MARTIN JOHNSON

You can always tell when an Ashes series is taking place in Australia by the number of cauliflower ears parading down the High Street.
Some of them will belong, especially if it’s a burly looking chap with a size 22 neck, to rugby prop forwards, but most will be the result of spending entire nights with one ear permanently attached to a transistor radio buried beneath the pillow.
It goes back decades, to the days when Marconi’s invention hadn’t progressed much beyond the crackle from a crystal set, and when marriages were severely tested by those 2am verb...