Having groaned at the number of times the word "Olympics" appeared on the BBC's schedules last week, something stranged happen on Saturday morning.
Having got up at 6am to drive to a wedding on the south coast, I'd parked up at Oxford services some time around 10am, and invested my overdraft in a breakfast (tasty, surprisingly) before sitting down in front of a telly. Since when did service stations have tellies?
Anyway, the Olympics were on, and we took bronze in the Men's double sculls. That's rowing, you know. I wouldn't go so far as to say the place stopped to watch it - two bus loads of West Brom fans were just leaving on their way to the first of many defeats in the Premier League - but a good two thirds of the this travelling mass of humanity did. In fact, there were probably more watching the event in Oxford Service Station than there were at the marina itself - don't the Chinese know that to build a real empire you need to be good at crossing water quickly?
So I watched - and boy did I get into it. So much so that, had it not been for the fact that I can't really afford £3 for dishwater tea (food lovely, tea grim). The first thing I did when I got to the B&B we were staying in was switch on the TV (flatscreen - yes I was surprised too) and watched some more rowing. This time, we took a Gold. Or four, to be precise. I nearly forgot to go to the wedding. But then that's why I have a girlfriend.
And since Saturday, I've tuned into as much as I can. I even marvelled when Louis Smith won a bronze for something called the pommel horse, which, it turned out, had everything to do with gymnastics.
The BBC's coverage isn't bad, as it happens. I have no problem with Gabby Logan appearing on the telly around the clock. I quite like tuning into Five Live as they flip from one event to another, with the likes of Nicky Campbell trying to make it sound as if they are ever so au-fait with the intimate workings of the dressage. Some of it is positvely cringe-worthy, like when Nicky Campbell got one of the eight-strong rowing team to talk to his parents live on air moments after they'd missed out on gold. It wasn't meant to be like that.
But admist this myriad of sports-hopping, something special is evolving before our eyes. Relatively free of the computer generated nonsense which goes with sports like football and cricket, the presenters have been left to focus on the athletes themselves. Athletes who often have spent the last four years struggling make ends meet, getting up at 4am to go swimming and so on. And when they win, they're made up. And so are we, because they are British. And we don't normally win so many medals at the Olympics.
Whether we'll win many more is open to debate, but in a world of broadcasting where so much sport is neatly packaged and often without surprises, played by people whose salaries warrant them to be called professional, with so many liggers and hangers on they'd be better off being described as industries, it's great so see something different.
No doubt we'll have the flood of stories about people taking up swimming in the future and so in the quest to become the new Michael Phelps, but all of a sudden, as a man in the North, I don't begrudge this huge dose of the feel good factor coming to London in 2012. I might even go one better than the Chinese and buy a ticket to the sailing. Because, by then, Adrian Chiles will be presenting that, too.
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