South Africa 1 Mexico 1. Surprisingly entertaining for an opening match. The only negative - if you were watching in the UK - was ITV's horribly hysterical and patronising coverage: from the figurative patting of heads when the South Africans got quite happy when their team scored (what a surprise!) to the deeply condescending generalisations about 'The Africans' (and painfully dull soundbites back in the studio), it was irritating as only ITV can be. But so long as one can see most matches, from now on, on the Beeb, it should be a fun tournament.

The bbc coverage is much better, the commentary by Mark Lawrenson is wonderfully dry and Shearer, Hansen, and Lineker are very engaging. Emmanual Adebayer however is sometimes quite difficult to understand.

Also its a shame that Martin O'Neil won't be part of the bbc pundits team this year, as he was always very entertaining.

Interesting - guess who is the TFI French TV star commentator?
Clue - he manages Arsenal.

I can imagine Wenger's good. Houllier is good, too, as a pundit. In the UK the BBC is better, as usual, than ITV, IMHO. ITV footie coverage is like an empty box wrapped up in gold leaf: the team is hopeless (Commentator Clive Tyldsley, who thinks sounding chronically sarky is the same as being witty; anchor man Adrian Chiles, stuck grimly with his Faustian deal; and 'experts' that include Andy Townsend - a cockney Irishman who spouts platitudes like a teenager vomiting chunks after his first night out at the pub - and Gareth Southgate - who looks like a horse that has woken up in a Kafka novel about a human being who doesn't know what's happening) but everything is still wildly over-hyped. And tonight the ITV HD channel cut to an advert and MISSED ENGLAND'S GOAL! What a shambles! Thank goodness for the calm and honest appraisal on the Beeb, Alan Hansen is an eminently sensible, grown-up, pundit.

Another victory for the BBC over the Daily Mail. The obsessive BBC-bashing Mail has been predicting, quite desperately, that the Beeb's decision to base its studio on top of a Cape Town hospital that allows 360 degree views across Table Mountain and the waterfront would be an humiliating disaster (because the weather would leave them with nothing but clouds and rain every day). How has it been so far? Breathtaking views every day as far as I can see.