It would be uncool and tedious and criminally
un-English to wet my pants in excitement over the London Olympics. The universality of such global events means
that the indiscriminately happy are afforded an opportunity to celebrate, while
the mean, the cynical and the sardonic get a chance to rip the piss. Everybody wins. Of course, I shall admire the skills, the
determination, the commitment and the achievement of every single participant;
but we have a suitably limp and tongue-in-arse television sporting commentary
culture to gush over all that is GOOD about the Olympics. My intention, as always, is to join the ranks
of the shit-pointers of society and hold aloft the torch of turpitude, so that
its light might singe the hairs around each Olympic ring.
The Opening Ceremony will undoubtedly drive
all social media into a frenzy of indefatigable piss-taking. The choice of Frankie Boyle to direct was
inspired. Clearly, the organisers wanted
something akin to Berlin 1936: A few
jokes at the expense of the Para-Olympians, something mildly racist to appeal
to the older generations of East Londoners and the use of David Beckham as a personality-void
straight-man for Frankie to bounce his bile off.
Yes, I know it’s not Frankie Boyle doing
it. It’s the excellent Irish writer
Roddy Doyle. And they’ve reformed The
Commitments to kick off the ceremony with the official Olympic anthem, “Must
Hang Sally (Gunnel)”.
Let’s face it, the Opening Ceremony will be
like Eurovision Song Contest interval entertainment on steroids. They’ll recycle some of those ubiquitous
giant costumes from It’s a Knockout in the 70’s, have hundreds of local kids
running between the pyrotechnics like synchronised looters and employ some
X-Factor finalists to sing some sanitised pop-rock while the camera cuts to
David Beckham in his VIP seat grinning inanely with all the personality of a bowl
of spit.
Once the games commence, Sod’s law dictates that
you only ever switch on during a sport in which you have zero interest. I love ALL Olympic events with the exception
of the following:
·
Events which can start and finish in
the time it takes you to pop upstairs for a wee;
·
Events in which nothing actually happens
in the time it takes you to pop upstairs for a wee, a poo or even one of those
messy poos which demand a brief remedial stint in the shower;
·
Sports where participants do very
little beyond working state-of-art equipment that has minimal margin of error;
·
Sports which kids can’t afford to do
regularly, because they are so expensive and thus become hobbies for rich
bastards;
·
Sports which have a much bigger and
better appeal outside of the Olympics, so that a country can have several
thousand non-Olympian participants who are better than an Olympic champion.
Let me know if you’ve worked out what that
leaves and I’ll try and watch it.
Being at home during the day watching the
Olympics throws up one of middle-aged man’s worse paranoia traps. That is, I could be watching the Olympics,
let’s say boxing, and the doorbell goes.
A visitor comes into the house and as we enter the lounge the TV
coverage has cut to girls’ gymnastics or something involving Tom Daley. And I’ll say, “Ah the boxing must’ve just
finished.” A defence too far.
Not that I’d necessarily watch the
boxing. It is the Olympic sport furthest
removed from the real thing. You get
about 6 minutes of two boxers with pillow-sized gloves and duvets wrapped round
their heads, scoring points if they happen to make any form of physical contact
that is recognised by all three judges, if they are fast enough to press a
button within a millisecond of each other.
It’s like primary school Gladiators.
There are also some sports which can only be
appreciated with the guidance of the commentator. Fuck knows who’s in the lead in any event
involving yachts. If I switch on to that
load of cobblers, I won’t know if I’m watching an event or a couple of rich tossers
dicking about on the Thames, having knocked back too much Bolly.
The beautiful irony of the games being
sponsored by the two multi-national corporations most culpable for obesity in
the Western world should be enjoyably ridiculed, but such sponsorship has saved
the tax-payer no small amount and has also provided a cash clawback for Beckham’s
agent, who masterminded the whole London 2012 Olympics purely to keep David’s
public profile afloat. If he was still
playing proper football, then we wouldn’t even have got the Olympics.
As a teacher, I did become worried that
Michael Gove was on the verge of demanding that we all work in our summer
holidays by helping to fill the security deficit left by the feckless G4S. They could send the army to help out at all
the MANLY events (like rowing and anything involving the throwing of heavy
objects) and send us teachers to where soldiers are too embarrassed to go. Yes, it’d be that awkward gymnastics moment
again.
