My honeymoon was deliberately timed to coincide with Euro 2000. The idea being that, by placing us on a remote Caribbean island, my husband could avoid what he calls my "temporary Tourette's syndrome". As soon as the referee's whistle blows, every conceivable insult known to mankind pours from my mouth for 90 minutes, not to be heard again until the next Liverpool or England game.

On my first night in Canouan, I glumly accepted that there was no chance of seeing the England v Germany match live. The TV channels on offer in our luxury villa showed South American soap operas, American golf tours and Italian soft porn, but no European football whatsoever.

The day of the England v Germany game, I persuaded my husband to don the red England T-shirt that I had bought in duty free and join me at the complex's business centre to listen to the game on the internet. The computers lacked the necessary software to deliver radio coverage, so we spent an hour and a half in a freezing, air-conditioned office watching a blinking scoreline. When the screen flashed up the final score - England 1, Germany 0 - I ran laughing past the golf centre and hurled myself into the empty pool, whooping "Yesssssssssssaaaaaaaaa" and "Engerland" for all I was worth.

I had erased this loutish behaviour from my memory until I glimpsed the Sun last week. There on the front page was Sven Goran Eriksson, the new England manager and bronzed holidaymaker who has never shown any interest in English football (although he has shown distaste for its exuberant fans).

During the football season, I also (apparently) adopt the persona of a cartoon scouser, complete with stock phrases such as "Ya dirty get!" and "Come 'ed ref" and a hankering for cheap lager. According to psychiatric jargon, this is "learned behaviour". My dad, the original "scouse git", cried, laughed and roared through Liverpool games when I was a kid. By the time I was eight years old, I knew every word to "You'll Never Walk Alone" and "Lily the Pink" (although, apart from the exhortation to "drink-a drink-a drink", I never understood the appeal of such anthems). Even our pet kittens were named after the Liverpool team of the late 1970s.

A couple of seasons ago, I thought that I had found my perfect soccer partner in Charlie Whelan. During a drinking session, he offered me a ticket for an upcoming Spurs v Liverpool game at White Hart Lane. As the vodka flowed, we looked forward to an afternoon spent yelling abuse at each other, the players, the ref and anyone within shouting distance.

I turned up at Spurs three weeks later, with a hangover and wearing the traditional football fan's uniform of scruffy jeans and a warm, worn pullover. Charlie was not happy. "Lauren," he huffed, "we're guests of Alan Sugar." This meant eating a buffet lunch with some of football's richest executives, having fleecy blankets placed over our knees when the breeze picked up and observing a glum, apathetic silence throughout the game.

At one point, when a Liverpool player was fouled, I stood up and shouted: "No way, you've got to be kidding . . ." Charlie pulled me back into my seat as Sugar, two rows in front, craned his neck to give me a disapproving look. Enthusiasm at "Box level" is confined to the boardroom and discussions about money. As one elderly gentleman on the board at Spurs observed: "We're not used to real fans being guests here."

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