It’s nice to hear that the Olympic Torch will be in Croydon today. All morning I’ve been singing to myself  “It’s coming home, it’s coming home, fire’s coming home…”.
I suppose if (as has often happened on this relay) the flame goes out they can always re-ignite it with the embers of a burning sofa left over from the riots.

Yes, there’s no getting away from it : IT’S here. That event that you and everyone at T’BBC Salford has been looking forward to.  London 2012 is here and it doesn’t matter that, like me, the very thought of Sebastian Coe induces in you a touch of the Yangtze Rapids it’s here to dominate your tv set, pub conversation and in some cases, the very hell you live in.

Nobody enjoys sport more than I do (unless I have to actually compete in it, you understand) but I do get the taste of a thousand lemons in my mouth as the BBC commentaries and fanfares are drowned out by the clinking-clanking sound of Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Samsung, Procter&Gamble (as if it’s much of a gamble)  G4S and the rest of them hauling sack-loads of our cash out of the country. And all this before Brendan Foster even gets the chance to sober up, or Michael Vaughan interviews Steve Redgrave about his two Olympic Gold Medals.

The decision to move the BBC out of London in the Jubilee Year (in the end, the Queen refused to move to Bury) and the LONDON olympics is really bearing fruit now. The team in Salford are left to report on events in London the way that Jeremy Bowen used to report on events Syria from a vantage point over the Jordan border. They do, of course, have people nearer the action, but for Orla Guerin read Carol Kirkwood, and for John Simpson read the brilliant Mike Bushell. From their gantry this morning above Freedom Square…sorry…Olympic Park, Carol kindly familiarised the viewer with the London skyline, as if it was us who’d been away, not them:

“…and to the left of the screen you can see the Shard: one of the biggest buildings in London…if not the biggest”. It’ll be one or the other darling, but well done on your preparation nevertheless. She ran out of time before she could show us the exact location of the community Gun Emplacements “Sponsored by Accurist”.

Bushell, with his Homer Simpson gormless smile splashed across his face, sat motionless, desperately trying to remember that Wiggly Baggins had won the Tour de France and not scored a double-hundred at Chelmsford yesterday. Such a pro.

Somewhere between the enthusiastic amateurs and the Shard in the distance (however big it may or may not be) one could just spy the scene of the crime, Park Olympia: A dozen or so thoughtfully-designed, and on a few occasions, strikingly beautiful stadia dotted around what looks like the industrial storage facility next to Heathrow’s Terminal 4.

 If not exactly a war-zone that Kate Adie would be proud to report from, then something that needs the help of the Olympic torch and an accelerant. My knowledge of the English language is not advanced enough to express my sentiments on the bit of sculpture in the middle.

So, at last the sun has come out, as if to welcome the world’s finest athletes to our shores. (I knew it would be hot this week – Carol Kirkwood predicted snow) It certainly shone on 12 South Africans yesterday as 11 of their cricketers made life miserable for an Anglo/Bokke XI at the Oval yesterday, and the 12th – a golfer- not only won The Open at Lytham, but went a long way to dispelling the myth that no-one has ever met a nice South African. Ernie Els overcame the hapless and helpless Aussie Adam Scott who Devon Loch’ed up the home straight, playing the sort of golf that I’d be proud of – bogeying the last four holes.

Poor Adam, it’ll be tough to forget that one. Clearly his caddie Racist-Stevie Williams (it’s a double-barrelled forename), who has claimed all those Tiger Woods victories as his own, clearly lost his golden touch and should now be sacked, never to whiten our door again. Some weird mirrored symmetry in a liberal-thinking, white South African, beating a bigoted kiwi.

But never mind all that now. It’s Olympic week. So gird your loins and cheer for your boys (and girls). Cast aside your petty squabbles with racism, corruption, corporate greed, scorched earth policies and financial impropriety. This is England, after all. You should be used to it by now.

Cry God for Bradley, Rebecca and Saint George !!!

And Seb can go and fuck himself.