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They put their greatest-ever son a pedestal on the island of his birth but you too can live like Cristiano Ronaldo in Madeira.

All of which I learned when the Madeirans rolled into town… that town being my old stomping ground of Dublin.

Where one of the highlights of the year, the Meet the Media networking event takes place at the central Radisson Blu on Golden Lane.

And where we billet down for the night after our meetings at the convenient Maldron Hotel on Kevin Street.

A familiar and friendly hotel it has decided for reasons best known to itself not to line its corridors with green fake grass.

Not that Dublin doesn’t have football heroes of its own in Johnny Giles, Liam Brady and Robbie Keane.

CR7 heaven

It’s just that Cristiano Ronaldo looms larger than anybody else even if our Madeiran mates accept his statue is not a very true likeness.

Cristiano, of course, has his own hotel with chain Pestana here we grew up in humble circumstances.

Next naturally to his museum and branded as is his way with the CR7 logo.

You might have seen too other CR7 hotels in Lisbon and Madrid, where he also played, and New York.

The Body Beautiful

Now, of course with the CR7 endorsed by the Great Man himself you won’t be surprised to know that he puts the Body Beautiful to the fore.

And so there’s a distinctive “pink-coloured pool” in his Madeiran haven on the rooftop to unwind.

And take, as they put it, the most epic photographs which you’ll want to share on your feed.

As well as hanging out in a sauna and open-air jacuzzi to enjoy some more.

CR7 also challenges us here to work out at the open-air gym with training sessions designed by thew footballer.

Best CR7 bar none

And as the day comes to an end, experience the best sunsets on the island at the Off-Side Rooftop Bar.

Where you can sample the best Portuguese wines although probably out of eyeshot of Cristiano, famous teetotalller that he is.

Like the Portuguese god I had to swear off the grape too when I won the prize at the event, three bottles of vintage wine.

Which, of course, I wouldn’t have been able to take through customs

But my hosts will be able to toast me in my absence.

Now Cristiano Ronaldo is, of course, a gateway into Portugal’s biggest island.

A lush haven where you’ll want to sharpen up hiking and cycling.

And also paying homage to CR7 at his museum next to the hotel where you can worship at his altar.

Which make no mistake they do, as we found out when we went to holy site Fatima on the mainland.

And found among the statues of Our Lady on the tables a beach towel to CR7.

So the best advice is to just give in and live like Cristiano Ronaldo in Madeira for €127 a night.

And a celebration of the little people with a Swift guide to Dublin.

The little people in question not the fabled leprechauns.

You can find them in the Leprechaun Museum in Jervis Street across the Liffey in north Dublin.

Although they tell us they’re on an adventure until the summer – looking for their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

No, the little people we’re talking about are the Lilliputians of Gulliver’s Travels fame.

Off Pat

If you want a Swift history of Ireland’s other little people then you need to retrace the steps of the Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, Dr Jonathan Swift.

When Swift wasn’t clericing he was satirising the establishment of his day.

Their pomposity, self-interest and petty squabbling – he’d have even more fun with the politicians of today.

Alas Swift can no longer deliver his rapier wit from his workplace, St Patrick’s Cathedral, off Medieval Dublin on the south of the river.

But he does live on in his writings, the movie of his most famous book, and on the walls of the flats within the vicinity of the church.

While his body rests for eternity at St Patrick’s Cathedral.

A temple of writing

Now most visitors these days won’t travel further than party central, Temple Bar, but if you can carry on down the river.

Then you’ll come across hallowed ground in St Patrick’s Cathedral.

It is here in its gardens they mark the well where the patron saint of Ireland is reputed to have baptised the first Irish Christians.

Now Ireland being affectionately known as the Land of Saints and Scholars its writers too are celebrated within its grounds.

With discs of the likes of Shaw, Joyce, Synge, Beckett, Behan et al built into the walls.

By Jameson Whiskey and the publicans of Dublin.

And for that purple prose and poetry then we naturally follow the recommendations of James Joyce himself.

Or his great character Leopold Bloom, in whose mouth he put these words: ‘Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without passing a pub.’

The Joyce Crawl

Hats off: Politician David Norris and a Joyce impersonator

Dublin by pub helpfully give us a Joyce pub crawl.

Including Davy Byrne’s where Leopold ate a cheese sandwich and glass of burgundy and the pub off Grafton Street does the same.

If Davy’s is the best-known drinking den for Joyceans it’s not the only one, it’s just the others are known now under other names.

The International, the old Ruggy O’Donoghoe’s, J & M Cleary’s, back then The Signal House, Kennedy’s, the old Conway’s.

As well as The Oval which still carries the old name but was destroyed in the Easter 1916 Rising.

The Fairest City

You can and should, of course, branch out further than the Joyce pubs.

And we did at popular watering hole Sheehan’s, Chatham Street, near Trinity College Dublin.

Before putting our heads down at the always accommodating and comfortable and central Maldron Hotel on Kevin Street.

And then a red eye back to Edinburgh with Ryanair knowing we would be back soon.

And that every visit to Dublin, even after spending 13 years in one of the world’s great cities, brings areas we haven’t explored before.

So with that a Swift guide to Dublin in a long history.

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Live like Cristiano Ronaldo in Madeira