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André van Duin is a national treasure. And yes, totally and uttterly unfunny.

Alquin and Kayak were both half-decent progrock contemporaries of Focus back in the 70s. Radio Caroline used to play them both a lot. The Ex are the best of the long-standing stalwarts. The local scene is currently as good as I can remember it in my 30+ years here. There are a growing number...

If you're doing that, Angus Young is married to a Dutchwoman and lives here part of the time. They have a house up in the east

Adolphe Sax - invented and then named a famous musical instrument after himself.

My top 10 would consist entirely of beer, although none of those places are likely to be showing the match...

Eight years of headaches and frustrations as a commuter on Dutch trains back in the 1990s was plenty enough to convince me that the internationally held notion that the country runs an efficient rail network is, in fact, utter b*ll*cks...

Hope you all brought your brollies: https://www.weeronline.nl/Europa/Nederland/Amsterdam/4058223/weersverwachting-48uur

Probably also worth noting is that although the official speed limit on Dutch motorways is 130km/h (except some clearly marked areas that are 120 or 100), there is (in a bid to reduce emissions) a blanket limit of 100km/h that applies nationwide from 6am to 7pm. After 7pm you can put your foot...

There are no tolls on the stretch of French motorway between the tunnel and the Belgian border.

As has been mentioned above, it's a good idea to avoid hitting the Antwerp ring road at peak times. A lesser-known pinch point if you're driving via the A27 between Breda and Utrecht is a bridge around the town of Gorinchem. I wake up every morning to Dutch news radio and that area features...

Certainly among the best (can't beat Hollandse nieuwe in my opinion, or snert when I come to think about it), although one a year is probably sufficient for anyone who wants to survive into old age...

Most of my Amsterdam friends are true Amsterdammers, even longer in the tooth than me, and have lived there for many decades. I know at least one that gets his own back and derives enormous fun from cycling at speed up and down Zeedijk and other similar narrow streets, dinging his bell furiously...

Years ago an ex-colleague moved into the bible belt (more of a bible sash if you look at it on a map). He was British, so unaware. Early on he decided one Sunday morning to wash his car. Didn't make that mistake again... Got spat at, I believe.

The problem Amsterdam has is that, especially since the advent of Airbnb, it gets far more tourists than the infrastructure can handle. Lest we forget, it is only 1/10 the size of a London or Paris. I can completely understand why the mayor wants to reduce the numbers and filter out the...

Philips doesn't employ that many people round here any more - when I first moved here they had 40,000 employees in the city (40% of the entire working population), but now there's only really Philips Health Tech in Best left. Most of the South Asian expats work at the High Tech Campus or ASML

Yeah, I'm in Eindhoven. There may be one club here, but out of interest I just looked on their website (www.eindhovencc.com) - as I suspected there isn't a single "Dutch" (or any non-South-Asian-origin) name in any of their three senior squads.

Not a peep on the front pages of any of the actual physical papers today though - just checked in my local supermarket. The only people round here who even realise there's a tournament going on are the Indian expats. My neighbour Rahul is pretty happy at the moment.

I had lunch with Rod Stewart once before an England - Scotland game at Wembley in the 1970s (the same one where the Scots broke the goalposts after the game, but those facts are unrelated). OK, so he was sat at the next table, not at mine...

What's pink and can't turn round in corridors? A baby with a javelin through its head...

I always thought it was a penguin in a liquidiser... What goes black white, black white, black white, red? A nun on a spit