I couldn't watch the Olympics opening ceremony.

I had to switch off the pre-opening studio interviews and looks back at previous triumphs.  Thank goodness the gushy presenters and uncomfortable superstars bedecked with multiculturally tinted malteser on stick microphones had less than a hundred years full of shaky images to enthuse over.  Think of the fun they could have inflicted on us with flickering pics of that poor old Greek doomed forever to compete in the pushing a rock up the hill race.

The opening ceremony, or what I saw of it, I thought was ludicrous.  The press has almost universally enthused, throwing in eccentric, surreal,bizarre and idiocyncratically British as approving epithets rather than coded disapproval.  One daring commentator went so far off message as to suggest that it became a bit too much like Saturday night television but I seem to be alone in laughing at it out loud.  Noble doctors and nurses throwing one another around the dance floor while their cute little patients bounce up and down on their beds.  I ask you, and that from the man who directed Trainspotting!

I was in bed before the athletes appeared (I had been up since 5a.m.) and so missed what I hear was a thrilling and moving parade and an amazing cauldron lighting moment as did the large number of British athletes who didn't think it worthwhile leaving their Portugese training camp to participate.  But it led me to ask what on earth this opening ceremony is in aid of.

Would it not have made a lot more sense if the Queen had just cracked a bottle of the sponsor's tipple over the Olympic logo and wished good fortune to all who would run, swim, kick a ball........over the next two weeks.  That would have proved we couldn't outdo Beijing without spending 27 million in the attempt.