Can anyone see the ball? Afloat on a sea of booze with the tweedy toffs of Twickers

Twickenham was a blur of red wine, whisky, pork pies … Oh yes, and the rugby

D ‘o you fancy the England v South Africa game at Twickenham this weekend?” my friend Holly asked a couple of weeks ago. I was confused at first. Was this part of a tournament? A one-off? The Six Nations normally happens when it’s cold, I knew that, but not much more. I’m a great admirer of rugby players but fuzzy when it comes to the game. You get some points for booting the ball over the giant H, but more points if you pounce on the ball at the end of the pitch, like my mother’s terrier on his favourite stuffed toy.

It turns out this match was part of the Autumn Internationals, so-called because they’re held during the autumn with international teams. Armed with such knowledge, I said I’d love to go and off we set last Saturday. What made it jollier still was that we caught a lift to the stadium with South Africa’s rugby hero, Bryan Habana, part of the commentating team and a great friend of Holly’s since she’s worked in rugby for many years and has various of these chaps on WhatsApp. As we cruised towards Twickenham in Bryan’s Mercedes, I wasn’t sure that it was the right moment to ask the Springbok star how many points you got for a goal, so we sang along to the Pogues and Wham! on Magic FM instead.

Once there, Bryan went off for rehearsals and Holly explained that we were having a picnic in a field. Lovely; I was up for a sandwich and a Thermos of coffee. Except it wasn’t just any picnic and it wasn’t just any field. You are respectable, intelligent Telegraph readers, the sort who may well know how many rugby players are in a team (20ish?) and understand the form. At Twickenham, picnics are held out the back of 4x4s in the Cardinal Vaughan field, specific spots marked by fluttering flags – Savills or Knight Frank, say, a bit like a posh Glastonbury – so picnic attendees know where to find their sausage rolls.

As we walked in, I was reminded of the grand picnics in the car parks at Royal Ascot or at Eton on speech day (or the Fourth of June as they call it, because as touched upon last week, Etonians insist on having their own vocabulary). Occasionally at those picnics, the wealthiest families of all would bring butlers to serve salmon sandwiches off silver platters. A picnic of sorts, although not as Ratty from The Wind in the Willows would know it.

Here, there were just as many Range Rovers but more men in tweed. Tweed everywhere. Tweed caps, tweed coats, probably tweed socks. Tweed underpants? Let’s not go there. There were trestle tables laid with pork pies, cheese boards, sandwiches, quiches and, on one very smart stand behind us, a table decorated with glass lanterns and altar candles. Except thanks to Holly’s aforementioned sporting connections, we’d been invited to an even smarter picnic, generously thrown by the cricketer Allan Lamb.

We arrived and I goggled. There was a mountain of Scotch eggs, a heap of cheese gougères and bowls overflowing with cocktail sausages. “Would you like a drink?” asked the caterer, gesturing to a table on which sat a silver ice-bucket filled with a magnum of champagne. Lined up beside that, as if reporting for duty, were three magnums of red wine. There was also a pyramid of alcohol-free beers, but I think they must have been there for decoration. Blimey, did we drink. Champagne first before the temperature dropped and we turned to the red as if thirsty pilgrims who had recently traversed a desert (although possibly not a desert anywhere near Qatar) and arrived parched, only to be greeted with seemingly bottomless magnums of merlot.

What do I remember? Eating a plate of beef bourguignon with pearl onions, served from the back of the caterer’s Defender. Gazing around the field, eyes popping at the sight of so many men swilling full glasses of wine and whisky. At one stage, I quizzed a nice explorer at our picnic – an extraordinary man called Mike Horn who’s swum the Amazon and likes nothing more than a brisk walk to the North Pole. What was the most revolting thing he’d ever had to eat, I asked. Rotten walrus, said Mike. Imagine a really aged, almost rancid gorgonzola. It was a bit like that, apparently.

On we drank. More red wine. Others had port. An hour or so before kick-off, we were ushered into the stadium where everyone lined up to buy more drinks, because what you definitely need after drinking for three hours is a pint of Guinness. Waiters behind the bars deftly slid these drinks into cardboard carriers so spectators could stagger to their seats with four pints instead of the measly one.

It did seem faintly unfair by this stage that we could continue swilling while the rules at the football World Cup, and at most football matches in the UK, are so much stricter. How come football gets so much grief when rugby’s this boozy? I hesitate to use the c-word, but it is that, isn’t it? A class thing. There were no fisticuffs at Twickenham; it was mostly red-faced

There was a pyramid of non-alcohol beers but that must have been there for decoration

men (and a few women. My lips were magenta), roaring at one another. But the fear must be that scalps would be lost on the terraces.

A government white paper potentially changing this rule for football, allowing drinking in seats for the first time since 1985, was due to be published this summer. “Some of the draconian rules directed only at football supporters need to be revised – specifically not being allowed to consume alcohol in view,” thundered one football fan, quoted in the review calling for the change. “I am a middle-aged senior professional with an honour and I still get treated like a criminal just for enjoying attending football matches – it’s not the 1980s.” The white paper has yet to materialise, however, presumably because the minister for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has changed 63 times in the past few months.

Oh yes, the match. England lost and plenty of spectators grumbled about how boring it was as we filed out. Boring? I had a magnificent time. Still no idea how the scoring system works but that hardly mattered, since I couldn’t see the ball anyway.