ME? I’M ALWAYS IN FOURTH PLACE.

I LOVE the Olympics. I cannot wait until Los Angeles 2028. I’ll be one of the few people not renting out their home for tens of thousands of dollars. With Paris 2024 now at the halfway mark, I could not be more impressed. That opening ceremony will be the unreachable standard for decades to come thanks to most cities’ inability to match the French capital’s enviable combination of geography and history. The naysayers? I put those voices of dissent down to jealous Anglo-Saxons still intent on fighting the Battle of Agincourt. The English language won, but the style and spectacle of La France still reigns supreme.

I’ve been watching the BBC’s coverage, complete with delightful – and occasionally sarcastic -commentary delivered in Scottish brogues. But I couldn’t get the Beeb to load this morning, so I switched over to the American network, NBC. Thank goodness I did. This whole time, I thought the The Olympic Games were about the glory of a surprise victory, the agony of unexpected defeat, young people giving it their all in the name of global unity. The Peacock set me straight. It turns out the Olympics are all about the camera finding as many Hollywood celebrities in the stands as possible and returning to them every few seconds to gauge their approval.

One has to wonder… did the judges also look to John Travolta’s gentle claps before deciding the scores? I suspect not.