This is a wonderfully smelly love story. A deeply noxious romance. It involves a golf shoe, champagne, sweat and, well, a tasteless ritual. Read if you must, but please don’t try it.

Let’s start in Adelaide. On April 28, Cameron Smith, that sterling golfer with a dubious hairstyle, drank alcohol from his shoe. Looked like beer. It’s called a “shoey”, a custom favoured by that Down Under crew which once even merited a 2019 headline in The New York Times – “Behold Australia’s Grossest Drinking Tradition: The Shoey”.