If I was going to spend 30 grand on a night out I wouldn't go into a Leeds nighterie with flock wallpaper and a cocktail list. Venice maybe.

And Rome and a video of the semi-final to watch on the Lear taking me from one to the other.

But if you're a professional footballer plying your trade at the showbiz end of the industry, a night out costing 30 grand doesn't extend even as far as a couple of busty eastern block chicks nowadays. All it takes is few dozen alcopops and a karaoke machine plus a modest contingency to allow for your club docking you a bit of pay and there you go, that's your 30 big ones gone.

I guess the Lee Bowyers and Jonathan Woodgates of the world reckon it's worth the gamble, especially if they are immediately given a £9,000 a week pay rise. Quite how long the august institutions that help pay their wages - Barclay's Bank and the Nationwide Building Society come to mind - will remain so sanguine is a matter of debate.

Not long is my guess but to be honest I don't care a toot how long their fantasy world survives. To those who worry that the Premiership bubble is about to burst all I can say is, would you like to borrow this pin?

More upsetting is how the rest of us are being demeaned by the oikish excesses of Elland Road and Upton Park.

The Evening Standard bleated that even if Lee Bowyer was a wife-beating racist we'd all forgive him if he won us the World Cup. I so hope that's not true. The past few months have seen Leeds United damaged, football in general damaged and Sarfraz Najeib's cheekbone damaged. If the lager boys go to Tokyo in the summer then at least half the country will find their passion for England's football team diminished. Sven shouldn't risk it.

In spite of all the talk about treating football supporters as consumers, events outside the Majestick show that professional football still models itself on Tsarist Russia, circa 1917. While those in the gilded inner courts gorge themselves, the serfs come nowhere. Take New Year's Day.

My family lashed out 75 quid to go to QPR and when the tickets arrived they had "partially obscured view" printed on them. What this actually meant was that you could see only the top 12 inches of the goal at your end of the pitch. (Watto hitting the bar? Brilliant! Danny forcing a goal line clearance? Don't ask me mate.)

This crucial shortcoming wasn't an accident. It was the result of a fundemental mistake in the design of the stand. Except I doubt if it was a mistake. In order to squeeze a few hundred extra paying customers in they made the upper tier bigger than they should have done. Imagine someone extending the balcony of the Theatre Royal so far out that, sitting up there, you couldn't see the stage.

Then, having imagined that, visualise queuing 25 minutes to go to the loo before the show due to a profound shortage of women's cubicles. Followed by quarter of an hour waiting for the privilege of spending £16 on a collection of inedible hotdogs and unidentifiable hot drinks. And then finding that the usherettes (or stewards as they are called here) had given your seats to someone else. And then being told to move by a rude policeman who proceeded to spend the next 90 minutes watching the action from the place he had just told you to move from. And, finally, finding a quiet spot to watch 50 per cent of the game. Quiet because it was behind a pillar; 50 per cent because it was a very wide pillar.

They treat people better at Withdean but if the men in authority at any football club ever wonder why supporters sometimes get vexed and irritated then they should look at themselves and ask if perhaps they aren't partly to blame.