Mark Steel

I'm fine, Andy.

I've been to Germany to watch my football team win a contrived cup.

Which conference league?

It's called the Conference League, but it doesn't really matter.

You know, it could be called the Round 3 Fruit Pastel Conference and it would be fine with that.

The players all have to get voted and then there's a big row on the floor.

And of course, you know, some of the trade unions had a block vote.

So that's how...

you know that's how we won is the other team their conference elected a sideboard as their left back that surprises me the germans lost they're usually very good at team sports no the game was in germany but we were playing against the spanish team a spanish team i have to say that is magnificent rayo velichano and they are the poorer part of madrid and they're very proud that they're not atletico madrid or real madrid

And so they they what about this?

They gave out leaflets to all their fans as they were going in, explaining the history of Crystal Palace and and then waited 40.

They had a big banner they brought out at the end saying to be with you in our defeat is our victory.

And then they waited for 40 minutes to cheer Palace, who had just beaten them, as we got the trophy.

And then spent the rest of the night in the centre of Leipzig, just getting drunk and dancing about.

So in the end, I sort of thought, oh, no, you've ruined it now.

No.

No.

I heard Jeremy Bowen, the BBC's foreign affairs correspondent, who seems like a decent chap and seems very knowledgeable.

And I heard him on the radio one morning a few weeks ago in this conflict and pretty much exactly this is what he said.

This morning, the president said that he'd got a present from Iran.