Lights, camera, action. Given the diarist’s manly prowess, head-turning stature and film-star good looks, it’s perhaps fitting that we are billeted next to Rome’s Cinecitta Studios for this week’s golfing blockbuster.
This vast, 99-acre sprawl – and that’s the studios we’re talking about not the diarist’s bolthole – was once dubbed the Hollywood on the Tiber due to the great volume of international productions being made there.
Filmmaking greats like Fellini, Rossellini, Coppola and Scorsese all worked at Cinecitta as did Sergio Leone, the pioneer of the Spaghetti Western genre.
The Leone reference is all rather apt as the title of one of his celluloid classics illustrates the diarist’s slowly degenerating state during the course of a tough day at the Ryder Cup coalface. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
*Talking of Fellini, the diarist and his colleague have been enjoying the nightly hospitality at one of his old haunts.
The Meo Pinelli bar and café has been going for yonks and Fellini would regularly pop in for his favourite bowl of Minestrone soup back in ye day.
Fellini’s famous production, of course, was La Dolce Vita, a satirical comedy drama about a journalist on a fruitless search for love and happiness.
As for the diarist? I haven’t found love but happiness abounds amid the Chianti glass-clinking. Well, it did until I slootered that steaming bowl of Minestrone onto my lap.
*There’s plenty to see in Rome toon centre. The Roman Forum, for instance, is a sprawling ruin of architectural fragments attracting upwards of 4.5 million sightseers a year.
At the Marco Simone club, meanwhile, corporate ticket holders get guided tours of the Ryder Cup site which includes an intriguing, history-laden walk through another fascinating forum full of crumbling ruins and ancient relics. That’s right ... the media centre.
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