I know this information will make you despair of me even more, but I am afraid I am rather a fan of boxing (the clerical equivalent of those elderly ladies with lead-weighted handbags who traditionally sit in ring-side seats for wrestling). I have seen the flint ‘Rumble in the Jungle’, charting the classic 1974 Ali-Foreman bout in Zaire, three times already and if it came on the screens next weekend, Mass would have to be cancelled to accommodate my needs.

I recently saw a review of a new book on "how boxers tick" by the sports journalist Phil Shirley: "The Soul of Boxing". I therefore called it at the new mega-Waterstone Piccadilly bookshop (the old Simpsons) to get a copy. The sports shelves didn’t contain it. Enquiries followed, and yes, there were two copies ... in the Religion section. Somebody had obviously seen ‘Soul’ and gone no further. Anyway, they now have only one copy left, nestling close to the "History of Ancient Israel volume 1", in case you’re looking. Funny really, because boxing is often talked about, by its adherents, as a kind of religion, possibly because it is a sport poised on the knife-edge between life and death, sometimes literally so. They say there are more religiously inclined boxers than any other kind of sportsman. The same religion talk is also used about bullfighting (and there’s a new book about that, including information on the edible nature of the deceased in the combat — assuming it is the bull and not the bullfighter, but enough of that).