Footballers' Wives kicks off

I think this may be the first time the football world has triumphed over gangland in the mounting of a truly memorable funeral. And it had to be Footballers' Wives.

As the coffin slid from the hearse, the word "Chardonnay" was seen emblazoned across the top in foot-high letters. It doesn't need me to tell you that the casket was appropriately oak-aged.

Tanya, the widow of the not-quite-so-lately-departed but infinitely more unlamented Jason, did the oratorical honours: "Down the waterfall, wherever it may take us, we know that life won't break us."

As Chardonnay had clearly not been carried away on a torrent of white wine never to be seen on this earth again, this speech had to be considered in a purely figurative light. The point was that football for once was shown to be a mere tributary off the river of life.

This point was reinforced throughout the duration of this first episode of the third series of the one that they can't gag.

The need for some exotic action was met by the introduction of Con and Amber, who were hard at work learning some simple lines in Thailand under the watchful eye of a member of the Triad gang, to whom the aptly named Con owed £3 million.

You might care to think of the duo as Pecs and Oriental Spice. Because Con had run up the gambling debt in Italy, he could not understand what the debt collectors were doing in Thailand, even though he was obviously a frequent flier himself.

Meanwhile Amber, a Bollywood B-movie star, was putting urgent calls through to Italy to speak to her bambino, a revoltingly fluffy pooch called Simba.

Soon enough, Tanya and her new husband Frank, the owner of the Earl's Park football club, turned up to complete the signing of Con.

This allowed for multiple sexual options to be explored, involving a clearly bi-sexual Con, his Bollywood swinger girlfriend, the single-minded Tanya, various ladyboys, and a multi-function dildo.