I await Rooney’s latest transfer – to Oxford University

My suspicion that Wayne Rooney secretly yearns for a life in academia was strengthened when I learnt that a Manchester bar he visited during his recent adventures was called Symposium. It’s clearly a high-minded sort of place, where ideas are exchanged and learned papers read out.

At the same time, it is clear to me that Professor Louise Richardson, the vice-chancellor of Oxford University, envies the lifestyle of a Premier League soccer player. Defending her sizeable salary, she pointed out that it is considerably less than what footballers get. Could there be the chance of a life-swap here?

I believe that a good many vicechancellors are now hanging out in such famous Manchester nightspots as Dostoyevsky’s and Cogito Ergo Sum, and sampling signature cocktails such as Tutorial on the Beach, Slow Comfortable Sabbatical, Flaming Fellowship and Screaming 2:1. And all professors of classics must surely feel that a classic sports car is the ideal accessory.

I’m sure Rooney would jump at the chance of becoming the head of an Oxford college. He would soon have the Master’s lodge refurbished with a basement games room and private cinema, with a swimming pool in the cloisters. At high table he could enjoy his role as sweeper, picking up ideas from around the table and distributing them so that others run with them.

There is clearly an affinity between the Premier League and our universities. You can see that in the way that some of the more garish gowns that go with honorary doctorates reflect the home strip of clubs such as West Ham and Manchester City. And I’m told that soccer players want to get classier writers to ghost their memoirs. Several have their eye on Hilary Mantel and Dr David Starkey, I gather.

Maybe, with her forthright opinions, Professor Richardson might be more comfortable as a highly paid and controversial soccer manager. José Mourinho had better watch his back.

“I’m still feeling so utterly overwhelmed by Tom Hiddleston’s Hamlet. An unforgettable and enriching experience.”

“Totally shattering. What the play conveys so brilliantly to me is the prince’s sense of utter isolation. That was my feeling when the truth dawned on me that I was not to be one of the 3,000 people who were able to see the production at the 160-seat theatre of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.”

“Oh I know. There was that overpowering bleakness when one discovered that one had not been successful in the ballot for seats and in fact one had not even known there even was a ballot. Sublime!”

“Yes, and I was transported by the reviews. Somehow I felt I was there, in that 160-seat Rada theatre, actually seated next to the critic, sharing the experience.”

“Ken Branagh was so clever to make it a slimmed-down version of Hamlet. It made me feel that I wasn’t missing quite so much – I mean in terms of minutes spent in the theatre.”

“How do you think Hiddleston’s Dane compared with that of Benedict Cumberbatch?”

“In a way they had much in common. They were both challenging. So challenging, it was impossible to get tickets.”

“And what about David Tennant?”nant?” “What I got from Tennant’s Hamlet was that fatal element of indecision. I couldn’t make up my mind whether to see it or not.”

“Another impressive feature e was that we missed all the awful scrambles at the bar in the interval.” erval.”

at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion As I have to swallow a good number of prescribed pills at various times of the day, I find myself taking an interest in the techniques of other people. There are the furtive ones, the forgetful scrambling ones and then there are the show-offs, making a performance of it, flourishing their pillboxes, like an 18th-century gentle gentleman with his snuff, or fussing with fe feigned exasperation. (Probably hoping we will ask for a detailed descri description of their various unique ailmen ailments.)

I’d says I was a furtive pill taker in public public. At breakfast in hotel dining rooms rooms, I line them up out of sight behind the coffee cup and keep my head d down while, all around, that partic particular hotel breakfast-room silen silence is broken by the artillery crac crackle of blister packs.

T To deal with the problem of older peo people forgetting their pills, there is no now a pilot scheme to issue them wi with a device that delivers a voice me message, telling people when the they have to take one. So in pub public places, along with all those irrit irritating ringtones, we will also hear “Time for another pink one, Mr Wilkin Wilkinson.” What joy for the pill show- show-offs.