Giles Tremlett may well have answered the question I posed only a few days ago about how all the local papers finance themselves. In his chapter on Spain’s unique approach to matters sexual, he writes that even the national papers garner a significant amount of their income from the numerous, highly graphic ads for male and female prostitutes adorning the back pages. Just after the sombre gravestone announcements re the recently deceased.

In the same chapter, Tremlett reports the comment of one brothel owner that, unlike in the colder establishments of northern Europe, here you can have a drink and a chat before getting down to business. “It somehow seemed very Spanish” he adds “to put talking on a par with sex, even if both were paid for”.

They say the ranks of the caring professions are full of people who need attention even more than their clients/patients. This certainly seems to be so in the case of a 62 year old UK gynaecologist who went off for his summer holidays as Colin Bone and came back as Celia Macleod. Minus a few bits, of course.

I mentioned the other day the Spanish government was prosecuting the entire Marbella council for a wide variety of cash-related offences. Like me, you may have wondered why this had not previously been done by the Andalucian government. Perhaps it was because, based on press reports about the activities of him and his family, the president may himself have had a few difficulties distinguishing between propriety and impropriety.

A British charter flight from Scotland to the Canaries was yesterday diverted to Vigo so that a 49 woman could receive emergency treatment for alcoholic poisoning. I fear this will do little to diminish the widespread belief in Spain that all Brits are 'ooligans at heart.

It’s reported today that new evidence shows the last Neanderthals lived in Gibraltar 8,000 years ago. This confused me a little as I could swear there were still some there when I last went about 25 years ago. Maybe they were just Brits on holiday.