KEY POINTS:
Roger Federer came to the rescue this morning, beaming into my hotel room in high definition in the early hours of my first morning in France.
Dressed just as Johnny Cash would have if he had chosen Dunlop strings instead of Gibson strings, Federer made that sleeplessness that often follows a long-haul flight more bearable.
As he relentlessly, and at times brilliantly, wore down home-crowd favourite Andy Roddick in straight sets thoughts turned to the World Cup. Will any individual come to define the very best elements of his sport like Federer does with tennis?
The first name that springs to mind is Daniel Carter, and not through any sense of patriotism.
Carter, despite a flat patch early in the international season, has it all: pace, guile and strength. He's better looking than Federer, too... apparently.
If Jonny 'Sicknote' Wilkinson was the face of the 2003 World Cup, Carter should be the face of this one, though first impressions of Paris - and we're talking a straight line between Charles de Gaulle airport and the Gare du Lyon here - indicate a generic approach to marketing this World Cup that could best be described as low key.
Now Paris is no rugby hotbed and things are sure to liven up here when France plays Argentina in the opener on Saturday (NZ time), but I imagine this is just a fraction of the saturation coverage the Fifa World Cup would have received when it came here in 1998.
Or perhaps I was just too tired and grumpy to notice.
It occurred to me that while we have all these liberal PETA types running around fighting for the ethical treatment of animals, we have no such lobby group fighting for the rights of economy-class travellers. After the best part of 30 hours fighting for snippets of sleep and battling for control of the armrest with a wilful Israeli, I have begun to get the same sense of job satisfaction I imagine a battery chicken feels at the end of a day.
Economy class is inhumane. It's a classic subjugation of the proletariat scenario. Take the poors' money, buckle them into third-world conditions so they won't have any energy to be typically boisterous, and with a bit of luck they will search for those cheap seats with another airline next time while we get down to the business of making real money off the wealthy traveller.
Everything about economy class is set up for humiliation. You enter the plane and what is the first thing you see? The landed gentry and their trophy wives spread-eagled across leather upholstered business class seats.
They get fine wines and cheeses while economy fliers get a choice of chicken or beef, and no matter where you sit the chicken has run out before they get to your seat.
Research shows people are getting bigger and to accompany this research airlines have reduced the leg room so any person over 1.8m now spends the journey with his knees wrapped somewhere around his neck.
But that is in the past; today I travel to Marseille. By train. Now that's the way to travel.
