The World Cup is almost upon us and, to celebrate that fact, IdeasTap have asked me, a Scottish man, to write this week’s column on it. Bearing in mind that our last World Cup appearance was in 1998, please excuse me if I come across as slightly bitter but this is really like asking an amputee to write about glove fashion.

Scotland’s constant failures have left me on the outside looking in at all the wild celebration and jubilation, like a Dickensian orphan pressing his dusty little nose up against a wealthy landowner’s dining room window on Christmas Day. We’re left to pick over the carcass of trivial facts that no one else cares about like in 2006 when Trinidad & Tobago – England’s opponents in the group stage - played a man called Jason Scotland who became the single most universally popular thing in Scotland since Tunnock’s introduced the Heroin Wafer.

The only plus-point of our sportingly-impotent nation is that it allows us to keep a calm, rational head when everyone else is swept up in boundless optimism and shrieking patriotism. When we’re not caught up in the national hype it all seems a bit overblown from here, especially when the last tournament involving our team was so long ago that I was too busy developing my basic motor functions to bother about sporting events.

The outburst of World Cup hysteria is affecting absolutely everything at the moment. All adverts have turned from being mildly annoying to being violently patriotic and will force all impressionable Englishmen to buy the product in question lest they be hanged for treason. The news is broadcasting updates on Rio Ferdinand’s knee so often and with such mournful despair that it could only be considered proportional if it turned out that Rio Ferdinand’s knee moonlighted as a refuge for battered women.

Public demand for St George’s flags is so unmanageable that desperate men have had to fashion their own version of the flag using bed-sheets and strips of their own sunburned flesh.

It seems quite obvious to me that I am in no way jealous and that England has just gone insane. I love the World Cup as much as the next man who watches football about once every four years, but I’d only ever strip naked, paint myself blue and run down the street bellowing Loch Lomond with tears filling my eyes if I was in a parallel universe. Although, admittedly, a trip to a parallel universe may be necessary to see Scotland compete in a World Cup.

I suppose, without my team being there, the fever that’s swept England has just gone over my head. But, despite all the patriotic ballyhoo, I can only wish them the best of luck in the next three weeks.

There are, of course, some petty Scotsmen who will see this World Cup as an opportunity to enthusiastically support England’s opponents due to old rivalries. I intend to sit back, enjoy the spectacle and spend some time rehearsing my faux-indifferent reaction to use just in case England actually do win.

More Jamie:

...on Eurovision

...on festivals

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Image courtesy of trumpetflickr on Flickr.