“No, but I've often thought I'd like to.”

“Well don't. It's a ghastly place. Huge gangs of tough, sinewy men roam the valleys, terrorising people with their close-harmony singing. You need half a pint of phlegm in your throat just to pronounce the place names. Never ask for directions in Wales, Baldrick. You'll be washing spit out of your hair for a fortnight.”

Go back another 600 years and there's this: "Tell him there's some land in it for him." "Very generous, My Liege." “Not so generous; it's in Wales."

As demonstrated by these historical references, courtesy of two of the greatest television series of all time Blackadder the Third and Robin of Sherwood, Wales has never had a great press.

Home of bad weather, coal mines, the planet’s longest place name and the leek, its strengths have never exactly been sung about from the peaks of Snowdonia.

But all that has changed in the last few weeks.

The Old Land of My Fathers has become a new land of their footballers.

A generation after the country’s golden era of Ryan Giggs, Mark Hughes, Ian Rush and Neville Southall, a team of two genuine superstars and nine other willing support acts has taken the country to previously unchartered heights.

Coming into the European soccer championships in France, many experts experts expected Wales to finish in the same position it sat alphabetically among the 24 countries.

But the team emerged from a tricky group as the competition’s leading scorers and faced the widely-anointed next big thing in world soccer, Belgium.

Boasting Eden Hazard, Thibaut Courtois, Kevin De Bruyne, Romelu Lukaku and the magnificently-coiffured Marouane Fellaini, Belgium is the top-ranked FIFA nation at the tournament although the fact that world champion Germany is also there shows how truly dysfunctional FIFA is.

How ironic it was that within sight of its western border with France, Belgium was undone by a move inspired from beyond its eastern border in the Netherlands.

Wales striker Hal Robson-Kanu produced a game-deciding moment of skill forever associated with, and indeed named after, Johan Cruyff, thus providing the perfect tribute to the Dutchman, who died four months ago.

Wales rely heavily on the planet’s most expensive footballer, Gareth Bale, whose £86 million transfer fee equates to $146.5 million (admittedly with a post-Brexit conversion rate).

While his better publicised Real Madrid clubmate Cristiano Ronaldo has failed to score from 34 free-kicks at major tournaments, Bale found the net from his first two at Euro 2016.

The two Galacticos are destined to meet in Wednesday’s first semi-final in Lyon.

Ronaldo’s Portugal has stumbled through without winning a game in normal time, courtesy of three group stage draws, a penalty shoot-out and an extra-time breakaway late winner.

If Euro 2016 was a Harry Potter story, Wales is the undoubted hero, Iceland is Hermione, the romantic interest, and Portugal the sinister and untrustworthy Draco Malfoy.

Meanwhile, lurking ominously in the background, France and Germany represent not one but two Voldemorts, the seemingly indestructible foes whose names shall not be mentioned.

Until the host nation took its foot off the pedal against Iceland on Monday (understandable when you’re 4-0 up at half-time), the only goals either nation had conceded were penalties _ just three in nearly 10 games.

Only one of the two stand-out teams in the tournament can make the final, as they will meet in Thursday’s second semi-final.

In the quarter-final, Germany played Italy, a country it had beaten just eight times in 33 attempts, losing three major semi-finals and the 1982 World Cup final in the process.

The word nemesis does not do justice to Italy’s spell over the Germans. More of an Achilles leg than heel.

But on a bizarre day when another undisputed world champion Novak Djokovic went out of Wimbledon, Germany avoided the same fate by being marginally less bad at taking penalties.

The cricket World Cup could learn a lot from this.

While that sport’s powerbrokers, in their own self-interests, have sought to eliminate smaller nations, European soccer has embraced the idea, expanding this competition to the benefit of all.

Leading the way have been Wales, home of the dragon, and Iceland, Arctic home of the world’s most northerly capital. Surely the ultimate fire and ice combination.

So when Ireland beat England at the 2011 cricket World Cup, the sport’s establishment grimaces, but when Iceland beat England at Euro 2016, the sport’s establishment rejoices.

​Meanwhile, in the unlikely event of losing interest in the action, Euro 16 provides plenty for anybody who shares the enjoyment of wordplay, capped by the irony of a commentator praising the mobility of Italian striker Immobile.