Saxon Horse Blankets

DJ Taylor: Blatter's no more than a bench player

Possibly the oddest thing about last week's Fifa meltdown – the suspension of senior officials on corruption charges, the unopposed re-election of Sepp Blatter and the faint stirrings of sponsor unease – has been the inability of a decent-sized chunk of the populace to see what all the fuss is about.

To the non-soccer fan, the sight of Mr Blatter on every front page and the blanket coverage given to his detractors from the English FA was the equivalent of News at Ten leading with coastal erosion in North Norfolk. "After all," as one friend incredulously put it, "it's only football."

The problem with this approach is that, almost since its inception, and certainly since the mid-Victorian codification of its rules, football has always been more than a sport. In the 1860s it offered the materials for socio-cultural bridge-building with many professional teams originating from working men's societies. Later, football became an integral part of the moral code brought to Victorian public schools – with injunctions to "play the game" and shrug off the "hard knocks" – and an invaluable tool for inculcating these lessons several rungs down the social ladder.

Eighty years later, alas, football has become a different kind of signifier: an example of what happens when the two parallel lines of globalisation and television start to converge, and the huge amounts of money that can be made along the way. Just as the head of an Oxbridge college has nothing to do with education, but spends his (or her) time marshalling the fund-raisers, so Mr Blatter is simply a high-grade business impresario whose activities, on a good day, bear some notional attachment to sport. Meanwhile, is there a recreational activity left beyond marbles and conkers, you wonder, that is "only a game"? Fifa was founded in 1904 by the way, as a means of fostering international co-operation. Don't laugh.

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My local newspaper, the Eastern Daily Express, was greatly excited by the unveiling of Felbrigg Hall's "talking bench", one of eight recently installed by the National Trust which allows "a cluster of stars" to "share their odes and anecdotes about their favourite Trust properties". Visitors to Felbrigg, near Cromer, who plug in their headphones will hear Stephen Fry remark how "very alive" the place is, and allege that "you can almost hear the rustles of the skirts of the maids as they hurry along with bowls of steaming water". Other notables roped into the scheme include the TV presenter Claudia Winkleman (Quarry Mill Bank, Cheshire) and the BBC's erstwhile political journalist John Sergeant, who does the honours for Petworth House and Park, West Sussex.

Panky in the Saddle

The Saxon Shore

History of Friedrich II of Prussia

Official record, containing introduction, history of exhibition, description of exhibition and exhibits, official awards of commissioners, and catalogue of exhibits

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