The Olympics just won't go away - right now there's the permanently rising costs, the media probably having to hang out in Nissen huts or  some such, and of course Carphone Boy having to stand down from the London 2012 advisory group. It has all remnded me of a tiny episode in the early days of the bid.
 

I was working for another newspaper at the time and the head of British Olympic Committee then, an amiable chap called Simon Clegg, who by the time of the Beifing Games had transformed  himself into the rather grandly titled Chef de Mission, came to pay us a visit. It was late 2002 and he wanted to urge us to get behind a London bid for 2012. He made a very good case, and it was always something that we would have been keen on at  a newspaper where sport was very important.  Don't forget this was simply the process of bidding for the Games we decided to support;  not yet the Games itself.


There was clearly a cost to the bid - several millions and this was in the days when several millions actually meant something.  No bid could have gone ahead without the support of the Government and the Mayor of London. It vwas felt that Tony Blair, an eternal optimist, was possibly the only Cabinet member fully behind the bid. All the Treasury Ministers, including the Chancellor, were opposed, for understandable cost reasons.