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It felt a bit like a Hollywood movie last week with volcanic ash menacingly making its way across Europe. If the Russians wanted to invade then that was the time to do it as Wing Commander Johnny Hero sipped tea and James Bond remained stuck at his skiing chalet waiting for it to blow over.

I still think it was an insurance scam by the government of Iceland as Jeremy Clarkson visited and was allowed to smoke as much as he wanted. Hot air and a packet of Woodbines is a lethal combination, but the get out for insurers is that Clarkson will boast to everyone that, as he did it, it must be an "act of God".

When things erupted, so to speak, I was stuck in Dubai on business and unable to get home so I managed a few days sight seeing. I realise you have no sympathy and there are worse places to be stuck. I could have been held in Kazakhstan or Croydon.
They love being biggest and best in Dubai. It's home to the world’s tallest building, where I sat in a restaurant with the world’s best food and watched the world’s tallest fountains go off every fifteen minutes, choreographed to the world’s worst music.

Where other schools would employ former Raith Rovers second eleven players as football coaches, one school here has ex England midfielder Carlton Palmer. Dubai - never knowingly understated.

Armani has a hotel here though Giorgio himself couldn’t make the opening because of the travel chaos, there’s Dolce and Gabanna and Chanel, as well as McDonalds and Costa. But that’s just where the fun starts. Look further and you’ll find outlets that reflect the Arab love of the gaudy. Shops like ‘You Bring It We Bling It’, a place where you can get anything from your mobile phone to your wife blinged with diamante or Swarovsky. Stupidly I had my underpants done. Now I know what having piles must be like.

I visited The Palm, a reclaimed area where the footballers have bought their holiday homes. It is a man made island in the shape of a palm tree with the Atlantis, a castle like hotel, at the end and having a foyer which is underwater. I was mesmerised looking through the floor to ceiling glass walls at giant fish and sharks swimming around a recreation of a sunken city. Wait till Dubai realises they can open the world’s biggest dentist waiting room here.

I spent some time in what’s billed as the world’s biggest shopping mall. There’s the front half of a full sized aeroplane here for kids to virtually fly, an operating theatre for them to play doctors and nurses, a university for them to graduate, and a law court in which to play lawyers and bad guys. There’s also an ice rink, a twenty screen cinema complex, and another floor to ceiling aquarium but with a cage for shoppers to be lowered in for photo opportunities as they swim with sharks. Beats the wet fish counter at the Wimbledon Waitrose.

Here I bought some sweatshirts for the kids but extra small size of course. Dubai does everything bigger

Perhaps what sums up Dubai best for me was a letter published last Tuesday in the local newspaper 7 Days. It mentioned the world’s biggest travel chaos caused by the world’s biggest ash cloud with the world's greatest publicity from the world’s largest currently erupting volcano.

The letter ended, “when can we get one?”.