If his lion's mane of hair had been clipped a bit, and his alarmingly shaggy eyebrows had been half disguised by a bowler, he might have cut a figure in the city; for the accent was right, and he always looked dapper with a brolly.
The team's last bid to reach a big tournament, overseen by a native known as "the wally with a brolly", ended in humiliation.
She could see the lines, and at the end of them the trembling shadows of Bert, or Mike, or Stan, spending an idle Sunday away from the wife with a brolly and a can of beer.
A quick glance at the clouds flitting across the sky each morning is usually enough to decide whether to leave the brolly behind or grab a mackintosh and galoshes.
If it is still too early to lampoon Mr Cameron as Steve McClaren, bemusedly wandering up and down the Downing Street dugout beneath his brolly, there is no sign whatever of the political and economic weather improving.
So it's very good to report that Izzard is in enchantingly frisky and confiding mood here, once this self-professed "action transvestite" has tossed aside the brolly and the bowler hat of his ironic John-Steed-from-The-Avengers get-up with a practised, red-nailed hand.
Now 52, the Yorkshireman is some way from retirement, but when that day comes the image of him watching helplessly from under an umbrella – the infamous "wally with a brolly" – as his charges slithered to defeat against Croatia will inevitably be part of his footballing epitaph.
For it would not make the slightest difference if you trussed the Croatia coach in an FA blazer, and stuck a brolly in his hand.
Must remember to take my brolly next time!
Brooking reckons by 2018, 10 years after Steve McClaren stood hopelessly beneath his brolly as England failed to qualify for the European Championship, football's mother country will present a different landscape.
cowshed.com We're not sure about… Rainy days and Mondays Summer dresses were not meant to be accessorised with a brolly, which makes the recent spell of showers most unwelcome.
