TV VIEW:GO ON, own up, you watched from start to finish, despite vowing you'd boycott the whole thing because it's just not your cup of tea, you've no interest in that class of thing and you were sick of the hype.

But if you were entirely honest you’d concede that it was a quite, quite magnificent spectacle: the pageantry, the colour, the crowd, the outfits, with a Prince Charming thrown in.

True, rugby isn’t really proper football, but Leinster’s victory over Toulouse was, you have to say, a thing of beauty. And although it took a while for Brian O’Driscoll, wearing a snug-fitting blue and navy number designed by Canterbury, to get the ring on the Heineken Cup’s finger, his 59th-minute try confirmed Leinster and this competition are a marriage made in heaven.

It’s a union, though, that Northampton will attempt to pull asunder in Cardiff later this month, so the honeymoon will be delayed until the philanderers are seen off. Still, there’s no reason why we can’t celebrate, a bit of light relief is always welcome in these doomy, gloomy times.

Sky News’ collective jaws dropped a couple of days before when they heard that, despite being invited, O’Driscoll would be skipping Friday’s shindig in London because he reckoned he was obliged to have himself in good shape for the tussle with Toulouse.

Kay Burley sounded like she wanted O’Driscoll sent to the Tower for impertinence, but she resisted openly expressing the view, perhaps after someone whispered in her ear that he’s not actually British, so Sky didn’t technically have jurisdiction over the fella.

In contrast, Sky swooned about David Beckham putting his $32-million-over-five-years contract with LA Galaxy on pause so he could attend the do, although he did hope to be back in time to line out against FC Dallas at Pizza Hut Park yesterday.

“He understands and the club understands,” he said of his Galaxy coach Bruce Arena.

“It’s important. He knows that I’ll be sacrificing to travel to turn up in Dallas. I’ll speak to the manager, just to see how I feel on the day of the game. Obviously, it’s not ideal with the travel, but it’s a royal wedding, and those don’t come around very often.”

That’s true, but the same, as it happens, can be said about your team reaching the semi-finals of the Heineken Cup, and in fairness to O’Driscoll he sacrificed to turn up in tip-top shape.

Come full-time our Sky host, Simon Lazenby, was purring over O’Driscoll’s performance, telling Paul Wallace that he was, definitively, the greatest Irish player of all time.

Sean Fitzpatrick thought that was harsh on Wallace, so put an arm around his shoulder, but Wallace modestly conceded that, in comparison, he was a rugby commoner compared to Prince O’Driscoll and all that Leinster blue blood flowing through his veins.

Blue bliss didn’t end there: the sight of Dublin beating Kilkenny in the National League final left those of us who weren’t around in 1939, the last time they managed the feat, to conclude that the sporting world had very definitely turned upside down.

We also learnt that TG4 commentator Brian Tyers has a couple of sets of eyes in the back of his head, how else could he have spotted the copious amount of off-the-ball activity at Croke Park yesterday?

But it was a mighty day for the Dubs, although captain John McCaffrey tried to lift Kilkenny spirits in his post-match speech by reassuring them that it was “a flash in the pan”.

It was probably a wise move, a wounded Kilkenny is a ferocious animal.

Man-of-the-match Ryan O’Dwyer heroically beamed through his TG4 interview, despite the blood Niagraously flowing from his mouth. Tipp by birth, Dublin by the Grace of God, he almost said, but was wise enough not to.

What do they call you?

“Ryano, Rodney and Rod,” he said through the blood gurgles, before rejoining the celebrations.

They’re hardy men, these fellas.

Snooker is, it has to be said, slightly less challenging, physically speaking. John Higgins and Judd Trump might well be finely tuned athletes, but you’d have to fear for them if they were thrown in to the middle of a National League hurling final.

Sadly, the legendary BBC commentator “Whispering Ted” Lowe died yesterday at the age of 90, just as Higgins and Trump prepared to square up in the World Championship final.

A soundtrack to our misspent youths, he was. His finest hour: “He’s going for the pink, and for those of you with black-and-white sets, the yellow is behind the blue.”

Snooker royalty, he was.