When Curling Became a National Obsession

It's fitting that Britain's first Winter Olympic gold medal for 18 years should involve a collection of British ladies bawling at women with brushes.

For centuries the British have been giving their staff gyp, stalking the corridors of their stately homes and yelling 'T, T, T, T, T' at the poor cleaner. On Thursday night, practice made perfect. Up and down the country, pubs stayed open so that grown men and women could sink pints and shout 'Great weight' at the TV screen.

In 1984, 23 million watched an uncharismatic couple from Nottingham win gold; last week half those watching television at midnight were cheering on Rhona Martin, Fiona MacDonald, Janice Rankin and Debbie Knox in the curling. 'Were you up for Rhona?' a nation asked one another around the water cooler. After 312 hours of continuous coverage on British Eurosport, Britain had won a gold. For the aficionado, however, the big moment had come on Wednesday afternoon with what Jayne Torvill described as: 'The best 10 minutes Britain has had in the Winter Olympics ever.'

She wasn't lying. The 10 minutes were best watched on BBC Digital's multiscreen coverage, where, once you had reassured yourself that the skeleton bob at the top of the screen wasn't going to come out of turn Snowy or Sunny and crash into the back of Rhona's head, you could relax and enjoy Alex Coomber and curling at the same time. In the top box, we had the final of the women's skeleton.

In the middle box, Great Britain versus Canada in the semi-finals. And in the bottom box, an ice-hockey match involving two teams, neither of them British, which consequently shouldn't have been there at all. At the ice run, Paul Dickinson was talking about 'a right turn, a left turn and then an awesome turn'.

Over at the ice sheet, Dougie Donnelly was saying three-quarters of Canadians are curlers, although I might have transposed that. Certainly the Canadians looked good. Possibly because they employed a personal trainer, a psychologist and a nutritionist. Ready Brek - the breakfast of curlers. In the skeleton, 'a tiny American' went '0.36 seconds into the lead and that's a big chunk of time'. Alex Coomber meanwhile was ' only 0.22 of a second away'. A third of a second is a big chunk in the world of skeleton, where 'a hundredth of a second is nothing but can be crucial'. As Sue Barker would say later: '0.2 of a second! What does that mean? How much is that?' At the marginally less frenetic curling: 'The sweepers are earning their keep 100 times over today.' Clean the house and you can have some dinner. Irritatingly, a mobile with a Star-Spangled Banner ringing tone trilled thrice.

Suddenly, in the top screen, a man was interviewing a sleeping dog. He wouldn't let it lie. Eventually he moved on to grilling a neighbour. (The Beeb had camped in the Coomber family house in Somerset.) 'Second is just where she wants to be,' said Coomber's neighbour. 'She's in third,' said the interviewer. 'Third is just where she wants to be,' said the neighbour. Before we could check the validity of this dubious proposition, we had to watch yet another British male failing to live up to expectations. 'Bromley has picked off another person, which means he moves up into the top 15, which is terrific ,' said Dickinson.

Steady, Paul. Tom Landry, the Dallas Cowboys coach, used to dissuade his players from over-celebrating touchdowns with the words: 'We're the Dallas Cowboys. We should act like we've been in the endzone before.' Adopting the Landry principle, we're British, we should act like we've finished fifteenth before. As the excitement built, speed-switching channels became mandatory. 'Every shot is so vital now.' Zap. 'It's not looking tidy for the German.' Zap. 'Sorry about my hair.' Not Sue Barker, but one of the Canadian cleaners apologising after a careless tress impeded her skip.

And then, in a rush, the medals. 'Gold is on the cards... The snow is absolutely throwing itself down... We've got a bronze,' said Paul. The snow's fault, obviously. 'It's an open house,' said Dougie. 'All those years in the game come down to repeating one apparently simple shot. This to play for gold.' And Rhona nailed it. What a conclusion to 'three hours of enthralling nip and tuck curling'.

Later in the evening, Steve Cram and Clare Balding could barely keep their hands off each other, announcing on the highlights programme: 'Tonight we have some sport for you.' Which made a welcome change from the night when Steve had thrillingly said: 'Stick around, because we've got more of your ski-jumping emails in a moment.' Everyone in the studio had difficulty coming to terms with 'the enormity of what's actually happened'.

Two medals in an afternoon and the world had changed forever. 'Everyone's gone curling crazy,' said Kirsty Hay. 'This should inspire young people to take up curling.' And that was before they won gold. They'll be saving up their pocket money to buy a quartet of stones and a couple of brooms, cajoling their friends into joining their team, bullying their parents to act as cleaners, and hanging around for the next Ice Age. Perhaps.

Now, a churl might argue that, stunning as the above clearly was, being described as 'the best 10 minutes the British have had in the Winter Olympics ever' may be less of a compliment than it appears. That many people would be hard-pressed to remember a single minute, let alone 10, from a past Winter Olympics. But such churlish people are probably rude to their staff.

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