I missed Radio 4’s The Reunion the other day, but was pleased when someone said afterwards that I should have been on it. The subject was Euro ’96 – the football championships with that memorable theme song about “football’s coming home”, in which England lost to Germany in the semi-final, and we all got so upset that we shut ourselves in the cupboard under the stairs.
I find it easy to remember the effect of Euro ’96 on my own life. Twenty years ago, you see, in May 1996, I was invited to lunch by two chaps from the sports section of the Times, which was a surprise, to say the least. I was the TV critic of the paper. But sport? The only time I’d ever written on the subject, it was to say in an opinion piece that a woman should, by rights, always be charged less for a newspaper, as half of it (the sports bit) was destined for the bin.
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