I say I had Olympic fever, but to be honest I really couldn't give a rat's arse about this quadrennial farrago of obscure sports, obscene patriotism and industrial-scale drug abuse. I'm trying, I really am, but I just don't care. The reasons for this are varied.
First, the fact that I am paying for it, directly, in the wallet. That does annoy me. I somehow suspect I won't be getting the free tickets to the opening ceremony, the seats behind the starting blocks for the 100 metres and the unfettered access to the beach volleyball locker rooms that I feel the 5% levy on my council tax deserves.
Second, and perhaps most damming of all, its the actual games themselves. Most proper sports are either unrepresented or fucked up in some way. Football? Under-23s only, and England aren't allowed. Cricket - no. Rugby - no. Golf - no. Even Darts and Snooker are denied, presumably because the bureaucrats realised long ago that we'd clean up. Basketball and boxing are included, but for some reason professionals aren't allowed, so you get nonsense like Cuba winning the Gold in Baseball (and the US failing to get through the qualifying tournament). Wrestling is in, but no Hulk Hogan, 'Cyanide' Sid Cooper or Mick McManus, just a load of Central Asians in leotards rolling about on mats.
Giant Haystacks: no place at Olympic jamboree, despite this impressive win over Catweazle.
Instead of genuine sport, we get such wonders as YngLing (that is not a typo), Softball (i.e. rounders), Taekwondo, Madison Cycling and the Uneven Bars. I've been in a few uneven bars, usually after 11 o clock and a few pints of strong continental, but what this has to do with sport I couldn't say.
The Women's 50kg Snatch: no punchline required.
The final hobnailed boot in the gonads is the fact that we aren't going to win anything. Not a thing. Nine billion quid for an outside chance of a bronze in the Fencing does not good value make. Things are so bad that the British Olympic Committee are actually inviting tall, fit people to join our squads for some of the more bizarre team sports like Handball (which we are obliged to enter this time round as hosts), then learn how to actually play. Handball is not a game with a lengthy pedigree in these islands. Apparently its a bit like five-a-side football (with the 'goalie rush' permutation, for those of you who played playground football in the 1980s), only you have to chuck a ball rather than kick it. A quick glance at the International Handball Federation website gives cause for concern - for a start, court dimensions are metric (40m x 20m). This is not a good sign. For example, a cricket wicket's size and shape are based on the dimensions of a Saxon ploughshare; proper sports should be rooted in antiquity, riddled with arcane rules, and be difficult for the French to get to grips with. Humiliation by Handballing powerhouses such as Croatia, Russia, and, inevitably, the Germans, beckons.
Thank God its nearly the football season and I can stop worrying about this sort of thing.
This week's celebrity spots
Some scarcely believable celebrity action to report. First, though, a sighting mainly noteworthy in that it occurred on the tube and not in one of the usual Soho hotspots. Though it is a bit obscure: actor and comedian Ken Campbell, perhaps best known for appearing in an episode of legendary comedy show Fawlty Towers, among a raft of TV ads and (apparently) Brookside. Ken seemed a garrulous fellow, chatting to fellow commuters and eating a large salad sandwich before bounding off the train at Chancery Lane.
But the week's real story comes from Thursday. Lunch in a local Thai restaurant was enlivened by the presence of Kevin Eldon wandering along outside - another Hyperdrive casualty like Nick Frost, Eldon was wearing red flares. Nice. Afterwards, I had to nip to the bank, while my co-lunchers headed back to the office and saw actor Rhys Ifans heading into the pub next door. I wouldn't know Ifans if he came up and bit me, but they were quite impressed. Sadly for them though I managed to play a genuine trump card. At more or less the same time that Ifans was ordering his first pint of the day, none other than Sir Bobby Charlton was marching into the paper shop on Dean Street, presumably on a break from urgent FA business, or something. I didn't have my glasses on and had to get quite close to make sure it was him (not appreciated by the shiny-headed knight of the realm). But Charlton it was, and the afternoon's bragging rights were safely in the bag.
Charlton looms out from the paper shop doorway.
Recommendations
Well, the Indians won the second test. England were quite staggeringly feeble. What makes it even worse is that their 'hilarious' wind ups (such as chucking jelly babies on the pitch to suggest a 'soft centre' within the incoming batsman) seem only to have made the opposition bowling attack want to kill someone (that beamer bowled at Pietersen was deliberate, make no mistake about it). An unedifying spectacle.
If you're going to sledge the opposition, do it properly:
Rodney Marsh (to the incoming Ian Botham): "How's your wife and my kids?"
Botham: "Wife's fine, kids are retarded"
But quite frankly, who cares. Cricket has had its annual three weeks of undivided attention, and its time to move on to more exciting fayre. And where's better than the battle for promotion from League Two? I reckon the 3/1 on Chesterfield (Bet365) is worth a second look, while I'm truly mystified by Barnet's 16/1 (Boylesports) to go up. Obviously the bookies know something I don't, but Barnet had a strong second half of last season and represent a tasty each-way punt as potential play-off candidates. An even more jolly bet to make is for once-mighty Leeds United to go down, again. They've already been docked 15 points before the season has even started, and are 4/1 (SkyBet) to drop into football's basement. And nobody would like to see that happen :-)
Some more electropop wizardry to marvel at - The Projects. Cheerful, breezy and fun - I like.
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