It is probably sacrilegious to say it, given the British Open and all that, but Mark Twain’s description of golf as “a good walk spoiled” always chimed with me.

I said as much when a friend told me that to ‘improve himself’ he had taken up learning French and trying to play golf.

The phrase ”Zut alors, mon ami!” parted from my lips. Maybe I had learned more in O-level French than I thought.

I put my grade B down to the fact that my oral exam was taken by a nun who taught at another school.

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In my pigeon French I told her that I was planning to be a priest, and had spent the last summer in Lourdes caring for the sick.

Playing to your audience is an innate skill, and a very handy one to have if you’re in the communications business.

Deep down though, I suspect, she saw through me. Nuns, in my experience, are much craftier than we give them credit for.

Anyway, I wished my friend well as he headed off to a golf course in bonny Scotland for a weekend senselessly bashing a little white ball into the heather. He........

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