Shredded Wheat? I know as much about that as I know about cricket

THIS will be a long weekend of waiting for Geoffrey Boycott. Now he knows how the rest of us felt when he was stuck on 98 for what seemed like five days trying to get his century.

But when French judge Madame Dominique Haumant-Daumas raises her lacquered finger on Tuesday it will mean more than just another trudge back to the pavilion for the former England cricketer.

Her decision will decide whether he is branded a woman beater or an honourable man.

The appeal judge has to make up her mind whether Boycott's former mistress Margaret Moore's bruised and swollen face was caused by an accidental fall or him beating her up.

But if Boycott is hoping for a sympathetic passage from a fellow cricket fan, he can think again. Not only does Madame Haumant-Daumas not know her deep fine leg from her silly mid off...she is also a complete dunce when it comes to Shredded Wheat

The inoffensive breakfast cereal fell under the scrutiny of the law when it was revealed in court that Boycott made a bob or two promoting it.

At one point the judge thought it was the name of a TV commentator - and she has still not studied the finer points of wheatgerm.

"I know as much about Shredded Wheat as I do about cricket," she says. "Why is everybody talking about this Shredded Wheat? I asked what it was during the hearing and no-one explained it to me, so I still don't know.

"Shredded Wheat is a cereal? Ah! I have never seen it. Like all good French women I have cafe-au-lait and bread for breakfast."

Not a lot of help there then. And when it comes to the game itself, the lady judge is on an even stickier wicket.

"You can say I am impartial in this case because I have never been to a game of cricket, never read about it or seen it on TV.

"The nearest thing to it I have played is croquet. All I know from this business is that there is a hard ball and you hit it with a bat." I suppose you can't blame her for that. Cricket is about as crystal clear to the French as their game of boules is to us. A lot of blokes in berets standing around a patch of sand chucking metal things around until they fall over after drinking too much vin rouge.

But Madame Haumant- Daumas is willing to learn. "I do know that we French are world champions of football. You must be the best at your cricket, yes? No! Oh, what a shame."

That sort of sarky attitude is not likely to get her a seat in the stand at Lord's.

She does like England, though - even though she isn't keen about her countrymen arriving at Waterloo station on the Eurostar only to find it has been named after a crushing defeat.

It's a bit like Boycott calling his house "Caught Border, Bowled Lillee." Another English habit she's wary of is afternoon tea, scoffed in cricket pavilions everywhere. "All that tea, muffins and cream. Mmm, lovely but so fattening."

She remembers one visit to England with something approaching horror. "I put on a kilo in just one week with your cream cakes and pork pies. But I enjoy English food...without being ill."

She bursts out laughing. "No don't say that. It's very nice though your meat is always overcooked for my taste."

But one little bit of England sure to make Madame Haumant-Daumas go all gooey is...Sir Cliff Richard.

Yes, the judge with Boycott's reputation in her hands is a Cliff fan. She even plays his tapes in her car on her way to court. They were sent to her by a former penfriend from Southampton.

"I love Cliff," she says, her blue eyes fluttering. "He came to sing in my home town when I was a young girl and I sat in the front row. He is so good-looking, isn't he?"

With the best will in the world it's hard to see her heart going pit- a-pat when she's face to face with our Geoffrey.

Especially as he kept whingeing during the hearing that everyone was talking in French (they tend to have this annoying habit in French courts) and twice shouted out in his Yorkshire accent, "shut oop."

"I did hear him say 'shut up' at one stage during the hearing, but it was not me he said it to," she says.

"He would have been in serious trouble if it had been."

Another thing likely to strike terror into the hearts of many Yorkshiremen are her views on women and marriage.

Her great heroine is the English suffragette Emily Pankhurst, and she insists that she and her lawyer husband Jean-Louis - they have a seven-year-old daughter Jade - share the housework equally.

Madame Haumant-Daumas, who will deliver her verdict in a courthouse in the French Riviera town of Grasse, is clearly not a woman to be trifled with.

The beautiful blonde daughter of a sports journalist may not pack a mean punch but she does pack a mean pistol.

She keeps a .357 magnum at home which she uses for her sport of target shooting. With that in her hands she makes a Curtly Ambrose bouncer seem like a gentle summer breeze.

Copyright 1998 MGN LTD
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