Ekstrom and his Swedish diving colleagues opened the bottle and tasted the contents.

"It was fantastic... it had a very sweet taste, you could taste oak and it had a very strong tobacco smell. And there were very small bubbles," he said.

Experts said the shape of the bottle showed it was from the late 18th century, and the bottle and its contents have been sent to champagne specialists in France to be analysed.

"We are 98 percent sure that it is Veuve Clicquot champagne and that it was probably (made) between 1772 (the year the business was established) and 1785," Ekstrom said, adding that the cargo vessel was probably sailing to St Petersburg, then the capital of

He said they had found the wine on their first dive and did not yet know how many bottles the wreck contained or what other cargo it carried.

The current title of the world's oldest champagne is held by Perrier-Jouet, which has two bottles from 1825.

Richard Juhlin, a Swedish champagne specialist, told the newspaper Alandstidningen he believed the champagne was Veuve Cliquot and said that if it was from the late 18th century, it could cost around 500,000 Swedish crowns ($68,000) a bottle.

Because the wreck lies off Aland, an autonomous part of Finland, the local authorities will decide what will be done with the wreck -- and the champagne.

The fact is that the British Open, excuse me – THE Open, is a complete lottery, utterly dependent on the weather.  If the sun shines and the wind doesn’t blow too much, then the best golfers will indeed do well.  But because the competition is often held in grim seaside places in Scotland, more often than not the result is a lottery, won by somebody who is a complete non-entity.

At the time of writing this year’s competition seems to be a collector’s item for dreadfulness.  One day sunny, the next windy, the next lashing with rain.  Clearly the best golfer in the world in such conditions I the one who plays in the best conditions.  And that means he is the luckiest golfer in the world – not the best.

Why does the British media have to devalue our competitions by claiming them to be the best in the world when they so clearly are anything but?  I don’t know – but I do know a second rate competition when I see it.

I was intrigued to se that England boss Fabio Capello has demanded that player ratings website the Capello Index be removed from the internet.  I would have thought he would have wanted them engraved in tablets of stone.

The rankings, which score players on their performances in this summer's World Cup, appeared online on Saturday.

"I did not authorise this and am angry it was published," said Capello, while the Football Association claimed it was "satisfied" with the Italian's actions.

The project was set for launch before the World Cup but, following a media outcry, it was postponed.

"The index was published without Mr Capello's knowledge and his representatives have taken immediate steps to have the material taken down," read an FA statement.

The website uses a statistical system devised by former Roma, Juventus and Real Madrid coach Capello to award players a score out of 100.

Not a single England international appears in the top 45 players from the tournament, following the team's dismal showing in South Africa that ended with a 4-1 last-16 defeat to Germany.

Captain Steven Gerrard is the only member of the squad to be ranked in the top 100 performers of the group stages, coming in at a lowly 65.

Tottenham striker Jermain Defoe has the highest average score of Capello's squad with 62.47, while goalkeeper Robert Green, who was dropped by Capello following his glaring handling error that gifted the USA an equaliser in the England's opening 1-1 Group C draw, has the lowest score - 51.67.

Uruguay's Diego Forlan, the Golden Ball winner in South Africa, top the ratings. Germany's Miroslav Klose and Thomas Mueller are second and third respectively.

Tournament winners Spain occupy the next three spots with Andres Iniesta fourth, Xavi fifth and David Villa sixth.

Uruguayan striker Luis Suarez, Dutch winger Arjen Robben, Germans midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger and goalkeeper Manuel Neuer complete the top 10.

News of the project first emerged in early May, when Capello announced himself as a co-founder of the Index, alongside Chicco Merighi, the founder of an online gambling company.

"It's not only about money, my interest is in football," Capello said at the time.

A four-week trial of the index - limited to players from Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur - rated Ledley King, Michael Dawson and Sol Campbell as the best English central defenders ahead of John Terry and Rio Ferdinand.

However, following harsh media criticism of the idea as badly timed and potentially damaging to players' confidence, Capello was forced to put World Cup ratings on hold after holding emergency talks with the FA.

But a message on the front page of the site reads: "We are finally able to satisfy the numerous request we have had by publishing the results of the evaluation of the players' performance during the South African World Cup.

"Out of respect to the Football Association, who asked us to suspend the real-time publication, we decided to wait until the end of the tournament."

The site also claims the analysis will next season be applied to "all games of the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A and the Champions League", with all the data to be published "within two hours of the end of the matches".

If you feel you can trust Richard Branson just about as far as you can throw him, then maybe space travel is not for you.  But the toothy entrepreneur is on the brink of offering tourists a quick trip into space.

His slightly more practical version of the space shuttle appears to have come through some test unscathed.  Good news I suppose for those who want to throw money at Mr Branson and go up where the sky is black – and then look down on the rest of us.

But I have to admit that space exploration on the cheap is not for me. 

The Virgin team aiming to send tourists on suborbital flights has tested its spacecraft with a crew for the first time, it has announced.

The craft remained attached to a specially designed aeroplane throughout a six-hour flight over California's Mojave desert on Thursday, Virgin Galactic said.

On its website, the company congratulated the crew and said "Objectives achieved". It says the two crew members evaluated all the spaceship's systems and functions.

Virgin Galactic says the flight test programme will run until 2011 before it starts commercial operations.

Here’s a question.  What country does the Tour de France start in?  Easy isn’t it…. Belgium apparently.  If my memory is correct, the Tour de France has even popped across le manche and seen a bunch of lycra-clad drug takers pedal their way through a part of the UK.,

All of which is curious.  France is a pretty big country and cycling has lost most, if not all its credibility.  So why are they taking their tour to different countries?  Publicity I suppose.  And if I have noticed, then it must be working.  But all it does is draw attention to a ludicrous event.

Although maybe this year some of those brave Brits will get a bit of publicity – as long as they manage to pass their drugs tests.  I suppose you have to admire the fitness levels of people that can relentless pedal thousands of miles up and down hills and mountains in extreme heat.

But at the end of the day, cycling is a bit like athletics.  No matter how extraordinary the feat of the athlete involved – you wonder what is behind it all.

The extraordinary thing about cycling is how popular it seems to have become.  Wherever you go you will see lycra-clad men and women huffing and puffing their way  up hill and down dale – usually on some expensive piece of kit.  You know the sort of thing… a colour scheme that speaks volumes to those in the know – and a foreign sounding logo that is more expensive the more unpronounceable it seems to be.

I;m beginning to think I may be allergic to work?. We are led to believe that we should all want to work for a living, never take a day off sick and basically work until we drop.  I have to say I take exactly the opposite view.  Maybe there is something wrong in my make up- - but I have to say I am at my happiest when I am doing no work at all.

However, economic necessity dictates that every so often I have to do some work.  Usually this is pure purgatory.  I sign up with a local job agency and do some factory job that nobody in their right mind would do.  It pays crap – but at least it pays.

However, recently I have discovered the surreal world of cleaning.  In a former life when I worked in advertising, I was introduced to the darker side of office cleaning or office cleaners when slightly shy, awkward types who came from faraway places like Peru and Brazil asked me if I wanted my office cleaned.  I was never entirely sure if they were just being exploited – or were illegal immigrants who were really being exploited.

To my mind office cleaning is really quite cushy.  If you want to earn not very much money with a frisson of danger you could always pack agrochemicals as I did recently.  Or unload lorry-loads of flat-pack furniture. 

This too was highly dangerous – putting fingers and backs at risk for a pitiful hourly rate.  But the strange thing was it was all being financed by high-street companies who just sold on furniture that had been returned for whatever reason to a bunch of cowboys.

But the bottom line is, if you want to earn a bit of money, don’t get a job at Tesco’s – get a job in office cleaning.  You get paid by the hour to do not very much at night.  And the day is yours.  And when you get fed up – just give your job up!

LIke most blokes I hate shopping.  I rarely if ever go to the shops - and when I do I try and get out of the shop (or shopping centre) again as quickly as possible.  Oddly though, I have to admit that I rather like on-line shopping and can peer wistfully at retail web sites again and again.  So what is the difference?  And why are we so ready to assume that your money is safe in on-line purchases – and you’ll get what you want?

Most strange of all I guess is that I even buy fish on-line.  My father has a pond of pampered koi carp in the back garden and I thought it would be an excellent idea to get him a new koi for father’s day. 

It strikes me as somewhat unusual, comical even, comical even, that there are white vans zipping around the country with live fish going off to their new homes.  But indeed there are.  And after a chat with the delivery driver I now know that there is a special way to transport fish in a van.  They have to travel sideways.  Apparently, if they face forwards, they keep on travelling when the van brakes.

So koi carp might be a somewhat unusual on-line purchase – but there are a lot of places where you can look for and buy unusual gift ideas.  In fact I suppose that the internet retailer who does not need a real shop can take a few more chances on stocking something bizarre, on the off-chance it will catch on.

When you see all the style gurus letting you know what they deem to be trendy, more often than not, these are gizmos and gadgets that you wouldn’t touch with a barge pole if you went into a shop and saw how ridiculous they are in real life.

On the other side of the on-line coin – how many times have you or I bought something on-line – but only after having a good look at the item in a local shop?  Which kind of shows you that we don’t quite trust on-line purchases as much as the figures suggest.

The other day I saw what must surely be the ultimate father’s day present.  DuoFertility is a fertility monitor which can help you be a father.  It’s high-tech, stylish and expensive.  What more could you want?

What is it with mobile phone contracts?  Every single year you get offered yet another phone. It’s a though somehow this year’s must-have gizmo makes up for the appalling cost of making phone calls on a mobile network.  This probably explains the sudden emergence of all those TV advertisements telling me to sell my mobile for mobile phone recycling

I used to have a foolproof way around these bargain offers.  I would ask what is the lowest tariff they company could give me if they wanted to keep me (and not give me a new phone I did not want.  For a few years this worked fine.  Then I realised I was making virtually no calls on my mobile phone – so I canned the contract and went on to pay as you go.

On the face of it this might seem a daft decision.  I have to pay for every call and every text. And the tariff is I believe, quite eye-watering.  But here’s the thing – I don’t make any calls.  For me, the mobile phone exists as a medium for people to call me – except they never do.  So far this year I have made £20 of credit last until July.

From this little insight you might guess that I am fairly immune to all those TV adverts that promise you money for your unwanted phones.  Let’s face it if your mobile phone service provider puts a value of zero on your phone, it seems fairly reasonable to assume that its value is not unadjacent to zero.

But no.  If the adverts are appearing – it must mean that people are sending their phones in.  To my mind this is a bit like all those fools that send off gold in an envelope, expecting to get anything like a fair price.  It just isn’t going to happen.

SO the bottom line is.  If you want to risk having an unknown person get access to all your numbers in exchange for a few pennies, send your phone off to phones r us.  If on the other hand, you are not a mug, do what the rest of us do.  Stick the phone in a drawer.  Who knows – you might actually need it.

There is something not quite right about the state of the car insurance market.  But I doubt there is much point in consulting your solicitor, nor still going to the law society.  The problem I have is why do I need four car insurance policies for four cars?  It’s not as though I drive more than one at a time.

The other thing I don’t like about car insurance is that you can’t just insure your car any more.  Blink and someone has added breakdown cover to your policy.  Or legal services – presumably for all those accidents they don’t want you to claim for.

I wonder which is worse when you have a minor accident.  The knowledge that if you claim your policy will be hugely expensive for years to come.  Or the fact that the other people involved with your accident will be poised to make accident claims for compensation.  All in all it is quite a dilemma.

One thing you can be pretty sure of if you do bump into another car.  Your insurers will be getting ready to receive yet more claims for whiplash injury compensation.  I say this with the knowledge of someone who has done it himself.

And the odd thing is – I did actually have whiplash.  I remember it well.  The M25 was busy - as usual.  The traffic ground to a halt – as usual.  And unfortunately, a Danish woman decided not to stop. 

Which reminds me of another thing I loathe about car insurance.  My car was a write off.  No problem for everyone else who was involved in the accident – they were all driving company cars.  But I was left car-less for weeks while I endeavoured to get a better settlement out of my insurer.  Needless to say I got nothing like what it cost to buy another car.

And that, in a nutshell, is why I don’t like car insurance.

There was some astonishing financial news this week .  We were beinbg asked to believe that British banks are allegedly amongst the best (and best-off) in the world.   How can this be?  These are after all the reckless institutions staffed by utter incompetents that the taxpayer bailed out.

To my mind, banks are dull utilities.  And somehow those dull utilities have metamorphosised into utilities with a casino attached to them.  Yet at the end of the day. I really want from my bank is someone I can rely on to manage my current account. 

There can be few businesses that are as bomb-proof as banking.  When the markets are on the up it’s a licence to print money.  When the markets are on the down – well it seems much the same.  And when the worst comes to the worst and you destroy the global economy with reckless greed and incompetence.  Well the government bails you out with someone else’s money.

As gravy trains go, banking is rich in every sense of the word!   But if anything, there is a financial career that is even more rewarding for failures.  The 'I'll charge you commission for losing you money' world of the independent financial adviser.

Common sense would dictate that a financial adviser who has to use other people’s money to make money is not very good.  After all, if he or she knew anything they would surely be rich making the best use of their own advice?  But in my experience, a financial adviser is just an individual who charges commission for losing you money when the markets are bad – and doing the obvious when the markets are good.

How often do you hear about independent financial advisers who make their clients money?  Or recommend a pension scheme or an insurance policy that they do not get a walloping great commission on ?   I suppose there is a first time for everything – but I think we’ll see pigs flying before the truly independent financial adviser is discovered.

Did you see the astonishing financial news this week that British banks are allegedly amongst the best (and best-off) in the world?   How can this be?  These are after all the reckless institutions staffed by utter incompetents that the taxpayer bailed out.

To my mind, banks are dull utilities.  And somehow those dull utilities have metamorphosised into utilities with a casino attached to them.  Yet at the end of the day. I really want from my bank is someone I can rely on to manage my current account. 

There can be few businesses more bomb-proof than banking.  When the markets are on the up it’s a licence to print money.  When the markets are on the down – well it seems much the same.  And when the worst comes to the worst and you destroy the global economy with reckless greed and incompetence.  Well the government bails you out with someone else’s money.

As gravy trains go, banking is rich in every sense of the word!   But if anything, there is a financial career that is even more rewarding for failures.  The strange world of the independent financial adviser.

Common sense would dictate that a financial adviser who has to use other people’s money to make money is not very good.  After all, if he or she knew anything they would surely be rich making the best use of their own advice?  But in my experience, a financial adviser is just an individual who charges commission for losing you money when the markets are bad – and doing the obvious when the markets are good.

How often do you hear about independent financial advisers who make their clients money?  Or recommend a pension scheme or an insurance policy that they do not get a walloping great commission on ?   I suppose there is a first time for everything – but I think we’ll see pigs flying before the truly independent financial adviser is discovered.