Last updated 19:47, Thursday, 28 August 2008

WE’RE doomed! We’re doomed!

Our most successful Olympic team for 100 years returned from China last Sunday.

We say most successful but, of course, they are not really.

In fact, it appears, they are the instruments of our doom.

The sports they excelled in were not the right ones. Maybe the Australians were right when they said we could only win sitting down. Oh no! We thought we were having a good games but obviously other countries are laughing at us and maybe we didn’t do as well as we thought.

Or maybe – maybe our team has peaked too early. That’s what has happened. We not only got more medals than we have had in 100 years but we have as many as we are going to get for the next 100. We’re doomed! The London Olympics will be a disaster! We’ll be bottom of the table!

Not that it matters. It will be the least of our problems, of course. We know that our opening ceremony will never be as good as Beijing’s; we haven’t got the space, or the money. We haven’t got the thousands of people trained to carry out such precise movements. We’re doomed because we have people who might refuse to work every hour God brings to get it right. We are doomed because some of the British will demand tea breaks, lunch breaks and weekends off.

Mind you, the opening ceremony is academic because there will be nowhere to hold it, anyway. Okay, they are claiming to be a couple of months ahead of schedule at the moment but we all know that the stadia will never be finished in time. It is just going to be embarrassing. We are going to shame ourselves in the eyes of the world! Maybe we should introduce binge drinking as an athletic event – at least then we would have a chance.

All this might be appear a bit over the top, but not by much, because I cannot believe the negativity I have heard and read in recent days. It is absolutely disgraceful, not to mention disloyal.

Now, including a portrait of a serial killer in an Olympic games ceremony is bad form and, frankly, heads should roll for that. But I have a feeling it was probably included as a work of art by someone who didn’t know what Myra Hindley looked like.

There have been so many complaints about our section in the closing ceremony, but I don’t understand why. Hindley apart, I thought the red London bus and the umbrellas was a wonderful sight. I’ve lived abroad off and on since I was two years old and, believe me, from the time I was a small child I have known that a red, double-decker bus means London. It is as iconic as the Statue of Liberty to New York or the Eiffel Tower to Paris. I am not a huge fan of Leona Lewis but even I have been able to recognise her without looking her up on the internet, and anyone who knows anything about rock music in the western world, anyway, knows Jimmy Page.

There was criticism about David Beckham kicking a ball into the crowd. But did you hear the cheer he got? There would probably not have been a person at the games, no matter where they are from, who didn’t know who he was. And Britain and football, albeit sometimes shamefully, always go together.

We have to stop knocking ourselves, stop talking ourselves down. It is so annoying.

What is it about the British people that they can’t just enjoy a moment?

Britain is famous for being able to celebrate but sometimes I think it is only when we are in trouble.

With our backs to the wall, the British come up trumps, but what does it say about a nation that it can only really enjoy itself in times of adversity? What kind of gloomy people are we that we can’t enjoy the good times, too?

The public was asked to stay away from Heathrow Airport when the Olympic team arrived on Monday and to save their welcome for a street procession next month. I’m not surprised; if the team knew what the British public had been talking about all weekend they would have got back on their gold-nosed plane and flown back to beg for asylum in China.

Maybe it will be a good thing if the stadium is not ready, we get no golds and there’s a riot at the opening ceremony. Because maybe if the whole world is judging us a failure, we will stand up, be united and show the courage and optimism for which we are famous. But only if we think we are doomed!