I acknowledged that this little game with passengers at Edinburgh airport was losing its appeal. Stopping dead in your tracks just to witness the reaction of people following immediately behind you is a bit childish.

At the gate, and from behind, I recognised my university friend JG. My excitement turned to revulsion when he turned round. His body was a mass of haphazardly stitched and bandaged wounds. How had he taken on this zombie-like appearance? Was he a military hospital out-patient rush-job? JG explained that he had undergone surgery in Scotland to remove a massive tapeworm resident in his gut. Now discharged from treatment it was time to travel home to Ireland. He didn’t care that he looked a mess. What mattered more was that the operation was 95% funded under an agreement set up by the Republic of Ireland with NHS Scotland. All that JG had to cover personally was the (inexpert) stitching around his lips. His jubilation was somewhat dampened, however, when I remarked on the pregnancy of his mistress EF, of which his wife knew nothing.

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The basic ingredients of an incentive holiday were here. The big beach resort Hilton hotel in Spain was awash with TPR’s colleagues and their significant others. However, some elements did not ring true. First, there were no business sessions, and I wasn’t sure how the company could get away with presenting this as a work event. Then the hotel facilities and its staff did not match the standards of previous trips. For example, the lift system was completely unreliable. It dropped passengers off at random floors and occasionally descended “below stairs”. The evil concierge who agreed to look after my hand luggage on our last morning definitely deserved to be sacked. She attached a note to my brown coat: “Staying an extra night. Please send to suite 2.”

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Alex McLeish was jubilant. He’d identified Sir Alex Ferguson’s Swiss-styled château in the Spanish resort. It was quite beyond me why one footballing Alex would take such pleasure in spying on another.