Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you.

It's that bloke who writes about arts and stuff, and that column about his dog Ludo and the chickens.

I know what you're thinking, what's he doing on the sports pages, writing about the World Cup?

One of the world's biggest sporting events with all the razzamatazz, sound and noise of a West End show, and the drama, stories and tension of a Hollywood blockbuster - yeah, why am I writing about the World Cup?

Unlike the rest of my colleagues, who will no doubt be drawing on their extensive knowledge on the subject, my scant expertise has been cultivated from my minor years being taken to the local football team by my father, and then various social occasions where it seemed appropriate to join my friends in the pub to watch the 'big game'.

There's a rather wonderful episode of the IT Crowd where Roy and Moss discover a website that let's them speak 'football' which unfortunately gets out of hand when they try it out in the pub.

And while I'm not that bad, I'm not going to try and convince you back page afficionados that I'm some kind of John Motson or Alan Hanson, I'm not even John Hanson!

But actually that's not going to matter this year because I think the World Cup is going to be a very different kettle of fish.

Normally the whole country would be going World Cup crazy at the moment but it appears, from watching the news and talking to the 'man/woman/child' on the street, that we're not that bothered this time around.

There's no great World Cup anthem, no World in Motion, Three Lions, or even This Time (we'll get it right). I can't seem to see any naff car appendages, like those England socks that went over side mirrors or the annoying flags which my friend Mark would always shake his head at and say 'do you know how much petrol they're wasting reducing the aerodynamics'.

I went into a school this week to talk to Year 6's about why it's great being a journalist and asked who the England manager was and none of them knew.

The teacher did kindly offer up he was the guy who missed a penalty in '96 and then did that awful pizza ad but they were still none the wiser.

Even on the news, the arrival of our brave young lads getting ready to fight the good fight was consigned to a few seconds at the very end of the bulletin, and before that the warm-up games got barely an analytical prod rather than the usual in depth media psychoanalysis.

In previous years we've been worrying ourselves sick about the state of someone's metatarsal and then rushing off to the Oxford Medical Dictionary to find out exactly what a metatarsal is - it's the bones in your foot, in case you were still wondering.

Perhaps that Iceland game was a real watershed moment and the expectation from us is so low, we're just going to enjoy it for the sporting spectacle that it is.

Or may be we have other more pressing things on our mind like two crazy guys who run rather important countries becoming bosom buddies or what our Brexit deal is going to be like.

May be, just may be, the great Bill Shankly got it wrong when he said, admittedly half-jokingly, that football wasn't a matter of life and death, it was far more important than that.

My brief when given a chance to write a column was 'irreverent and off the wall, something a little different'.

I think with this year's World Cup, I'm going to be right at home.