All about the contacts

As I run about Paris - quite literally with the trains all up the spout - word reaches me from readers of this blog who are now on their way. "If you find more tickets than you need, call me," writes a solicitor, Nick Jervis. Meanwhile there is elation in the the chaotic-sounding Vavasour household.

They had planned to be on holiday this weekend, but all was placed on hold at England's ascension to the final, and Sarah Vavasour has been working her contacts quite ruthlessly all week to secure a ticket for her "rugby mad husband".

Her quest illustrates the curious nature of this ticket market. There are mass exchanges beneath the Eiffel tower and outside the Stade de France, but so many tickets have taken a route through corporate hospitality companies and sponsors, and surface through a series of informal networks. 

Mr Vavasour, a doctor, had been depressed at the general lack of corporate hospitality in the NHS: a little brother in the City had little problem laying his hands on a ticket. Then he was told of an orthopaedic surgeon who had been trying to get rid of 2 tickets. "By the time the very kind theatre nurse had tracked him down, he had sold them," writes Mrs Vavasour. Then there was a mutual friend "who had had a ticket, but was actually on holiday in Mallorca with wife and new baby, and who would have "given" it to Simon if he had known, but had just sold it.

"However dawn lifted on a brighter day. The younger brother's provider of tickets has come up trumps and got tickets not only for Simon, but also his elder brother - but at a cost. Looking at the moment at £800 each, but incl travel and accommodation. Let's hope they're kosher. As a former lawyer these things worry me." From where I'm standing it looks like a great deal.

All that remains now is for the two of them to attend a 50th birthday party this evening, for Mr Vavasour to race to Kent afterwards to get a dawn ferry to Calais, for Mrs Vavasour to get her daughter to Norwich High School for Girls at 4am for a Netball and Hockey tour in Barbados, and for herself her remaining three children to get to the Dordogne for their half-term holiday. Judging from her emails, this is all in a weekend's work.