This isn't made up. Well, the Third Kray thing might be.

Ferdinand, who clearly fancies himself as Peckham's answer to Ashton Kutcher, has been putting together his own version of the stitch-up show Punk'd featuring the England squad to be shown on ITV during the World Cup.

What good's a global stage if you can't show yourself to be a latter-day Jeremy Beadle while you're on it, is presumably the thinking. Whatever, Ferdinand's planning of these comedy vignettes is something he's going to have to work on if he's hoping to make a career out of all this. For the Beckham thing didn't quite go as smoothly as intended.

"I didn't think I was being kidnapped, " Beckham said on Friday. "I just thought I had a really, really pain-in-the-backside security man. I got in the car, had a driver taking me somewhere, and my security guard was telling me how he got arrested that morning and had to go and pick his documents up from the police station which was the other side of Manchester, the other side to where I was going.

"Maybe on another day I would have said: 'Not a problem', but I was rushing around, trying to get the kids some presents and I was getting annoyed and then he wouldn't stop. That's when I decided to make a run for it. We were going through Moss Side and had gone through some traffic lights when he should have stopped. I was getting more and more annoyed. I looked in the car behind and there was a camera crew.

"That happens every day in Spain where there's camera crews following you rather than the paparazzi. I wanted to get out and run. I saw a couple of black cabs in a petrol station and thought this was my chance. The car was still moving slightly but I thought:

'Sod it'. I jumped out and then decided to run for a black cab.

That's when I heard Rio's voice shouting at me, but a car had pulled across him and I couldn't see him so I kept running.

I just kept running for a black cab, I can't remember the last time I had to get one of them.

But as soon as I saw Rio I saw the joke."

Nicely put, Becks. It wasn't exactly the cleverest of pranks to play on a chap whose family have had to deal with this kind of thing a few times in real life. But then, nobody would argue that Rio Ferdinand is the cleverest of pranksters.

Still, it kept the mood light.

Anything to pass the time.

So here they are. A week away from the start of what they always said would be their turn. Whenever it was the worst of times for England during Sven Goran Eriksson's reign, this next month was earmarked for what would be the best of them. World Cup 2006, the choice of a new generation. The blessed generation.

The one that would finally cash all the cheques their country's expectation levels couldn't help but keep writing.

Yesterday they played Eriksson's last game on English soil and today they move to their base in the mountains above Baden Baden. On Saturday afternoon they walk out into the Waldstadion in Frankfurt to play Paraguay. And somewhere in between times, the good folk of England hope, Eriksson will come up with a plan to win them a World Cup.

They still talk about it quite earnestly and honestly. Hope lives on. Win the World Cup?

Course we can, mate. They'll tell it to anyone who'll ask them. Like a shark who'll die if it doesn't keep moving, England's footballers seem to fear they'll personally evaporate if they don't tell somebody at least once a day that they have every chance of winning it.

Should we tell them? Let them in on a few little secrets?

Appraise them of the fact that their best player is injured?

Tip them off that their coach seems to be deciding what's around the next corner according to how lucky he's feeling today? Probably not.

They're bound to know well enough without having to be told.

The sports shops all across England offering to refund punters the price of an England jersey if they win the World Cup know they're in safe hands with Eriksson. How is he all at sea? Let us count the ways. In picking a player he's never seen. In picking a player he's never seen as one of only three fit strikers. In doing so knowing that he was more than likely going to have to replace his injured fourth one before the tournament, thereby letting whoever he calls up know that he has more faith in a player he's never seen than in him.

In deciding, after five years of trying to work it out, that Jamie Carragher is the one to anchor his midfield but only giving him 45 minutes to try it out against Hungary before shunting him to right-back.

In experimenting with his formation a month before the tournament when both the 2002 World Cup and Euro 2004 told him his biggest problem was going to be how to get a midfield of disparate talents to play as one. In reinventing himself as a daredevil risktaker just as he's walking out the door.

The eagerness with which Friday morning's news that Wayne Rooney had apparently kicked a ball was greeted . . . as much by Eriksson as by the salivating press . . . showed what the real underlying feeling in England is. Without Rooney, their chances are sunk and no amount of tactical sleight of hand will save them. Steven Gerrard is a willing mimic but, as he admits himself, the act is pretty seethrough.

"I'm not going to master the role in one game, " he said on Friday. "I need more time in there. Although I am no Wayne Rooney, I still think I can be effective. I tried my best and I enjoyed it. [Against Hungary] I was demanding the ball even though their number six was following me everywhere. Once we got the breakthrough I thought I opened up more and got more tackles in. I have played the role on numerous occasions for Liverpool and I love playing further up the pitch.

"Of course, I know what my best position is. It's where Frank [Lampard] plays. He's one of the best in the world at doing it and he's done really well for England there in the last couple of years so I have no complaints. Sometimes you have to sacrifice yourself for the team and play where the manager wants you to play.

You can't afford to have an ego playing for England."

For what it's worth, Gerrard was the one voice sounding a note of proper caution around the England camp last week, just as he's done since the day Rooney got injured. Back then, he famously said England's chances were ruined without the Manchester United man while Eriksson was, in practically the same breath, trying to convince that all wasn't lost.

Last week, he wanted everybody just to calm down and let what happens happen.

"There's so much expectation, and people tend to get carried away and think you just go there with the best players, you win four or five games and you win the World Cup, " he said. "It's not like that. You've got 32 teams, every single one is desperate to win it, and 70 or 80 per cent of teams going there are full of world class players and are very difficult to play against.

"The obvious names, on paper, are Brazil and Argentina. But I just think that the most dangerous teams are the hosts, Germany, and Spain, who have so much talent. And, of course, there's always one or two surprises in tournaments that I've experienced that don't even get a mention at the start, and then they're there round the semis and finals, like Greece. If you are being realistic, yes, we have got a good chance of winning it. On our day, we're as strong as anyone. But to win a tournament over that period of time, you need everything to go your way."

Starting on Saturday. Only once in their last four World Cups have England won their opening match. If Paraguay are big enough, ugly enough and sticky enough to dig in for a scoreless draw in Frankfurt . . . not a ridiculous notion by any means . . . Eriksson's talk of having seven games left as England coach will sound sillier by the minute.