What happened next? David Baddiel on the World Cup summer and 'It's coming home' memes: ‘One video made me cry’

I never did believe, not really. I never thought England were going to win the World Cup. It’s not what “football’s coming home” is supposed to mean, anyway. It’s just come to mean that, as it only gets sung when England are playing well. Which is a bit weird, from my POV. I get the sense that people now think of Three Lions as football’s version of Slade’s Merry Christmas. But it isn’t. Because Christmas does happen every year. Whereas the England team playing well … doesn’t. Noddy Holder isn’t dependent on Kieran Trippier turning out to be a world-class full-back for his royalties.

But what an extraordinary summer it was. It had happened before, in 1996, and it was extraordinary then. But that was in a time before everything was recorded, and shared, and the whole country, not just Wembley Stadium, could join in; before the existence of the word meme.

So many memes. It seemed at one point as if I had just finished watching one and a new one would pop up. I would think my favourite was Joey, Chandler and Ross dancing to it, and then someone would point me to the Wizard of Oz one, or Putin playing it on the piano, or The Shawshank Redemption epic. The best one? Purely technically, I’d have to say the Del Boy one, where he is on the phone playing it to Gareth Southgate, because, brilliantly, he is actually talking to someone called Gary, which works for Gareth.

Beyond the memes, there were also the street parties and local brass bands and, bloody hell, the Welsh Guards playing it outside Buckingham Palace, and Prince William saying “It’s coming home!” on ITV before the semi-final. But the one that really did it for me was a group of mums of kids with Down’s syndrome, who made a video of themselves and their children singing and signing their way through the whole song. It made me cry. Almost as much as when we lost to Croatia.

David Baddiel’s Head Kid is out now, published by HarperCollins