger’s team take the field without a single Brit but on Sunday the Frenchman’s World XI did at least have Jack Wilshere in the line-up. (OK, I accept that if Theo Walcott had not been injured, there may have been two Englishmen in the side).

I  believe England’s flop in last year’s World Cup was largely due to the fact so few homegrown players feature in the top club sides. And I am convinced things would improve if  Premier League bosses stopped buying abroad and started investing in the Championship – the second tier of the English game – which is packed with talented youngsters.  

Birmingham centre-back Roger Johnson, one of Sunday’s bruised and battered Carling Cup heroes, is an example of what I mean.

Not because he was my hero before my beloved Cardiff City sold him for £5million a couple of years ago - and not because of the 6ft 3in defender’s special courage in the face of giant odds at Wembley. Unable to train all week, he hobbled defiantly through the last half-hour after taking a knock that would have seen many lesser players carried off.

The fact is that Johnson turned in consistently brilliant performances for Cardiff week after week – yet until Birmingham came in for him, he might as well have been playing on the moon.

Not that we Bluebirds fans were complaining at the lack of interest, of course. While the big boys were looking abroad to strengthen their defences, Roger was lifting us towards the Premier League.

Now, after less than two seasons strutting his stuff at St Andrews, he is probably rated at £20m and being touted as a future England centre-back.

What I want to know is why was Johnson not poached by any of the Premier League giants much earlier when he was turning in consistently brilliant performances week after week for Cardiff?

Ironically, a few months before Roger’s move to Birmingham, Wenger had forked out £5m himself for Cardiff teenager Aaron Ramsey. Yet the names of the players that have since moved in at the Emirates continue to be as unspellable as ever.

At least Arsenal’s sorry losers still have something to celebrate after their Carling Cup misery. European Union law is apparently standing in the way of the desire by FIFA President Sepp Blatter and his UEFA counterpart Michel Platini to impose limits on the number of foreign players in a team.

Perhaps the solution would be a friendly agreement between the Football Association and Premier League clubs to field no more than five or maybe six overseas players in the team at any given time.

But I’m a woman. What do I know about football?

Headline non-news: Does ANYONE Care What Katie Price Did Today?

I spent nearly 20 years working for The Sun, Daily Mirror and Daily Star – but I rarely read Britain’s red-top rags these days.

It’s bad enough that they cost four times as much here in Spain as they do in the UK. But seeing the rants of  a talentless ‘celebrity’ plastered all over the front pages day after day is enough to make me wish I was blind.

You know who I’m talking about – and I shudder to even mention her name. Every day without fail there is a new ‘‘story’’ about Katie Price and her latest husband/separation /lover/divorce/motoring conviction/attempt to pick her nose.

There’s no story at all really – it’s just publicity for publicity’s sake of someone whose only assets are a distorted set of surgically-adjusted boobs. As for her over made-up face, I sense a new Jacky Stallone or Donatella Versace in the making. (God, those two actually make me look pretty!),

Whilst I quite like Peter Andre – and he does have a decent voice (well, decentish!) - we all know his appearance on the reality show which led to his romance with the aforesaid Ms Price was orchestrated to revive his flagging singing career.

Rather than ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here’ a more appropriate title for the show would have been ‘‘I Used To Be A Celebrity – Get Me In There!’’

OK, the romance that subsequently developed in the Australian jungle was a story of sorts. But how on earth did it develop into the current interminable TV and tabloid soap opera?

Have news values really sunk to an ebb where the day-to-day movements of a mouthy model heading for botoxville are more headline-worthy than events that change the world?

The tabloid press has gone crazy to the point that when Price and Andre inevitably split up, any man who moved in was destined to become a celebrity whether he liked it or not. As well as contracting foot-in-mouth disease from the irritation once known as Jordan.

Enter a transvestite cage fighter (anything for publicity) called Alex Reid, whose biggest claim to fame was that he was once a contestant on the Gladiators TV show. Cue an instant red-top revolution as the back bench eyed a new target to continue the obligatory promotion of Betty Big Boobs with the Thick Lips and Too Much Slap.

Anonymous Alex was suddenly Awesome Alex, albeit a multi-talentless addition to the growing volume of A-list nobodies.

Andre had Priced himself out of the picture (and conveniently into his own fly-on-the-wall series. But for his successor in the love-hate stakes, the ‘‘Reid all about it’’ headlines were more than enough reward for Alex’s self-sacrifice as Caring Katie’s new puppet.

I have long since stopped reading the titillating trivia, though it’s virtually impossible to avoid catching glimpses of headlines that highlight Price’s latest publicity-fuelled tirade.

I’m not sure whether the obsession with the lives of so-called celebrities is the fault of the media or just an example of the diminishing intellect of the UK public.

It’s not as if one needs any particular skill to become a celebrity. The fact is that in 21^st century Britain, ANYONE can become one.

At times, it really is a case of the less talent the better – as portrayed by the late Jade Goody, whose only assets were her ignorance, big mouth and a Big Brother with the frightening ability to change people’s fortunes forever.

Looking at the seedy background the poor girl emerged from, it’s encouraging to think that someone like Goody can be turned at the drop of a switch into a celebrity with millions in the bank. But I find it uncomfortable that the media has the power to create instant celebrities – and then destroy them just as quickly.

There was a time when the essential ingredient to become a celebrity was talent. Whether you were an actor, singer, comedian, sports star, you name it, there was no way into the public eye unless you possessed genuine talent.

When I was a teenager, I had a friend in South Wales who spent years performing around the clubs in the hope of making it as a professional singer. In the end, Tommy Woodward made it bigtime as the one and only  Tom Jones – because he had genuine talent.

Around the same time, one or two dodgy bands made the hit parade on the back of good management and sound effects. But generally it was a case of anonymity for life for most of us – including those with a lot more talent than the vast majority of reality show ‘celebrities’.

Had she been born 30 years earlier, Katie Price would no doubt have made a living as a model. No more than that.

But at least she wouldn’t have knocked  the Bay of Pigs and Watergate off the front page of the Daily  Mirror.

Six areas where sports writers go wrong - the inside story on Fleet Street

Having edited the work of leading British sports writers for more years than I care to remember, I can tell you that their articles are not always as well-written as you might think.

That is because, certainly in the tabloid world, the readability of a newspaper article is often down to a sub-editor’s fine-tuning rather than the author’s literary gifts.

In my early days as a Daily Express sub, we had a football reporter on the staff who regularly came up with great exclusives. But although he’d type up the news as an ‘article’, it was usually little more than a clumsily-written fact sheet.

Nobody cared, though, because the only thing that mattered was the story itself – and turning it into a back-page lead was usually a routine job for an experienced sub-editor.

In more recent times, one or two of Fleet Street's top sports hacks had a reputation in the business for churning out pure gibberish rather than acceptable copy. And whilst I am not going to name the paper or writer concerned, I had the misfortune to be saddled on several occasions with subbing the investigative reports of one of the best known drivellers.

All I can say is that reading the final flowing version of his ramblings in the following morning’s edition was for me just about the ultimate in job satisfaction. Even if I still wasn't sure what it was all about!

Sub-editors are what I call ‘desk reporters’ – journalists who work in an office environment editing and honing the work of those out in the field (or in the press boxes, to be more accurate).

Almost without exception, the subs have spent lots of time out there reporting before moving on into the sub-editing arena. It is rare indeed for someone to START his or her journalistic life as a sub-editor.

More often than not, the changeover is a conscious decision by writers with particularly high grammatical skills and a desire to work office hours rather than be farmed out on stories at all hours, day and night.

So what advice can I give to embryo sports journalists? What is the perception of someone who has been there and done it all towards the errors made by young writers developing their skills out in the big wide sporting world? Where do the reporters go wrong?

1/ Not checking the facts: Many writers just churn out copy off top of their heads and THINK they remember accurately. In the old days, reporters used reference books – it is so easy these days to carry out a quick internet search to establish the facts, but how many people actually bother to do it?

2/ Over-estimating the reader: Another common error is for the writer to assume readers know more than they actually do. I have edited match reports where the reporter hasn’t even included the score! So always think when you are writing whether you are providing everything the average reader would want to know.

3/ Spelling: This is usually the big difference between a reporter and a sub. With the sort of back-up subs provide, it doesn’t usually matter too much if a reporter can’t spell too well, as long as he or she is not completely dyslexic, of course! However, a sub who can’t spell would be as useful as a lifeguard who can’t swim. So if God hasn’t given you the gift of being able to spell (and word recognition IS a gift, not something that can really be learnt), then forget about ever becoming a sub-editor.

4/ Grammatical errors: Most people are aware that the infinitive and the verb should never be split, but how many people use expressions like ‘to brilliantly save from…’ or ‘to angrily remonstrate with the referee’? Those variances with correct grammar don’t really matter because few people realise it should be ‘to save brilliantly from’ or ‘to remonstrate angrily’. However, some expressions do grate – for instance, I find the phrase ‘‘in the back of the net’’ ludicrous. I mean, if the ball is in the back of the net, where is the FRONT of the net? The ball is in the net, end of story.

5/ Getting too technical: You’ll often find people writing about a football match as if it’s a game of chess – presumably to convey the impression they understand its complexities as well as those who coach and play at the highest level. Basically, football is a very simple exercise, though from reading what some of the so-called expert journalists churn out, you’d think it was rocket science.

6/ Amateur experts: Following on from the previous point, some writers think they know more than the REAL experts – namely the managers and the players. A writer is in a privileged position but if he has never played the game, is he REALLY qualified to slag off players for making mistakes? You can make an argument for saying ‘yes, anyone is qualified to criticise’, but it’s a debatable one. This is presumably why the TV channels use former professionals almost exclusively as their critics and summarisers – be it for football, rugby, cricket, tennis or whatever. The above article, part of which I wrote during my time as managing editor of the Sportingo.com website, embraces my thoughts after 35 years of reporting, editing and headlining hundreds of sports stories for newspapers like the Daily Mirror, Daily Express, The Sun, Daily Star, Sunday People and News of the World. I just hope it helps the next generation of sports writers in some small way…

Bizarre but true: The night my psychic dog gambled with her life

I love both cats and dogs – with a marginal preference for moggies. And that’s because they have cleaner habits than poo-ches, whose noses should be avoided at all costs because you know exactly where they have been.

Anything clean and healthy is not to be sniffed at as far as Fido and his pals are concerned. Far better to savour the pungent pong of canine excreta at any opportunity and then lick the residue lovingly into their owner's face.

Some dogs, however, are extra special. Like Carrie, who was my best friend for 15 years until I found her frozen body on the back doorstep of our home in Manchester one frosty winter morning. But more of that later.

Carrie was a small sandy mongrel with white markings – probably a whippet cross because she hared across the local park so rapidly that I swear she overtook herself half way across!

She was around two years old when we inherited her from our younger daughter’s best friend, who was moving abroad with her family. We already had a couple of cats and whilst initially Carrie and the moggies treated each other with caution, they quickly became great mates and indeed would often snuggle together in a basket at bedtime.

A few years earlier we had invested a large sum in a pedigree Irish setter puppy and inherited nothing but trouble and stress. Our attempts to house train the beautiful but highly-strung creature were a disaster to the point that visitors had difficulty working out which room was the toilet.

With the the red setter in grave danger of becoming a dead setter at the hands of her furious owners, something clearly had to give. And Beauty of Belhaven duly bounded off with her new owners six weeks later as the entire neighbourhood breathed a huge sigh of relief.

With Carrie it was entirely different. Calm and good natured, she was nothing like as excitable as Beauty. And she never had to ask to go out to do her business – she would squeeze her body though the cat-flap, albeit with some difficulty, and then squeeze back in when she had finished.

When we went out, we’d take her with us virtually everywhere and she adored sitting on the back seat looking out of the rear window. What she saw and how it affected her we had no idea – until one night when she demonstrated a sixth sense that was truly uncanny.

Perhaps once a fortnight my other half and I would have a meal at a casino three or four miles from home – and we’d occasionally take Carrie for the ride. We’d leave her in the car under the supervision of the car-park attendant while we dined and had a quick spin on the roulette table.

Carrie had been to the casino no more than three or four times – and always in the car, her eyes focused on the road behind as we headed towards our destination, and then home a couple of hours later.

One night, we went as a family to a restaurant for a meal, leaving the dog at home with the cats. When we got back, Carrie had disappeared but we weren’t overly concerned. Presumably she’d just gone out for a wee and a wander.

Then the phone rang. ‘‘Hello, this is the Salford Albion Casino,’’ said the voice on the other end.

‘‘Do you have a dog called Carrie?’’ Cue panic – and the thought that something dreadful had happened to the dog. ‘‘Yes, we do,’’ I replied nervously. ‘‘Well, she’s here wandering around. The parking attendant recognised her. We got her name and your number off her name tag.’’

I was flabbergasted. She had obviously gone looking for us, but how on earth had she got there? I mean the casino was several miles away, across at least a couple of main roads including the busy A56. And she could not possibly have followed a scent because she had only been there in the back of a car.

As we drove to the casino to collect Carrie, the only explanation we could come up with was that she had somehow remembered the route, even though she had never been there on foot and therefore could not have picked up a trail. Or could she? Who knows what goes on inside a dog’s brain – and how many extra senses they possess?

It’s 15 years or so since Carrie died that fateful December day. Fifteen years old and suffering from a heart complaint, I guess she had squeezed out through the cat flap during the night to do a wee, and suffered a fatal coronary attack as she tried to get back in.

She went to meet St Bernard at the Furry Gates still carrying the secret of her mysterious trek to the casino that remarkable night. Indeed, to this day I have no explanation how she found her way there.

Carrie gambled with her life i n that bizarre trek to the casino on highly-dangerous roads that night. And with her courageous if unnecessary mission to find us, she won even more of our love. RIP, little one.

Ryanair the loo-ser as O'Leary's cheapskate ideas head down the pan

I’ve only once flown Ryanair and had no real complaints. But when, loo and behold, company boss Michael O’Leary began spouting about charging passengers for using his aircraft toilets in-flight, that was bladder-well not on.

As far as I was concerned, the Irish cheapo fly-boys were just cheapskate penny pinchers, at the same time screaming hypocritically that they are the cheapest and best airline around.

The problem is that O’Leary has got himself stuck uncomfortably between two stools (more Donna toilet humour). He’ll do anything for publicity – but in the process tends to ostracise a huge number of people, including passengers and staff.

Some travellers will no doubt be happy to save a few more quid by utilising the ‘‘standing seats’’ he plans to introduce in order to shoe-horn as many passengers as possible into short-haul flights.

Not me – I get backache after ten minutes shopping, so what price surviving a trip from Manchester to Murcia or Alicante on my feet?

Last summer O’Leary riled his own pilots with his ridiculous questioning of whether commercial airliners actually need two pilots on the flight deck.

“Really, you only need one pilot,’’ he ranted. ‘‘Let’s take out the second pilot. Let the bloody computer fly it.”

O’Leary’s logic is that flight attendants could do the job of the co-pilot, who he claimed was only there ‘‘to make sure the first fella doesn’t fall asleep and knock over one of the computer controls.”

He wants one of the cabin crew on all Ryanair flights taught to land a plane, with the pilot ringing the bell in an emergency and calling her in to take over. Following those comments, O’Leary quickly found himself on the receiving end from his own pilots, with Marseille-based Captain Morgan Fischer proposing that Ryanair ‘‘replace the chief executive with a probationary cabin-crew member currently earning about 13,200 euros net a year. “Ryanair would benefit by saving millions of euros in salary, benefits and stock options,” quipped Fischer

saw the funny side and joined in the banter, as did Ryanair spokesman Stephen McNamara, who said: “Michael thinks that cabin crew would make a far more attractive CEO than him so we are going to seriously look at the suggestion. “After all, if we can train cabin crew to land the plane, it should be no problem training them to do Michael’s job as well.”

They say that any publicity is good publicity – and that certainly seems to be Ryanair’s policy. But if they don’t soften their attitude towards their customers, I reckon they will pay heavily for it in due course.

A Cork-based friend of mine often travels from Cork to the UK with Ryanair because has no other option. And he reckons their attitude is not one of gratitude for his business but that THEY are doing HIM a favour in providing a service.

Another friend’s recent experience suggests that Ryanair should consider adopting the expression ‘The Customer is Always Wrong’ as their official slogan. My pal Andres Ballesteros, whose English is adequate but not perfect, paid on line for a return ticket from Liverpool to Alicante for his UK-based son – only to realise almost immediately that he had booked the flights back to front.

It was clearly a genuine mistake but Andres accepted he’d have to fork out another 20 euros or so to have the dates reversed. But when he phoned Ryanair’s call centre, a dismissive female operator told him haughtily: ‘‘It’s your mistake. You’ll just have to pay again’’.

Poor Andres was forced to rebook both flights, more than doubling the cost and adding a tasty bonus to O’Leary’s greed machine. World’s Most Popular Airline? World’s Least Caring Airline more likely.

As for all those O’Leary cost-cutting ideas, I’m not sure how serious he is – and whether any of them will actually be introduced rather than merely touted for publicity reasons. But don’t you find Ryanair’s endless purse-squeezing in order to increase profits a little worrying?

We have to believe that safety is as much a priority with O’Leary as it is with every other airline – and that he is not cutting corners in crucial areas like aircraft servicing.

However, I bet his constant stream of penny-pinching ideas has sewn just a tiny seed of doubt in the minds of some people. Me for one.

Was it staged? Heroine granny's video handbag hit was too good to be true

I should be gasping with envy today after gritty granny Ann Timson’s incredible bravery in foiling six would-be jewel thieves with her mighty handbag.

But while the 71-year-old Northampton pensioner’s amazing bravery grabbed headlines all around the world, Grumpy Old Gran has just a tiny reservation about Thumpy Old Gran.

It’s not that I would have dared to have laid into those yobs in the way Ann did. Not likely. I might be a few years younger than her but a heart condition, Parkinson’s Disease and an arthritic back are hardly suitable weapons for nailing delinquents.

It’s just that something about the all-too-clear video of the action didn’t run true. It was simply too coincidental that a camera should capture virtually every moment from the perfect vantage point.

We saw it all - from the thugs sledging at the jewellers’ window and the animated manager leaping frenetically about in the entrance of the shop as the blinds came down, to Ann entering stage right, standing out from everyone else in her bright red coat, jogging across the road and unhesitatingly performing a solo bag bash on the would-be robbers.

Even the passers-by looked more like film extras as they stood, virtually motionless, watching the one-woman windmill whirl reduce the gold-digging gang to a fleeing flock of frightened fools.

It was all so clinical. Like a scene from a movie. Had it been April 1^st I would have instantly believed it was a bizarre attempt to fool the public. The subsequent interviews with the shop manager and his staff also seemed too smooth – their eloquence smacking of professional actors articulating a prepared script rather than shocked employees.

Now I am not saying any of it WAS an act. In fact, reports that most of the villains of the piece are facing criminal charges is surely conclusive evidence that Ann’s intervention was all a genuine instance of true heroism in the face of real danger.

By all accounts the former market trader has spent ten years challenging violent criminals on the estate where she lives.

According to the Daily Mail, her neighbourhood, once notorious for its lawlessness, used to be rife with drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes. But it is claimed that Ann helped turn the Spring Boroughs estate in Northampton from a ‘violent crack den into a thriving community’.

So why on earth am I so reluctant to concede that this was a very special event until a court actually convicts the gang of the offences we all saw?

Even then, no one will convince me this was not a staged reconstruction of what actually happened, rather than the real thing.

I mean, if it wasn't a set-up, why was the camera there in the first place? It didn't exactly look like a street full of action, did it?

If what we saw was the action as it truly happened, Ann is a fantastic lady - reconstruction or not.

There is no doubt she has struck a mighty blow for the credibility of a section of society that is largely invisible to Britain’s movers and shakers.

I just hope we are not going to see her reduced from a thoroughbred grey with a special pedigree to an also-Gran who was not really at the race.

Spain v Britain: The sunshine life is for you - as long as you don't need a job

In the misery of a cold, wet Manchester day, my daughter Lisa left a depressing message on Facebook this week.

‘‘What are we doing in this bloody miserable country?’’ she asked despairingly. ‘‘Can someone give me reasons not to move abroad, please.’’

Family, friends and making a living were the most popular responses she received – and when you have three children of school age, that is a BIG, BIG consideration.

Over the weekend, my local community here in Spain has been saying a tearful farewell to a family as they headed back to the UK after seven happy years on the Costa Blanca. The main reason they have returned to their roots is that their 15-year-old daughter pines for an English education and has understandably found it difficult to build a social life in the ageing expat community.

But even though Mum and Dad struggled to make a living while they were here, they loved the Spanish lifestyle so much that I reckon they will be back once junior has passed her A-levels – and leave her to her own devices at university.

When one looks at the pros and cons of moving from Britain to Spain, it is no contest until one gets down to the thorny question of employment. Spain wins on virtually every front – but if you are going to need a job, then my advice is to tread very carefully because there’s very little work available in these crisis-wrecked times.

As for family and friends, no problem there. They can always come out to visit. After all, it probably takes longer to drive from north London to Birmingham as to fly from Gatwick to Alicante or Malaga.

Personally, I reckon the best thing about modern-day Britain is that it is 1,500 miles away from where I live. But then I fortunately have sufficient pension income to keep going without a fulltime job,

But since there are two sides to every story, I took a straw poll of other exiles’ thoughts via the ExpatForum.com website. And, believe it or not, the UK more than held its own with some of my fellow expats.

Some of the areas which won a ‘Britain is best’ vote included jobs, mid-summer weather (in other words, Spain is too hot in July and August), home healthcare, keeping homes warm in winter, better tap water, no price rip-offs by utility companies, natural scenery, faster legal processes, broadband speed, TV, Sunday opening – and of course shopping.

Also, in the UK things actually work. It’s unusual to get a power cut, for instance, something that is all too common here in the Costa Blanca, with the attendant danger of losing all your freezer contents if you happen to be away when the switch trips.

Then there is a widely-publicised town-hall corruption that has blighted Spain in recent years. Not that it doesn’t exist in Britain, of course – it’ just not anywhere near as obvious. Not at local council level, anyway.
I can also confirm from personal experience that the service in UK shops, banks and other service outlets is vastly superior to the couldn’t-care-less attitude of so many workers out here.

As one ExpatForum member put it: ‘‘I hate waiting in a queue for an hour at a bank because the cashier is chatting to every Pablo, Pedro and Jose about their *abuelos/hermanos/gato/perro etc. Then it gets to your turn and. . . SIESTA TIME. Cashier is now shut!’’

Whereas banks and shops in the UK invariably put the customer first, prepare for a long wait if the clerk or shop assistant’s mobile rings while you’re being served. Because the chances of the caller being told curtly ‘I’ll ring you back’ is virtually nil.

My local vet Julien is a lovely young man who is unusually good at multi-tasking but suffers from acute ‘mobile attached to the ear’ syndrome. When I took one of my two cats to his surgery for a checkover recently, his phone rang just as he called me into the treatment room.

‘‘Un momento,’’ he said, taking the call from a pal. During the next 15 minutes, chatting throughout to his mate, he checked the cat, treated her, put her back into the cat box, ushered me out into the reception area and then signed some papers for a delivery man who walked in as I waited to discuss the bill.

Ultimately, seeing my face growing increasingly crimson, he mouthed the words ‘’14 euros’’, took my 20 euro note, rang it up on the till, gave me change and whispered a swift ‘’hasta luego’’.

As I closed the door of the surgery behind me, Julien was ushering in the next patient and its owner…still talking on the mobile that may one day need removing surgically from his ear. Because not everyone is going to be as patient as I was.

On that occasion, I had little choice but to wait – or to go to another vet. But I’ve walked out of a Spanish shop more than once when a staff member has put a phone call or chatting with a friend or colleague ahead of serving me. Unbelievably, it is as likely to be the boss as an assistant who snubs you – the person with most to gain. It simply could not happen in the UK but is so typical of the ‘mañana mañana’ Spanish mentality.

Having said all that – and factored in the menace of the myriad midsummer mosquitoes – Spain scores highly on so many fronts that it really is no contest which country has the most going for it. Particularly if you are looking to retire out here, rather than build a career.

The sunshine and healthy air obviously tops the lot. But then there are other aspects like the quality of life, cheap eating out (if you avoid the tourist rip-off joints), inexpensive housing, the third lowest crime rate in Europe (though you could fool me with all the handbag snatching and pickpocketing that goes on in the Costas), the fiestas, the family-orientated culture, the gentler pace of life and the golden beaches.

Oh, and pharmacies that sell prescription drugs without a prescription – something I have personally found very useful. (And no, I am not a junkie!)

ExpatForum members also gave Spain the thumbs-up for healthcare, public transport and less-congested roads. But sadly there was no mention anywhere of motorbikes.

Why motorbikes? Well, my Lisa’s fella Rob is a motorcycle training instructor and if they ever did come out here with the kids he’d be looking to open a training centre wherever they decided to settle.

And much as I would love to see them on my doorstep, I haven’t the faintest idea how he’d do that. Come to think of it, I don’t even know the Spanish word for motorcycle…

When things go bump on a Spanish road, there really is nothing to fear

Until recently, I was among tens of thousands of expat motorists who feared that coping with a road accident in Spain would represent the ultimate of ordeals.

OK, we would all have a problem if the other party involved was as physically aggressive as some of the lunatic speeders I see on Spanish roads, which are happily a lot less congested than their UK counterparts..

I’m talking about the stress, not only of having a bump, but the red tape that inevitably follows a collision. You know, things like accident report forms, dealing with insurance companies, organising repairs and the general inconvenience of it all.

Well, now I know – thanks to a blind young idiot who drove out of a service station near Alicante Airport straight onto the main road - and into my little Kia Picanto. In a Smart hire car of all things.

And I can now reveal that getting it sorted ain’t anywhere near as bad as you might fear.

My Kia got the worst of it and while it remained driveable, the front offside ended up looking rather mangled. But I was lucky on several points. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon, I had a passenger who speaks fluent Spanish – and the young man who hit me so Smartly was working for a major car rental firm.

In fact, he had been filling hire cars with fuel all day, which came in useful as an excuse. ‘‘Lo siento. Estoy muy cansado y no vi su coche,’’ he told my friend Beverley Ballesteros as we filled in the obligatory accident report form.  In other words, he  was very tired and simply did not see my car.

Until that moment, I had no idea that such a report form existed. But what a good concept it is (not that the UK would ever adopt anything thought up by foreigners, of course).

The idea is that both parties in any accident fill in their respective versions of what happened - and also draw a diagram of the collision.

There were a couple of these forms in my glove compartment, where I had deposited all the documents relating to the car soon after I bought the vehicle in 2007.

Just as well I remembered they were there!

Fortunately there was no dispute about the circumstances of the accident so filling in the details was a formality, complete with a mutually-agreed illustration of the point of impact. Even if my contribution did look like the weavings of a spider across a technicolor web.

Since the Smart car was insured on Europa’s all-embracing Axa policy, I already knew the scenario would not cost me financially. And from the professional and helpful way my insurers, Linea Directa, subsequently dealt with my side of the argument, I have absolutely no doubt they would have got me home muy pronto even had the Kia been undriveable.

And  what's more, there's no need to worry if your Spanish is not
up to it - because their staff speak perfect English.

As it was, I was able to limp back to my house in Guardamar - some 25 miles away -  with only the car showing any bruises. Even though it was a Sunday I was able to make contact with Linea Directa – and within 24 hours all the relevant details, including the accident report form, were in their hands via phone and email.

Since there was no dispute over blame, all that was left was for me to arrange a repairer. And I doubt I could have found a better or more helpful, convenient and efficient company than the British-owned Elite Chapa Y Pintura, who were recommended to me by a friend.

The only inconvenience during the entire episode was having to leave the car at Elite’s repair centre in Los Montesinos – ten minutes from where I live – for the Linea Directa assessor to sanction the repairs. OK, I was without the vehicle for half a day, but since Elite provided me with a lift home and returned my vehicle after the assessor’s visit, I have no complaints.

As for as the actual repairs, they were completely painless since I was by then away in England. Elite collected the car from outside my home just hours after I headed to Manchester for a family visit. And two days later it was back, gleaming as new, to await the inspection of its returning owner.

My ordeal was behind me, my Kia looked as good as new, and I still had my full no-claims bonus. My fears about coping had been banished.

So if you’re an expat motorist worrying that it might happen to you, don’t.  Apart from the initial shock of the accident, I’d go through it all again. Any time.

Providing it's only a little bump, of course.