This may not be a wholly accurate synopsis but the gist of it is that last week Tony Blair reshuffled the United Kingdom's unwritten constitution, abolished the post of Lord Chancellor, which had been on the go for just the past 1,400 years, and in the process forgot that Wales and Scotland existed.

"Yoo hoo," said the Welsh and the Scots. "Ooops, sorry," said Blair, before unlocking the constitutional door and letting them back in.

The Commons Speaker promptly requested that Blair make an appearance at Westminster yesterday to explain himself, not quite an unprecedented happening, but momentous enough. The session had, though, hardly begun when Sky News cut away and whisked us off to Madrid to listen in on the press conference called by Jorge Valdano, the sporting director of Real Madrid, to confirm the signing of you-know-who, a signing that had already been confirmed the day before.

Valdano, the translator informed us, "was berry happy to sign Davad Beckan", which was nice to know, but we were left wondering whether, back in London, Blair was on his way to the Tower.

Now, let's be honest, some of us are pitiful enough to regard this as a healthy set of priorities, but would concede, if a little reluctantly, that it is an indication that our planet has mislaid the plot.

News is news, sport is sport, business is business, entertainment is entertainment, and on the whole it's best if they all keep out of each other's way. Largely because if one dips into the other they usually get the perspective thing hopelessly wrong.

Sport, needless to say, should generally take precedence over life and stuff, but some of us are big enough to concede that, once in a while, it's okay to waive that rule and allow the front pages to focus their attention on wars and little things like that. (What's that? Why are you slagging Sky News when Beckham appeared on the front page of The Irish Times yesterday? Well . . . less of your guff . . . but . . . fair point . . . 1-0 to you).

Little wonder, then, that the most commonly heard expression of the summer has been: "If I hear about (expletive) David Beckham once more I'll (expletive) (expletive) scream."

And the second most commonly heard expression of the summer, after Tuesday's news? "Thanks be to God it's (expletive) over."

Even those of us with a mildly fixated, obsessive interest in the story couldn't stifle the yawns over the past week or 18. It became excruciatingly boring, tears of tedium began to well in our eyes, many a cry of "pleeeease, no more" was uttered, the odd plea for a bit of news on troubled world hot spots like Iraq, Israel and Anfield issued.

If the footballer at the centre of it all was a player we could rank alongside Pele, Maradona, Cruyff, Best and Zidane then okay, the prolonged saga would have merited our prolonged interest, but he's just a decent player with a big heart and a usable right foot, no more, no less. Labelling him "world class" is akin to labelling a pie made of cow entrails "vegetarian" - it's just not entirely accurate.

Truth is, Beckham hasn't had a consistently good season for United since he created a hefty percentage of Andy Cole and Dwight Yorke's goals in the treble-winning campaign, four years ago. And no, Alex Ferguson didn't drop him for those games against Arsenal and Real Madrid last season because he (Beckham, not Ferguson) wore a girlie hairband - if Beckham had been in form he'd have been picked even if he turned up at training in a boob tube, mini skirt and stiletto heels.

Paul Scholes, for one, has been a far more influential creative force for United in that time, but he has carrot-coloured hair and was not blessed (cursed?) at birth with chiselled cheeks, so non-football people didn't notice because he didn't sell duvet covers and wasn't big in Japan. As Real goalkeeper Iker Casillas, warmly welcoming his newest team-mate to Madrid, put it yesterday: "Listen, I know that Beckham is the most marketable player in the world, but that doesn't make him the best ****ing player, does it?" Indeed.

And Manchester United? If you had a heart you'd spare a thought for them, but you don't, so you won't. There were ominous merchandising signs at Tokyo airport yesterday where legions of young Japanese girls waited, tearfully, for Beckham to arrive. One of them, spotted on ITV's lunchtime news, was wearing her United shirt back-to-front, with the club crest and Vodafone logo to the rear, and Beckham's name and number to the front.

Maybe she just thought this was how English footballers wore their shirts, or maybe she was making a point: in this neck of the woods there's a greater loyalty to "Beckham" the brand than there is to the artist formerly known as Merchandise United. Which is good news for the traditionalists: from this day forth the club will revert to its old name of Manchester United, quaint but very lovely.

So then, back to reality. The saga's over, we can live again. News will appear on the news pages, sport on the sport, business on the business, and entertainment on the entertainment. As a Stratford-upon-Avon playwright once almost wrote, it was all "much ado about not much".