Let’s make it clear : the Olympic Torch is not actually important. It doesn’t matter if it goes out; mankind is sufficiently advanced to find a way to light it again. You don’t need heavy-handed sky-blue thugs (Seb Coe’s own words) to protect it from people venting their anger at the one-party-dictatorship in China and their brutal crackdown on Tibetan ‘separatists’. If you have to put it out and jump on a bus, it’s okay, you can admit it. The whole torch relay was started by the Nazis anyway. You can’t pretend that it was never political.

I’ll tell you what I think of when I see the Olympic torch (apart from the Aryan-supremacist iconography and the former symbol of the Tories) (and yes, apart from a Mr.Whippy). That bloody Chariots of Fire theme by Vangelis. And I’ll tell you what I think of when I think of that. An exchange trip to France I took at college, when I shared a room with a guy who listened to it on his headphones, after dark, when he thought I was asleep (I so wish I had been), and I could hear him busy doing the 15-centimetre sprint, tossing the caber, giving the bronze medal a good polish, slapping duncan goodhew on the head. And yelping, “putain! putain!”, as if I couldn’t hear him or something. I don’t know what he was thinking of, but I bet it wasn’t Nigel Havers.

originally posted at 20six.co.uk/petescully