As his dual designation may suggest, James I and VI was the sixth monarch of that name to reign in Scotland, and the first in England. He was famously described by his counterpart across the English Channel, Henri IV of France, as "the wisest fool in Christendom", and aptly so, I tend to think, when I recall that - harshly even by today's standards - he once described tobacco smoking as "a branch of the vice of drunkenness, which is the root of all sin".
I have much more in common with his predecessor, James III, who decreed in 1479 that "football should be utterly cryed down". My own antipathy to the game stems from its current sheer ubiquity, but James's reasons were much more pertinent, even from today's perspective.
At that time, it seems, football was more of a riot than a sport; it was an amusement indulged in by opposing factions irrespective of their numbers, the only object being to drive the ball as far as possible into the zone defended by the opposition.
Civil disorder, chaos, injury and even death were not uncommon at such contests, so that many proclamations were issued over the years in vain attempts to curb the violent game. Deja vu all over again, as someone said.
Now and then, however, the crowd observing such activities may be seen to include at least one meteorologist. Indeed, some years ago a weatherman who admitted such a weakness assuaged his guilt by studying the effect of weather on attendances at Scottish football matches.
Perhaps he justified his frivolous inclinations as being in line with the advice of Horace. Omme tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci - "He who has mixed what is useful with what gave him pleasure has succeeded in scoring all the goals".
In order to isolate the effects of weather, our sporty weatherman had to eliminate from the equation all the other variables that might have a bearing on attendances at football games - like the league position of the teams, recent performance, or the timing of the match in the context of the football season. When this was done, he found that the size of the crowd was unrelated to the local temperature or sunshine, but varied closely with the rainfall.
He found an average decrease of 200 people in attendance for every additional millimetre of rain on the day the match took place; all other things being equal, if the rainfall that day was 10 mm above normal, 2,000 fewer persons than usual would attend the game. But then, perhaps in soccer things are never equal?