A call for the England football team to boycott the World Cup has been on the lips of those British politicians who should know better (I often suspect some of them know nothing at all) as the mysterious poisoning of a former Russian double agent sends us spiralling towards Cold War Two.

Don't those who have the B-word in their bonnet realise Vladimir Putin wouldn't give a rouble's toss if England stayed away?

As has been pointed out, FIFA (who are the organising body, not the Kremlin) would simply replace them with a team which failed to qualify, almost certainly Italy or, should they wish to be mischievous and test Trump's so-called alliance with Theresa May, the United States.

As England are not exactly one of the great superpowers in world football these days Putin might even consider he was getting a bargain.

And, in the unlikely event that the English Football Association should kowtow before any such request, it should be remembered that FIFA's rebuke could extend to a ban on England competing internationally for an indefinite period.

So let's finally kick any further futile talk of a boycott into touch. And I write as one who has lived through, and reported on, a real boycott in Russia back in 1980 when the Olympics were hit by an American-led British-backed campaign to cold shoulder the Moscow Games because of Russia's invasion of Afghanistan.

Some 66 nations boycotted Moscow at the behest of US President Jimmy Carter and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. However, Britain defied Maggie and sent a team of 219 competitors, 149 men and 70 women, who took part in 145 events in 14 sports.

Individual sports had been given the option of staying home and only four - hockey, equestrian, shooting and sailing - decided to follow the Tory party line.

Those who elected to participate included athletics and rowing - and the supreme irony was that two Thatcher favourites who were later to become Tory MPs and peers, Sebastian Coe and Colin Moynihan - openly rejected her demand and came home with medals: a gold for Coe in the 1,500 metres and a rowing silver for cox Moynihan.

Coe was to say later to The Guardian: "My gut instinct was that there was an intellectual dishonesty about what we were trying to achieve. History proved us right of course, because four years later when we went to LA for the 1984 Olympics the Russians were still in Afghanistan, and the boycott had no impact."

He said the "clinching moment which hardened my resolve to go" was hearing Sir Denis Follows, chairman of the British Olympic Association, "being described in the Commons as basically a dangerous communist". He argued that his decision to compete in 1980 played a crucial role in enabling him to campaign successfully for London to host the 2012 Olympics.

"In hindsight it was a good decision to go for all sorts of reasons," he said. "I don't think I would have been able to stand up in Singapore in front of the International Olympic Committee and say what I said with credibility if I had boycotted in 1980. I was able to say that Britain had sent a team to every Winter and Summer Games. Had I not gone in 1980 it would certainly have been seized upon and exploited by rival cities."

Becoming rebels did neither Coe nor Moynihan much harm. Coe briefly became an MP before going on to greater things with London 2012 and the International Association of Athletics Federations and Moynihan was appointed by Thatcher as her Sports Minister. Both also chaired the BOA. 

There was a token British boycott of the Opening Ceremony. The Olympic flag was raised for the British medal winners and the Olympic anthem played for the five gold medalists, athletes Coe, Steve Ovett, Daley Thompson, Allan Wells and swimmer Duncan Goodhew. All subsequently received gongs. So much for the B-word, eh?

I found the Games distinctly memorable for rather personal reasons.

I was working at the time for Now Magazine, owned by Sir James Goldsmith, who leaned so far to the right he almost overbalanced. He supported a boycott but the editor, the late Tony Shrimsley, rightly insisted I should cover the Games as the journal's sports editor.

However, the front cover of the pre-Games issue depicted the Olympic Torch engulfing the five Olympic rings in flames with the headline: "Destruction Of A Great Ideal".

I took a copy with me to Moscow as it contained an interview I had done with Coe and other Olympic data. But on arrival at Moscow's Sheremtyevo Airport my bags were searched and my copy of Now seized by an immigration officer who declared it "bourgeois propaganda".

I told him I actually agreed with him but he insisted on confiscating it despite my protest that I required it for my work.

When I reached the press hotel I lodged a formal complaint via the International Olympic Committee pointing out that Olympic rules permit the import of material that a journalist may need to assist their coverage of the Games.

The next morning I received a telephone call instructing me to go to a certain room in the Kremlin (I was relieved that it was not Room 101 of George Orwell notoriety where people tended to disappear).

I promptly hailed a cab and uttered the immortal words "take me to the Kremlin".

There I was received by a grey-suited chap seated at a desk and holding my copy of the magazine.

He glanced up and handed it back to me, saying cryptically: "I think we understand each other, Mr Hubbard".

On my return to the hotel when I asked for my room key, I was informed I had been upgraded to a suite. Very nice it was too.

But was there a catch?

At the end of the Games a few of my colleagues and I threw a farewell party in the suite at the now demolished Rossiya Hotel, once the world's largest.

As the Georgian champagne popped, someone suggested that as we suspected the room might be bugged we should offer a toast. Jokingly we raised our glasses and said: "To all our listeners - Cheers!"

A few seconds later, the phone rang and a guttural Russian voice chuckled: "And cheers to you too, tovarich!"

Well unlike President Putin, some Russians do have a sense of humour.

Whether there will be much to chuckle about during the World Cup remains to be seen.

I enjoyed the Games despite them being diminished by the boycott. The Russians organised them well and I wrote as such, much to the displeasure of Goldsmith who tried unsuccessfully to get me fired.

Yet it must be said that away from the Olympic arena the atmosphere was depressingly sterile. No birds sang in Red Square, no kids clamoured for autographs outside the Lenin Stadium or Olympic Village.

Our hotel corridors were patrolled by KGB men with loose suits and blank stares. Although there wasn't a gun in sight, there was no shortage of armoury, with tanks rolling monotonously along the banks of the Moscow River.

At least the sport provided a golden lining to the cloud that hovered over Moscow.

But will the World Cup do the same now?