A spooky coincidence occurred in room 505 of the ironically named Comfort Inn Royal, Zurich. Said hotel is as comfortable as an interrogation suite in Guantanamo Bay. It is as royal as Never Mind the Bollocks. Inn? The hotel bar is actually a mini-bar, the clientele actually a queue and the ambience is created by the kind of music piped through birthday card shops - in this case a Swiss yodeller who has succeeded in making Enrique Iglesias' greatest hits even less bearable than the originals.

The Comfort Inn Royal is, at least, in Zurich. A can of Feldschlossen from said mini-bar is as expensive as an overnight stay during Euro 2008. I digress.

The spooky coincidence arrived as unexpectedly as the 7am dong from the local church bell conveniently situated across the road from room 505. A Hampden mole had forwarded an email from Mr High Heid Yin, Gordon Smith, headlined Appropriate Dress Code'. The chief executive is, after all, renowned for his sartorial elegance. Indeed, his former employers at the BBC recall how Smudger insisted on wearing a crisp new open-neck shirt for every television appearance after one eagle-eyed viewer, spotting the same garment on the silky smooth pundit for the second time in a three-year period, committed her displeasure to parchment.

His email was a response to the declining standards of dress on the sixth floor at Hampden Park. Steven Pressley's Guns N' Roses T-shirts are prohibited forthwith. There was no mention of George Burley's saltire tie, purchased by his dear old auntie at one of those airport shops that smell of shortbread. There was, however, a reminder that smart-casual was acceptable for office staff but that shirt and tie is compulsory when engaged in meetings with "external people". It is a phrase that evoked images of the lizard-alien birth in the classic episode of V.

No sooner had the email been digested than SF, the national Swiss television station, began their coverage of Thursday night's action, kicking-off with Germany versus Croatia. And there he was, Hans-Hubert Vogts, resident analyst, sat beside the Swiss Dougie Donnelly, wearing a replica Germany shirt. It is just as well his disastrous reign in Scotland ended before Smith's arrival or he would be the first national coach to have been fired for crimes against fashion.

Smith, who has only taken to wearing a tie since becoming chief executive of the SFA, has a point. I was once chided for not having a shave with the warning: "You never know when you might have to interview David Murray." To this day, I have yet to bring up the Rangers chairman's apparent phobia of facial hair.

It is all about keeping up appearances. In order to cover Euro 2008 as comfortably as possible, UEFA provide a standard-issue rucksack that can easily accommodate a company laptop (roughly the same size as a Russian satellite system), the rainforest of paraphernalia required to navigate you to and from the host cities, and perhaps some overnight essentials.

My Japanese colleague, grateful for the opportunity to interview someone who is not Shunsuke Nakamura, has one such bag that contains his entire wardrobe for a month's stay in Switzerland and Austria: two t-shirts, two pairs of pants and socks and some essential toiletries. I kid you not. He is at least useful in whittling down the canteen queue in the stadium media centre.

In contrast, room 505 resembles a Chinese laundry. The Comfort Inn Royal is the first hotel that offers guests the chance to pay their laundry bill by direct debit. I jest, but they should. It costs as much to have a shirt washed and dried as it would to buy another from the nearby H&M. Zurich, after all, has the highest standard of living in the world. It is so posh, the jaikies huddle round a bottle of Courvoisier. It is so expensive it costs CHF1 (10 bob to you and I) to spend a penny and double for a sit-down.

The only solution is an old-fashioned hand wash in the sink.

I discovered I was allergic to Co-op's own brand of laundry detergent within seconds of the first load. My hands became as hideously angry as Freddy Krueger's face. There were, of course, worse ways of discovering the allergy . . .

The neighbours have flags of Holland, Portugal and Switzerland fluttering out their verandas, but room 505 has pledged its allegiance to Gap. Fashion has literally gone out the window during Euro 2008. Smudger would not be impressed.